old flame in a minorwhen you were true making love with you was a jellyroll in blue your rhythm always perfect on the downbeat your gravel growl the counterpoint to the glissando of your tongue your fingers stretched flaming octaves across every key of my delight but now every note is sour a little sharp here a little flat there your memory a discordant jangle of minor seconds Rabbit In the pale spring sun I sit, enervated, frail, burdened with writhing demons that riot every day, infecting what should be calm with chaos. I am singularly ill-equipped to conquer them; if there is nothing rippling the surface of life's lake I invent something, some vague possibility of disaster, and then I am done for. Those devils take what I make and set it in a hall of mirrors, where, multiplied, magnified, its golem mouth gapes, raw and red, and swallows me as neatly as ever Jonah's whale swallowed him. Drink and chemicals are bandaids at best, temporary salves that solve nothing. So frozen I sit, afraid to move, wishing for nothing so much as a cloak of invisibility. a few things i forgot to say there is no strength like gentleness i know your strength you need not prove a thing to me wrap me in your gentleness and i shall be content the cacophony of the circus that is the world is drowning out the words i so need to hear come closer whisper to me the truth of your heart if you would understand me read me like a well-belovèd book listen with your eyes not your ears my speech is clumsy what i write is truth midnight music the symphony of the lost community you orchestrated pounds in my veins its syncopation my heartbeat you and i were charter members of that outcast tribe we knew every inch of that terrain it was mapped in our genes you walked those mountains fearless openhearted i lagged behind afraid of what i might discover when you fell you did it quietly with no surprise or apprehension you predicted it and owned it like the ancient soul you were i was not there to see you sail into blackness and had i been it would have made no difference what is to be will always be i could not rewrite the page you came a brief bright comet the instrument of my redemption rhyming…sort of life has a whiff
of brimstone about it the ground crumbles beneath my feet and the wind sings a dirge offkey even the sky is weeping buckets my pockets are empty my heart's empty too my eyes are surrounded by circles of rue all i desired was stolen by you life in perpetual midnight blue if it's truly better to marry than to burn than burn i will there’s no lover here for me but I won’t roast roast in hellfire only desire i carry a redhot torch
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ThingsNear the end of the summer after fifth grade, my mother received a call from Mrs. Raab. Her son, Eddie, was a friend of mine who lived across town. Turned out Mrs. Raab was worried that Eddie hadn’t enough friends nearby to play with and asked if he could come over to our house for a while. My mother said of course, and an hour later the wiry boy stood upon our stoop, using two fingers to brush his blonde hair from in front of his eyes.
Of all my friends, Eddie knew more than any of us about sex. He wore boxers before the rest of us. He had hair under his arms. And he was vulgar. While in line at school, he talked about pads and lips and Jamie Hickle—who he had a crush on—and about which girls he could tell stuffed their bras. He was the first person I ever heard use the word twat. He had an older sister, Brianne, who all of us wanted to do things to. What things? None of us knew exactly, but she was an eighth-grader with actual breasts and blonde hair down to her backside. Things were to be done. Eddie, in fact, was the only one of us who knew what things were. I figured he had obtained this sage knowledge from his sister. After all, I had no sisters, just one older brother who hardly acknowledged my existence anymore, and what better mentor on the subject than a fully developed sister who was almost in high school? I was surprised to learn this wasn’t the case when he brought up the topic of his father’s magazine collection. I was even more surprised when he came over that day with two copies rolled up and stuck into one of the back pockets of his jeans, covered with his t-shirt. Shortly after he arrived, we made the strategic decision to go up to the attic to rummage. I pulled the string that hung from the ceiling, and the hatch lowered. Eddie helped me unfold the wooden ladder and lower it to the floor. He went up first. The rolled magazines angled out from his pocket like a bobcat’s tail and jounced as he climbed the rungs. In front of my face on the red, rolled-up cover, a blonde woman sat open-mouthed and touched the insides of her thighs with her fingertips. Long and cavernous, the attic was a wooden trove that glowed orange when the sunlight shone in. The scent of the exposed framing was pleasant, like the pages of an old book. I often liked to putter up there on my own, but it became unbearably hot, even in the cooler months. That day, however, we had decided the reward outweighed the rub. Eddie and I cleared a spot and sat down on the floor behind a velvet-upholstered trunk, just in case my mother decided to come up and check on us. Eddie then set the magazines on the floor side-by-side, Penthouse on the left and Playboy on the right. Dust settled on our skin and mixed with our sweat. Eddie opened the Penthouse to a full-page spread: the platinum blonde-haired woman, the same one from the cover, was naked and bent over a desk in a detective’s office. One naked man in a deerstalker stood in front of her face, and she held him with both hands. A second hatted man stood behind her with one hand on the small of her back and the other on his own hip. An inset near the bottom of the page featured a close-up of the behind-man about to penetrate the woman, and Eddie exhaled a low, crooning sort of whistle. I wiped a bead of dusty sweat from the outer corner of my eye and wondered how anyone could think that kind of thing would be pleasant. And then I remembered something from several years earlier, from when I was very young—something I didn’t quite understand, but it made my stomach drop. He turned the page. Both men were inside of the woman, all the way in, one at each end. Eddie then pulled up the edge of the insulation between two planks in the unfinished floor and slid the magazines underneath. He met my eyes with an expression of bona fide goodwill. Then he smiled warmly and said I could hold onto them for a while. Later in the afternoon, we sat side-by-side on the couch and watched television and ate Fruit Roll-Ups until his mother came for him. During a commercial an attractive woman appeared on-screen, and Eddie and I glanced at one other. Eddie curled the sides of his mouth upward as he chewed and chewed and drew more and more of the fruit snack into his mouth. And I clenched. Things, I thought. Scott Clements lives in Windsor Ontario, where he spends most of his days teaching elementary students in a virtual setting. During the evenings, he enjoys spending time with his two daughters playing video games, building puzzles or binging whatever they tell him is 'trending'. On quiet nights, he spends his time working on his next novel, longing, as we all do, for a return to normalcy, when he can freely spend time with family and friends. Mr.C, as his students call him, hopes all of you remain safe and prosperous, and he thanks you for your support. A Fool’s LamentCalled by some the wisest man in the world, Vainamoinen Kaleva was at least wise enough to know he was a coward, had made a coward’s mistake.
And Aino--Aino—died. The burden of the wizard’s shame was like the weight of the night sky and all the stars. But he had never been one to suffer mistakes, and perhaps, if the fates smiled on him and the gods were kind, he would no longer suffer this one. Too late, he had seen. Had known he would be. She would not have howled so, had he lived. An arrow in the neck, crimson fletched, like the red-black blood that soaked the loamy forest floor. She had turned to him then, the largest wolf he had ever seen, regarded him with thunderhead eyes. ‘I came,’ he said, ‘with the cry.’ The enormous wolf tilted her head, storm-cloud gaze falling. Staring at the body of her lifeless mate, she said softly, ‘If only I were human, then might I visit the witch’s pool.’ ‘The witch’s pool?’ he said. ‘Yes. Baba Jaga’s pool.’ ‘Why, mighty wolf, would you visit Bony Legs’ pool? Please, tell me.’ ‘I would visit her pool to retrieve its water.’ ‘And why, mighty wolf, would you seek its water? What power does this water have?’ The great wolf paused, judged; spoke at last, quietly. ‘Know you not, great wizard? The witch’s water can raise the dead.’ He was silent then, as wind and salvation whispered through the trees. ‘Might I sing for him?’ he asked into the silence, his perfect voice feather-soft. ‘A final song for sorrow, for grief? Might I sing for him, mighty wolf?’ ‘I think I should like that, great wizard.’ The memory was a mantra that even the predatory wind could not flay. Vainamoinen’s face and hands ached at the wind’s frigid touch, and before him his harsh, white breath streamed into the night. The only sounds that reached him through the surrounding gloom were the creak and groan of the skeletal trees that swayed all around him, and the moaning wind. It had only been days before that he had spoken to the wolf, learned of the water, and with each step that brought him closer to it, closer to the witch, the weather worsened and the shadows darkened. Had he ever been this cold when he was young? Vainamoinen shook his head and hitched his cloak. The effort was futile, served only to send bits of snow and ice cascading down his back and chest. He closed his eyes and suppressed a shiver. High above, the argent moon looked down on him. Kuu she was called, Mother Night and Protector of the Stars. Beneath Kuu’s hoary, uncaring gaze, Vainamoinen the Wise, the Steadfast, son of a goddess whose might and majesty had always and ever been the source of his power, sat atop his warhorse, aged eyes narrowed. With the resigned silence of a man who knew his destiny and feared it, Vainamoinen peered through the wind-driven snow and spindly branches, strained to see the terrifying hut, the witch’s hut, nestled quietly in the center of the clearing just beyond the last of the dead trees. “Easy, my friend,” Vainamoinen whispered over the wind, close to the courser’s drawn back ears. Tursas had been with him when he journeyed to Pohjola to steal back the magical Sampo from his most wicked enemy, Louhi, Sorceress of the North, when he slew the Great Fish and fashioned from its mighty jaws his kantele. Tursas had been with him when he left the world of men in search of Tuonela, the Land of the Dead. Vainamoinen knew well it was not the beast’s own fear that unsteadied its hoofed feet. “It is well,” Vainamoinen whispered, his voice soothing, “let not an old man’s fear make you doubt.” Beneath him, like so many times before, Tursas grew still. “Ah, my brave, brave friend. One more time, into evil’s heart we journey. Shall you carry me still?” And Tursas did carry him. Through biting wind and blowing snow, through midnight shadows and the lonely night, Tursas carried him beyond the last of the skeleton trees and into the clearing. That he might, at last, right a great wrong, and retrieve the Water of Life from the most terrible witch of all. # Nestled inside her stone mortar, fully at home among the frozen, shadowy recesses of the primeval forest, she watched him. Unnoticed, the wicked wind ripped at her tattered shawl, tore at the tufts of her stringy grey hair. In one knotted hand was her broom, hardly thinner than the emaciated arm that held it, a few bits of yellow straw clinging desperately to its end. In the other was her stone pestle. Her carrion, rheumy gaze split the darkness like a dagger, cut through the wailing snow, the whipping, frenzied wind. Fixed on the invader in her forest. She had known he was coming, had been warned. The shadows spoke often; one had only to listen. They told her of this man, whispered tales of his deeds, his courage. They feared him, she knew. All the powers of the Dark feared this man. A mistake had brought him to her, a tragedy that the forest sang. But he would not suffer that mistake. What pride and desperation had sundered, his power and determination would mend. In the stories she heard, it was always so. From the midnight shadows of her forest, Baba Jaga Kostianaya Noga, called ‘Bony Legs’, cackled with glee. With a whispered word, her impossible mortar, as much her home as her hut, carried her whisper-silent across the snow-covered ground, her broom trailing behind, improbably, impossibly, obscuring her tracks. Tracks that would have led any foolish enough to follow them toward her hut, where she would greet her guest. # Perched atop a demon’s leg, nestled behind a picket fence of human bone, the hut was the most terrifying thing Vainamoinen had ever seen. He had heard tales, of course, stories about the hut and its abominable single leg. He had thought the stories preposterous. Even if true, how could one fear something so…ridiculous? Now he understood. It was the bizarreness, the absolute wrongfulness of the place. He felt small of a sudden, fragile in the face of so much malevolence. In the freezing wind it swayed gently, like a rotting flower. The wooden planks that formed the hut’s sides were split and cracked, the single, obscene leg that held it off the ground was thin and scaled and clawed, clenched the earth with a strangling hold. Above, the henna shingles of the wood-slatted roof were pitted and broken. A pair of black swans rested there, huge, shadows among the shadows. They turned their long, serpentine necks and fixed him with unblinking eyes. Before the hut, the sepulchral fence creaked and swayed. The hollow-eyed skulls that topped the fence stared at him, screamed silent warnings. The gate, too, was made of bone, the lock a sharp-toothed mouth, the bolt a single, skeletal hand. A black cat sat silently before the monstrous gate, licking a chilled paw. Here is the source of so much myth, Vainamoinen thought. Here is the Archetype, beside which so much pales. Stories of the witch were as numberless as the flakes of snow that fell from the sky. In some, she was a greedy hag who lured children to her hut and devoured them. In others, she was the First Witch, from whom all others came. In still others, Baba Jaga was manifest Fate, controlling the destinies of men by churning her roiling cauldron. While her ultimate nature remained shrouded in legend, one thing remained true across all the stories—she always demanded a price. At Vainamoinen’s approach, the cat turned and stood before it stalked away into the shadows. As he drew nearer the hut, the moon’s stark light seemed less than it had been, the shadows deeper, colder. In answer to the deepening dark, Vainamoinen reached over his shoulder and drew forth his kantele. Laying the ancient harp in his lap, he plucked the strings. Life forbidden, where Death and Entropy are all. He began to sing. # She watched him enter the clearing, watched him pause. Smelled his fear. Amid the silence of the clearing the swans waited, and the cat. The fence and the hut waited as well. Waited for her. She felt their impatience, sensed their fear. Fear of this man, this bane of the Dark, who had found them at last. At her silent command, her stone mortar carried her closer. He was tall, proud. His breath poured out from the depths of a beard that poured down the front of his red cloak, a cloak pulled low over eyes she still could not see. Eyes, the shadows told her, that contained all the knowledge in the world. Nearer now, to the edge of the clearing. Even the beast could not sense her, not here, in this place. The steed, Tursas, would feed her own beasts for days. While the wizard, the wizard would be hers. With a smile that split her pockmarked face, she shifted closer, readied herself. Saw him reach around, draw forth his instrument. Then Baba Jaga Kostianaya Noga, the Dancer on the Gravestones, heard the wizard sing. And she understood at last why this man was so terribly feared by the Dark. # In a voice unmatched in all the long history of the Earth, Vainamoinen the Wise sang of Light. Bright, keening words fell from the air like shafts of golden sunlight and the earth shifted beneath him. Far into the woods the ancient trees trembled. Enraged, the wind rose in answer, sought to flay the wizard’s song with ice and snow and cast it away forever. But its insufferable moaning was drowned beneath the brilliant, scintillant notes. Within the haunted clearing the shadows twisted and writhed like a man in pain, began to wither and ebb. And the moon’s light shone brightly down. Beneath the harsh, argent light, above the soaring glory of the words, the tormented hut screamed, spun round and round on its hideous, malformed leg until the swans were cast from its roof, taking to the skies where they faded as the other shadows faded. The bone fence too, suffered. Moaning, quaking, its ivory jaws clattered as the empty eyes of the dead flashed incarnadine, a thousand wretched souls fighting the wizard’s words of Light. And then he stopped. Before him, Vainamoinen’s ragged breath escaped into the night where it was seized and rent by the impotent wind. Staring at the quivering hut, the trembling, quavering fence, Vainamoinen said quietly, “Shall I sing your hut to pieces, Baba Jaga Bony Legs? And your fence? Shall I rend every shadow cast by every tree in this forest? Or shall you come to me, now?” “Turn wizard,” Baba Jaga said, “I am here. I am always here.” Vainamoinen turned, and for the first time in their long, long lives, the steely eyes of the wizard, met the unrelenting gaze of the witch. They were of a height, he atop his steed of war, she nestled within the confines of her impossible mortar. Gangly and gnarled, the witch resembled a dead tree, or a spider. For a moment they stood thus, frozen. Then Baba Jaga’s carrion gaze shifted, ever so slightly. And Tursas reared. Caught unawares, Vainamoinen was thrown from the maddened beast, cast from its broad back as the swans were cast from the hut. He landed hard on the frozen earth, stunned. Through the heaving gasps of his white breath, the blinding pain in his arm and leg, he watched Tursas flee the clearing, rush headlong into the night. All about him the shadows grew, stretched forth spindly fingers. Stretching out fingers of his own, Vainamoinen sought his kantele. Found frozen earth and snow. Confused, he glanced to his side. The harp was not there. “There, wizard,” cackled Baba Jaga, “your instrument, it is there!” Pointing with her stony pestle, Baba Jaga indicated a place far removed from where Vainamoinen lay. Around the wondrous instrument the black cat skulked, its amber eyes boring into Vainamoinen. “What shall you do now, I wonder?” Baba Jaga said, her mortar gliding forward over the frozen earth. “Bereft of his songs, what shall the word-mage do?” Vainamoinen stared up at the ancient, smiling hag. In her right hand she held her stone pestle, and in her left, her broom. The stringy tufts of her hair billowed around her wretched face like a nest of adders. Her nose, long and thin, curled under like the beak of some foul bird of prey. But it was the witch’s teeth that gave him pause. Long, sharp, the teeth of a carnivore, yellow and black stained. Vainamoinen had long heard the tales of Bony Legs’ terrible appetites, heard the tales of the oven, forever hot, which awaited unwary visitors in her hut. Though he was a visitor, he was, by no means, unwary. Nor was the kantele his only weapon. Rolling quickly to his side, Vainamoinen smoothly freed his sword, Kantelvala, from its sheath hidden among the folds of his red and black cloak. The old man’s breath came more rapidly than he would have wished and his voice, when he spoke, was not so firm as he would have liked. “I’ve no wish to fight you, Crone,” he said, struggling to control his breath. “I’ve come only to make a request, nothing more. Will you hear me?” “A request? Foo, what could the great wizard possibly want of Baba Jaga?” “I seek the Water of Life, to undo a great wrong. Allow me this, and you shall see me nevermore.” Behind Vainamoinen the skulls chattered. “Foo, shall that be all you offer?” “What more would you have?” “I would have you speak of the great wrong, the terrible deed that brought you to me. The night is eager for the tale.” A pause. “And if I do this, if I tell you, you shall allow me the Water? On your word?” “I shall consider it, word-mage, seek no more of me than that!” For a moment Vainamoinen, too, considered. Then, over the bitter wind and blowing snow, sword leveled, eyes unflinchingly on the witch, he began his tale. “It was the winter past. I traveled to my homeland of Wainola, having finished work on a ship I’d been fashioning. Tursas pulled my sleigh across the snow-topped heath when we came upon a bridge. Just as we began to cross, a second sled, also pulled by a single horse, stopped on the far side. A voice called out: ‘I am Joukahainen of Lapland, come seeking the sage of the North.’ ‘I am he,’ I answered. ‘For what reason do you seek me out?’ ‘I am the mightiest wizard in the world!’ Joukahainen declared, ‘yet, wherever I go, I hear your tales recounted! Though my great deeds far outweigh your own, though my power is without peer, still can I not escape your name. So, I am come this day to enchant you, to sing you down into the snow and ice forever, that I might at last be free of your long shadow.’ ‘Sing what you know,’ I said, in answer to his challenge. “Joukahainen began to chant then, into the wind, composing a song to show that he possessed a wizard’s understanding of the world. But the black-bearded youth, so arrogant and young, sang of nothing, surfaces and common places. ‘Sing of deeper things,’ I challenged, ‘show me your knowledge.’ “The boy’s voice grew louder in anger. He said that he himself plowed the seas, raised the sky. His hand it was that flung the infinite stars into the night.” Vainamoinen shook his head at the memory. “Such arrogance. ‘You lie,’ I said. “Joukahainen bridled at the rebuke. ‘If I cannot battle you with words, let our swords decide who is the mightier!’ ‘No,’ I answered. ‘Go back to your land; learn and grow. You are unworthy.’ “Ach,” Baba Jaga said, “a terrible thing to tell a boy.” Vainamoinen had trouble meeting the witch’s gaze. “Indeed,” he said. “At my words, the boy grew angrier still. ‘If you will not fight, I shall sing you into a swine, into a filthy, grumbling, muck-dwelling swine!’ Baba Jaga laughed. “Foo, foo! The boy has spirit! Mightily must you have bridled at these words!” For a moment, Vainamoinen closed his eyes, lost in memory. “Yes,” he said quietly, shamefully. “At this last, I finally grew angry. Drawing forth my kantele I threw back my head and began to sing.” Sensing his diminished spirit, his weakening will, the wind, no longer so impotent, slipped curling fingers down his neck, and all around him the shadows encroached. “It was…a powerful song. As I sang the boy cried out, ‘Enough! I yield!’ But in my own arrogance, I did not heed his words. I sang him down into the frozen earth.” “Ho!” Baba Jaga cackled, “the Wizard of Light! Ho, ho!” “Down the boy sank. First his feet, then his knees; past his waist and chest. Only when the frozen earth lapped at his bearded chin did I heed his cries. ‘Mighty sage, reverse the charm and spare my life. Pray you, let me pay ransom!’ ‘And what will you give me, boy, in exchange of your life?’ “Gold and boats, stallions and land, all these things, he offered me. ‘I’ve all that, and more,’ I cried, and once again the boy began to sink. ‘My sister, great wizard, I pledge to you the life and hand of my sister, Aino.’ Vainamoinen hung his head, whispered: “And it was done.” “So, the mighty wizard, fearing age and loneliness, took from the youth the only thing he himself did not possess: a young life.” Baba Jaga’s laughter split the night like a streak of gangrenous lightning. “Shall the world stop spinning, I wonder, to hear of your evil?” He ignored the taunt, like he ignored the barbarous wind; both were his due. “You are correct, witch,” he said. “I accepted Joukahainen’s offer and freed him from his doom. Then I left with him, that I might claim my prize.” “Blind, arrogant fool,” Baba Jaga said. “Did you never once think of the girl?” The weight of his shame threatened to pull him down into the cold earth. “No,” he said, “I did not. When we arrived at Joukahainen’s home in Lapland, he took me to his sister and told her of our deal. She cried and raged at the unfairness of it all. I swore kindness to her, promised to care for and protect her, but she would have none of it.” Vainamoinen shook his head and raised his eyes, stared hard at the witch. He would not turn from this. The burden was his to claim, and he would not shrink from it. “She was in love, you see,” he said, his voice hard as old ice, “with another, though I knew it not at the time. Before I could speak more, she ran from the house, mounted a steed, and fled into the woods. For hours the boy and I searched for her. We found her at last, at the bottom of a river, a large rock tied about her left foot.” “Ach. Knowing that if she refused you she dishonored her brother, she knew as well that if she did agree, she dishonored her true love. Foo! What choice save death? And now you seek my Water to return her to the world she was so unjustly released from, that you might ease your own torment. How truly noble, foo-foo! But I wonder, wizard: will she want your help?” Vainamoinen stared at the hag. “The Water, Bony Legs. I have upheld our bargain, I have told you my tale. May I use your water?” Baba Jaga’s eyes did not leave Vainamoinen’s. “You have spun a good tale wizard, but one thing more will I have of you, before I allow you to visit my beautiful pool.” Vainamoinen flinched at the words, his sword at the ready. “You shall compose for me a song of your deed that I might sing it each night. A reminder to the world, forever, that there is darkness, even in light. That is my price, sorcerer. Pay it, or die.” The wind and wolves howled through the trees. Behind Vainamoinen, the skulls chattered incessantly, eyes aglow. Vainamoinen trembled with rage, his sword point quivered. But he had learned his lesson, pushed his rage, his pride, aside. For Aino. This time. “Very well, Crone,” he said at last, “I agree to your price. A song, for the Water.” Slowly, Vainamoinen lowered his sword. He took a step toward his kantele, lying on the frozen ground. “Ach,” the witch said, “you’ll not need that to sing.” Vainamoinen turned. “As you wish.” He raised his voice and began to sing. Under the stars and the uncaring moon, over the driving wind and the whipping snow, Vainamoinen the Wise, hero of his people, sang of his shame. His words shaped a sadness in the night, a soul-wrenching grief. They carried far and high, deep into the heart of shadow and beyond. The words were a catharsis, a cleansing, offered to the night openly. They were a gift, bestowed by a tormented heart upon the shadows that mocked him. When he was through, when his song was ended, the shadows were silent. Baba Jaga stared at him. “It was well done, old man,” she said. Vainamoinen looked up to meet her gaze. “It is not yet done.” One more time, Vainamoinen raised his perfect voice. The words were different this time, the cadence altered. Of origins did he sing, of beginnings, of the birth of earth and stone. Before the wizard’s words, Baba Jaga reeled. In her hand, her pestle, so ancient and strong, split wide down the center before changing into dust that was carried away by a startled, panicked wind. Baba Jaga cried out, sought a spell that would destroy the wizard where he stood. Was too late. Below her waist, her mortar cracked with the sound of the world breaking. The witch screamed, the terrible, nightmare sound echoed by fence and hut. An instant later, the stone of the mortar, hewn from the rock of Golgotha so very far away, shattered into a million pieces. And Baba Jaga Kostianaya Noga, the Dancer on the Gravestones, tumbled from her lofty height to land upon the frozen ground like a broken thing. As the witch fell, the fence of bones collapsed, reduced to a heap of ivory, then to dust and at last, to nothing at all. Beyond the fence, the single leg that held the hut began to wither. With a sharp crack, the leg snapped, the weight of the hut suddenly too great. With a terrific crash the baneful shack settled, for the first time, upon cold earth. Casting his hooded gaze about the clearing, silence as thick as the muffling snow, Vainamoinen quietly approached his kantele. “Shall I sing for you as well, precious?” The black cat, hackles raised, claws extended, met the adamantine eyes of the sorcerer, then bolted into the shadows. Stooping to recover his instrument, Vainamoinen turned to the witch. She lay upon the cold ground, arms twisted and bent, unable to rise. Her legs were gnarled, knobbed. Tufts of cadaverous flesh clung to them in places, but those diseased limbs could never support even her spindly form. They were the reason for the mortar. As he approached her prone, pitiable form, Vainamoinen felt nothing. For centuries, Baba Jaga had gorged herself on the life’s blood of the innocent, had devoured the souls of the pure. And now, at last, she had been made to answer for her crimes. As he drew near, Baba Jaga shifted her head, peered at him through rheumy eyes. “I shall take my Water now, Crone,” Vainamoinen said, “and leave you with my song. Sing it through the long nights, let the shadows rejoice in its telling. But know this: I’ll not flee the darkness, ever. Even if that darkness is my own.” On the ground before him, the witch muttered words he could not hear. A moment later, from out of the night, the swans came. Gracefully, they swept down, and with the very last of her strength, Baba Jaga Kostianaya Noga clung to their sable necks. As one then, the swans took to the air and hovered in the clearing. “Foo, I’ll remember, wizard,” she promised, looking down on him from between the swans. “The Water is yours. A bargain struck is a bargain kept. And know, foo, that I will sing your song, for as long as light casts shadow. We will meet again, Vainamoinen Kaleva, foo, foo! I shall wait for you in the night.” And carried by her swans, cackling through the sky, Baba Jaga rose, higher, higher. “The pool, Crone,” Vainamoinen shouted, “where is the pool?” From out of the darkness Baba Jaga cried, “It is in the hut, of course, foolish man!” And Baba Jaga, her fell laughter ringing through the night, was gone. “No. No!” Panicked, Vainamoinen stumble-ran to the teetering hut. Hurtling across the threshold where the bone fence once stood, he reached the door. Creaking, dangling, held in place by a single hinge, he gripped the iron handle and pulled. The door came free in his grasp. Casting it aside, the wizard stepped inside. Frantically, he cast his gaze about. Inside, a small table still stood, across from a huge, cold brick oven. A putrid stench permeated the wood of the hut. Broken jars and smashed vials littered the cracked and rotted floor. Everywhere collapsed shelves and cupboards lay strewn in broken piles. “What have I done?” Feverishly, the great sorcerer scanned the wreckage called down by his song. Then he saw it, at the very back of the small, crumbling shack; a round basin. “No,” he said, spying the thin crack that ran from the basin’s lip to the floor. In his haste to reach the pool, Vainamoinen stumbled. Pain lanced up his arm from his hand. A broken bottle on the floor, blood welling from a terrible wound. Ignoring the pain, on hands and knees, the mightiest wizard in the world crawled. As he drew nearer, the precious Water pooled on the floor beneath the stony vessel, seeped through the crack, blood from a wound far more terrible than his own. “Please,” Vainamoinen pleaded to the unheeding night, “not like this, not like this.” Vainamoinen rose, looked in the basin. His heart threatened to burst with relief. “Ah.” Reaching beneath his cloak, his aged hands trembling, he pulled free a small, glass vial. Dipping the translucent spout into the water he filled it, slowly, taking care not to spill any more of the precious liquid pooled at the bottom of the basin. Capping the flask, placing it deep inside his robe, well away from his own water, he stood. Life forbidden, where Death and Entropy are all. “I am coming, Aino,” he whispered. “At last, I am coming.” # Gathering his kantele, Vainamoinen plucked at the strings. A moment later, Tursas thundered out of the woods. Trembling, the mighty beast of war shied from the wizard’s gentle touch. “Oh, my great, great friend. Come to me.” Reluctantly, shamefully, Tursas lowered his frothing head. Vainamoinen hugged the huge horse, held it until its fear was past. “She was a terrible foe, Tursas, but she has gone now, and we’ve work left unfinished. Shall we ride together, you and I, one more time into legend?” Tursas reared tall, his answer ringing through the forest. Vainamoinen laughed. With more difficulty than he would have liked, his arm and leg still aching from his fall, he climbed atop Tursas’s back. “Outside Juskazero we shall find what we need.” Carefully, Vainamoinen reached one hand into a deep pocket inside his cloak. Withdrawing the sprig of withe, he nodded, then a jerk of the reins and they were off. To find a dead man who would lead them into the Land of Eternal Shadow. In silence, from the darkness, the wolf watched all. # “Yaaah!” The sound of the cart bursting forward as the horse bolted drowned out the taut snap of the rope. When the horse came to rest, the hanged man’s gurgled cries were prominent among the silence. Twitching, convulsing, arms wrenching to be free of the cord that secured them behind his back, the dying man dangled from the broad branch of the long-dead birch, his body silhouetted against the setting sun. The last of the man’s ragged breath poured out into the chill air, and goose flesh crawl along his naked body. The man’s eyes bulged in death the way they never could have in life, the blood from the visceral brand on his forehead—the murderer’s mark—pooled in them, fell from his quavering lip to the icy ground below. A cheer went up from the dozen or so witnesses when the man’s bowels released. A moment later the twitching stopped, and the breath. From the shadows, Vainamoinen sighed. “Now,” he said to Tursas, “we wait.” They did not wait long. It was nearing twilight and Vainamoinen knew even a crowd of armed men would tempt fate only so long. To those who listened to such things, twilight was said to be an in-between time, indefinable and fey. Some said at twilight the dead walked the woods and the warriors of the Tuatha roamed free. Vainamoinen knew this to be true. When the last of the men had disappeared from sight, Tursas carried Vainamoinen into the small clearing. For more than a hundred years, men had died here. Some, as the murderer dangling in the wind before him, deservedly so. But not every man hanged was so deserving. The clearing was an angry place, where for decades unjust and cowardly acts were perpetrated against good and fair men. It was a place one could only see truthfully from the corner of an eye, where a shadow was not always a shadow, a whisper not always the wind. And so as he entered the haunted clearing, Vainamoinen quietly sang. He sang of sorrow, deep and profound, for those good men whom humanity and fate had wronged. His was a song of hope lost, and love, of regret and bitterest grief. Over the keening wind, his radiant, quiet words carried across the clearing and the night, across the distance that separated stars and worlds; that those so wronged in life might know there was one who was sorry. And on that night, it was enough. Still singing his quiet song, Vainamoinen, atop Tursas, reached the hanged man. The wizard sensed the ghosts of the place, the victims of murder and unjust violence, felt their spirit eyes. Knew they would suffer him, this time. “Thank you,” he whispered. The wizard stared up at the dead man hanging from the dead branch above him. He reached into his cloak and withdrew the sprig of withe. As he did so, one more time, he began to sing. The night resonated with the force of his words, their power as deep and old as the earth. All around him the ground began to tremble—nature and the world struggling as one to preserve an ancient, forbidden secret. Yet still did Vainamoinen sing, the cadence harsh, dissonant, the words guttural and rife with unfettered might. Above the wizard, the dead man twitched. Singing still, Vainamoinen reached up, tied the cord-like withe to the dead man’s icy toe. The wind swirled and raged, tore at the snow and ice that covered the forest floor. Then, just as the sun set, just as the last of its red-orange rays dwindled into darkness, Vainamoinen stopped. And the dead man stared down at him through open, hollowed eyes. Calm fell upon the clearing, a resigned silence, as the twisting shade waited. “Show me the path to Tuonela,” Vainamoinen commanded the swaying lich. The dead man blinked albino eyes, crusted blood cracking, flaking. Vainamoinen felt the dead man’s hatred, felt him fighting his doom. “By my words and my deeds are you bound,” Vainamoinen roared, rising in his stirrups, holding that wicked gaze. “I command you—show me Tuonela!” The dead man’s cry was harrowing, ripped from some deep, unholy place. When it finished, when the last of its terrible echo faded, the murderer turned his head, pulled his dead gaze from the wizard. Vainamoinen sighed and followed that gaze. Across the clearing a path, winding and stark, stood revealed through the skeletal trees. The wizard stared up at the dead man. “Thank you,” he said. A single red tear trickled down the murderer’s cracked cheek. As Vainamoinen reached up, he sang once more, the soft words simple and kind, an easing out of the world. Above him, the shade closed its bleached eyes a final time. Gently, singing still, quietly, Vainamoinen untied the withe from the dead man’s toe and fell silent. Then, amid the quiet of the clearing and before the hollow-eyed dead, the wizard cut the murderer down from the tree and buried him as best he might. When he was through, he mounted Tursas’s broad back, and horse and wizard followed a forbidden path to the Land of the Dead. # The path to the river was long, winding its way first through snowy thickets, then through thicker woods and finally through deep, deep forest where the snow had all but vanished. Vainamoinen had been this way once, long ago. A fool’s quest for words had brought him to the river where Tuoni’s daughters met him. For the price of a song they had carried him across to Tuonela, the Land of the Dead, where Tuonetar, the terrible queen of the Damned, received him. ‘And for what do you need these precious words?’ Tuonetar had asked from the height of her black iron throne. ‘For a song,’ he had answered, terrified, ‘I need them to fashion a song.’ He would never forget her laughter. ‘Silly child, can it be that you have traveled all this way to seek out words of creation?’ ‘Yes,’ he had answered, more the fool, ‘words to create a song, a bright song, of water and wind, that I might give life to the greatest ship of all.’ More laughter, loud and long. ‘Arrogant demigod, has your mother not told you? Creation is anathema to this place, life forbidden, where Death and Entropy are all. Your quest was doomed before you arrived. And now, so are you.’ And had it not been for Tuoni's crooked‑fingered son, Surma, foolishly plucking at his kantele, Vainamoinen knew very well that the Queen’s words would likely have been true. Long ago he had charmed his instrument and any who played it, died. With the death of the Black Queen’s son, the palace became chaos and Vainamoinen escaped to the river’s edge. There, in sheerest desperation, he had changed his form into an otter, his kantele becoming the slick fur on his back, and braved the malignant waters. He nearly died that day. Lying on the shores of that horrible river, he had thought he would die, wished, almost, for the release that death would offer. But he had lived, lived to grow wise and strong. Lived to return to the place where only he, of all those who had gone before, had ever returned. Such is wisdom. # As before, the daughters of Tuoni waited for him at the water’s edge. This time, Kiputytto and Loviatar. Thin and bent, Kiputytto, the Diseased, whose every breath released a hundred plagues, was a wretched, misshapen thing. One arm, her left, ended at her elbow where a tiny, gnarled hand worked hard to open and close. Her right arm, long and thin, ended in a huge, swollen hand with six thumbs, the thick, callused knuckles of which dragged in the mud. Her face, hidden behind seaweed hair, hung down to the withered nipples of her emaciated breasts. At her side stood Loviatar, Mother Pain and Origin of a Thousand Scourges, the most despicable of Tuoni's daughters and, some said, the source of all evil. She was also the most beautiful creature Vainamoinen had ever seen. Knowing better than to look at her, her beauty the insatiable beauty of all that is forbidden, Vainamoinen turned. Loviatar laughed. “Am I so ugly, sorcerer?” Beside her, Kiputytto barked laughter. “We have been waiting for you wizard,” the diseased hag said, her voice a rusty sword drawn from a metal sheath. “Mother and father knew you would return, eventually.” “Indeed,” Vainamoinen said, stepping down from Tursas’s broad back. “Wait here, my friend,” he whispered. “If I am able, I will return to this bank. For now, rest easy. Your work is done.” Stroking the great horse’s head, the mightiest wizard in the world secured his kantele upon his back and turned to the sister goddesses. “I am ready,” he said. “It shall make a fine trophy, that harp.” With that, Loviatar turned to face the river. Slowly, she raised her hand. A moment later, the surface of the water was shattered by the vast, enormous bulk of the One-With-No-Name. Young yet, said to be the unholy offspring of Loviatar and Water, the Nameless was the secret guardian of the river. Huge, black waves crashed over the creature’s enormous back, preventing Vainamoinen from seeing the monster whole. “We, too, have grown wise, wizard,” the Temptress said. “An otter, indeed.” Over the mocking din of Loviatar’s laughter, the Nameless cast its monstrous, mottled tail onto the shore and the wicked sisters stepped across, onto its vast, barge-like back. “Come, sage,” Loviatar said. “Your steed awaits.” Like a prisoner resigned to the gallows, Vainamoinen joined the terrible sisters. Fate or Doom commanded he do no less. # Once across the river, free of the whims of the Nameless, Vainamoinen followed his guides along a path of bones through a forest of dead trees. No breeze stirred the cool air and the only sound in the whole of the world was the constant crunch-crack of bone beneath booted heel. Above, in the forever-twilit sky, not a single cloud drifted, no star gazed down on them, no uncaring moon—just vast, merciless emptiness. They walked for some time, through muted twilight and maddening stillness. Vainamoinen concentrated on the sounds of breaking bone. Then all at once, vast walls loomed out of the dead woods like an ocean, like a world of shadow. Black, windowless iron, brutal, unyielding. Citadel of a God. Vainamoinen had thought himself steeled. Over and over again in his long life, he had faced and conquered despair, time after time had chased away the icy touch of fear. He was named Mightiest Wizard in the World, Hero of Light, and in his heart he knew these things to be true. He had even escaped, once, from this place. But for all these things, he was human still, mortal. And this, this was so much more. Centuries had muted his memory, had made things less than they had been. Staring upwards now at the jet towers that raked the sky, Vainamoinen marveled at the whim of chance that had allowed him his freedom, wondered at the magnificent pride that had led him to believe he might wander this land with impunity. Led him to believe he could do so again. “Can you have forgotten?” Mother Pain asked from behind. Laughing, Loviatar led him through the clearing, through the vast, impregnable gates of the tower, and on, into the very heart of Death. # “And so, at last, you have come back to me, little wizard.” Tuonetar, Black Queen of Death, rose from her throne of iron, her words carrying easily, effortlessly over the gurgling stream of water that passed through the chamber to the left of the dais. This too, Vainamoinen remembered, a tributary of the river. From the raised platform, the Queen stared down at him. Tall, regal, very, very beautiful, Tuonetar was every bit the Queen. Her robe of diaphanous green matched exactly her verdant gaze. Upon her brow she wore a tiara of woven rose stems, the drawn, thorned stems long browned and dead. Her sable hair cascaded down her back in billows, brushing the cold iron floor of the dais. At her rising, the throng of assembled damned come to bear witness to the wizard’s return, fell to their collective knees. Vainamoinen remained standing. Tuonetar smiled. Then Tuoni rose. The Lord of Death was tall, lean and very pale. His own black hair fell past his waist and his black, pupil-less eyes seemed to take in things that were beyond other men. Or Gods. Laying a pale, slender hand upon the shoulder of his wife, the God of the Dead said, “My wife has missed you, sage.” His sonorous words reverberated off the pitiless walls of the tower. “She had such plans for you.” Before the Gods, Vainamoinen remained unbowed. “I have not come to bandy words, great Lord,” Vainamoinen said, his own voice strong. “I have come to ask a boon.” Tuonetar’s brow rose in surprise. “Can it be? Does your arrogance truly know no bounds?” Around him the dead murmured, a hollow, vacant sound. Vainamoinen turned to them, those who had come to see his shame, to watch as he was broken. They looked like live men whose color and spirit had been drained. Ashen, bent, hideous wounds unhealed, they stared at him through lifeless eyes. Vainamoinen sensed their longing, their longing for life. Turning from them, pushing aside their despair, he faced Tuoni. “There is one here who should not be here,” he began. “Slain by my cowardice, she was taken too soon. I would have her back.” Tuoni stepped forward. “Interesting. And what do you offer, in exchange for this wronged soul?” Vainamoinen drew a breath. “I offer myself.” The dead around him gasped, empty eyes wide. “SILENCE!” Tuoni roared. And silence fell. “A worthy prize. But you know such a deal is forbidden. Life is not mine to give.” “I do know,” Vainamoinen said, reaching into the deep pocket of his robe. “It is why I brought this.” Tuoni’s gaze narrowed as he stared at the small translucent flask. “The Water of Life,” Vainamoinen cried, holding the flask high for all to see. “Brought into the Land of Death that Aino might live again, in exchange for my own soul.” Around him the dead rose like a tide, groaned and flowed toward him. “Life,” one of them said, then another, and another. Slowly, hands began to grab at him, at his robe, his hair. “Enough!” Tuoni raged. “Away from him—now!” Slowly the surging wave of dead fell back. When they were kneeling once again, Tuoni said, “It is an interesting offer wizard. But I am afraid you are too late.” Vainamoinen stared at the Death God. “I…don’t understand,” he began, confused. And for the first time, afraid. “How could I be—” “We have already had a better offer.” Tuoni turned then, smiling, and from behind his massive throne, in the company of the largest wolf he had ever seen, Aino strode forward. She too, smiled. Vainamoinen staggered, reached out a trembling, disbelieving hand. “Aino?” Tuonetar laughed, then the Black Queen crossed the dais, gently brushed Aino’s blonde hair with a sinuous movement of her hand. Standing behind her, both hands on Aino’s shoulders, Tuonetar stared at Vainamoinen. “Is this the reason you came?” she taunted, and beside her the wolf rumbled, a deep, terrifying sound that seemed to make the walls of the tower shudder. More frightening still was the expression on Aino’s face. She smiled still, poisonous, hateful. Vainamoinen felt her loathing from across the chamber. It reached for him, sought his open heart. And why should she not hate him? What had he expected? Was she to be thankful he came for her? He had driven her from her love and killed her! Did you never once think of the girl? The witch’s words. True when she had spoken them, true now. Was there no end to his arrogance? “I still don’t understand,” Vainamoinen said, turning from the grinning Aino, his voice harsh. “No?” Tuonetar mocked. “I thought you wise.” More laughter. Appropriate, as he played the role of fool so well. “But then, how could you know? Louhi, explain to the wizard.” And everything came clear. At the feet of the Black Queen, the monstrous she-wolf shimmered, its fur shifting, blurring, until the wolf was gone. And Louhi, Dark Mistress of the North from whom he had stolen the magical Sampo so long ago, stood revealed. Then it was her turn to laugh. “Oh, Vainamoinen,” Louhi said through the laughter, “blind to so very much.” Anger began to burn, hot, uncontrolled, deep inside the wizard’s heart. “It was you,” he said slowly, understanding blossoming like a blighted rose, “you led me to the witch, and the water.” He glared his rage at her. “Were you so confident that I would succeed? Had Bony Legs slain me, what would you have done? There are other lands that might lay claim to a soul.” Louhi’s smile faltered. “Ah, I see. You didn’t know. Baba Jaga was a more formidable opponent than you surmised. Fortune smiled on you, Louhi, for she might well have slain me, and all your plans have gone for naught. But she did not, and I found the Water and came.” Vainamoinen shook his head, turned to Aino. “Ah, Aino, beautiful, wronged Aino. Has she promised you freedom, has she promised you life?” “Both,” Aino spat. “She promised me the life you drove me from. Coward! Now you will rot in this place, as I would have rot, and I shall return to love and the world.” For innocence lost, and shame, Vainamoinen wept. “Oh, my dear. You are a pawn. Louhi cares nothing for you. She has used you to lure me here.” Vainamoinen shook his head. “Without the Water, Aino, the dead are forbidden life. She has lied to you. It is what she does.” For the first time since her appearance on the dais, the baneful, icy smile that polluted Aino’s otherwise pristine face, faltered. She turned, grey eyes wide, uncertain, to the Sorceress of the North. “And Louhi,” Vainamoinen said, his words chilling, “what is your reward? For luring me here, for your lies, what payment is enough?” Louhi met Aino’s bewildered gaze, stroked the dead woman’s hair. “Vengeance, Vainamoinen. Vengeance is my reward.” The sorceress cried: “The Sampo was mine! You gave your word! Its never-ending magic would have let me bring my people out of the darkness, would have made me Queen of the World! But you took it from me, stole it, a thief in the night, and destroyed it! Did you think I would forget? Did you think I would ever forget?” Louhi seethed, shook her head. “And so, it has come to this. My precious Aino, I offered you a chance at freedom. Now I give you that chance.” The merest gesture, a spoken word, and Aino was no more. In her place upon the unforgiving iron of the dais a great pike thrashed, gills suppurating, fins screaming for purchase. “No!” Vainamoinen cried, throwing himself toward the dais. “Hold him!” Tuonetar commanded, and the dead obeyed. Vainamoinen struggled beneath the cold hands that held him fast, knew they were too many, sought for calm. Began to chant. “His mouth!” Louhi screamed, pointing. “Seal his mouth, quickly!” And fingers, long dead, laced themselves across his face, tangled themselves in his long beard and sealed his mouth. Silence then, but for the struggles of the dying fish. Louhi stared down at the suffering, terrified creature. Then gently, like a mother, Louhi stooped and lifted the pike, held its suffocating form before her and all those in the chamber. “Beautiful, pitiful Aino,” Louhi said, mock sadness in her voice. “A pawn in life, now the same in death.” Louhi shrugged. Vainamoinen fought again for freedom, struggled furiously, mightily, with a hero’s pride. But deprived of his greatest weapon, held fast by the damned, his struggles, for all their nobility, were doomed. Bound by the dead, he watched the Dark Lady of the North walk over to the edge of the gurgling stream and release Aino into the black waters. “Farewell, gentle Aino,” Louhi said. “Farewell, fish,” Loviatar said, smiling. Then she turned and stared at Vainamoinen. “Give our regards to my son, when you see him.” Vainamoinen’s eyes fell, and as Aino disappeared amid the deadly waters, his valiant struggles ended. Tuoni turned to Louhi. “Our deal is done, sorceress,” he said, “and Tuonela is no place for the living. Even you.” Louhi bowed low to the King of the Damned. “Your will, great lord.” Then she turned to Vainamoinen. “And to you, my great and implacable foe, I bid a final farewell, for we shall not meet again.” At her words Vainamoinen’s head rose, and rage seethed behind his eyes. For a moment, amid the shadows of the dead, the Dark Lady of the North knew fear. Quickly, Louhi nodded to the God who nodded in turn, and with a single step toward the rushing water, Louhi was gone. Vainamoinen was the last. “Release him,” Tuonetar said. “Even your mother’s words will not be enough, not here, in this place which is ours.” The Goddess spoke truth. He could not have overcome one of them, not here in their home, let alone both. But he had never planned to. “So, your vengeance has come, Tuonetar,” Vainamoinen said. “Through the trickery of a mortal you have claimed me for your own. I wonder, though,” he said, reaching inside his robe, “shall you keep me this time?” With that, Vainamoinen drew free the Water of Life. In one fluid motion he unstoppered the vial and poured a tiny amount of the precious liquid into his aged hand. Turning to the nearest of the dead, he cast the Water, baptizing the lich with Life. Stunned silence reigned in the chamber, all eyes focused on the damned soul who staggered back, as if struck, only to stand, after a moment, frozen and dumb. The pitiable creature stared at Vainamoinen, hope manifest in its dead gaze. Then a miracle. All at once color returned to the soul’s grey skin, life to its dead eyes. In silence, they watched a sort of rapturous peace descend upon the dead man. “Thank you,” he whispered, an instant before he collapsed into dust; free at last. Holding the bottle high amid the silence, Vainamoinen stared at the shocked Goddess. “Who shall be next?” The dead surged forward as one, uncontrolled and uncontrollable. For an instant Vainamoinen was lost to sight beneath the deluge. Then in a voice that had shaken mountains he cried, “Look, here! Here is your Water! Take it if you would!” And Vainamoinen, amid the ocean of damned souls, tossed the stoppered bottle on the dais, where the God and Goddess stood. The legions of the dead surged forward, a desiccated, rotting tide that flooded the raised platform. Before he turned and fled, her voice rising even as Vainamoinen’s form began to shift and flow, the ancient wizard heard Tuonetar scream, “Back, get back! How dare—” Her last words were cut short by the moaning, eager cries of the dead. In the form of a wolf, Vainamoinen flew from the iron tower and out, into the waiting darkness. Over the din of battle the God’s voice roared: “You’ll not escape me wizard! Not again!” In front of Vainamoinen, the shadow-woods changed. Where a moment before there had been one path, now there were dozens. Where trees had been, thorns now stood in their place. But worse, by far, than all of that, than the world changing to challenge and trap him, was the moon that rose from beyond the edge of the wood. It burned in the empty sky, a desecration of the void. Baleful green, it hovered like an opaline eye, and Vainamoinen knew he could not run fast enough, far enough, to escape its odious gaze. Then, from behind him, a shape emerged out of the roiling chaos of the tower, a huge shape, vast and jet, lumbering towards him. Vainamoinen turned, lupine fangs bared. “You are, indeed, your mother’s son. But you’ll not need those fangs, not yet.” As the creature drew close, Vainamoinen recognized the dead wolf from the forest, the arrow that pierced its neck livid and stark under the cancerous light of the moon. “I am Naaki, messenger of great Ilmatar.” “Mother?” Vainamoinen said. “You were sent by my mother?” “Yes, in an effort to warn you of Louhi’s treachery and of the Death God’s desires. But on my way to warn you, Louhi treacherously slew me, and my message was lost.” A rumbling shook the land then, bone-deep and resonant. Something old finding release. “With the rising of the moon,” Naaki said, “Kalma shall again walk the land. We’ve little time. Though I failed you once, I’ll not do so again. Change back, quickly, and climb on my back. Even in your wolf form your speed is no match for mine. I’ll get you to the river. This I swear.” Somewhere in the baleful night, the world broke. In the distance Tuoni cried, “Find him, Kalma! Find him and bring him to me!” The answering roar was terrible to hear, and for the first time in a star’s age, Kalma, Soul Scourge and Life Grinder, loosed on the world. With a word, Vainamoinen changed once more and climbed aboard the broad back of Naaki. “Can we outrun him?” “We can try,” Naaki answered. “We can try.” # The Soul Scourge surged through the night unfettered, and the Land of the Dead trembled at its passing. Had any being seen the beast, they might have described it as a huge, endlessly black lion, eyes gangrenous, mane wispy, serpentine shadow. But no soul, living or dead, had ever, in all the long, long history of the Universe, met Kalma and survived. The consummate hunter, the nature of Kalma had been the subject of long debates among mortals and immortals alike. Some claimed Kalma was the daughter of Tuoni and the Night, a forbidden union that resulted in the darkest creature of all. Others say Kalma existed before Tuoni's rise, and only suffered Tuoni's claim to Tuonela knowing that the day would come when it would be released from its infernal prison. And murder the Universe. Others did not dare believe Kalma existed at all. After all, if the Gods themselves did not know the nature of the beast, who could? In the end, the origins of the beast mattered little enough. For Kalma was free now, and Vainamoinen was its prey. # A harrowing plunge through emerald darkness brought them at last to the forest’s end. Beyond the final clearing, surging black-green billows roaring like a gale, lay the river. Behind them, Vainamoinen heard Kalma’s inexorable approach. The Life Grinder free? Vainamoinen could not long think on that, on its meaning. He still had to cross the river. Without a word, Naaki thundered forward to the edge of the world. “VAINAMOINEN!” Over the roaring river on whose shore they stopped, over the thundering approach of Kalma Soul Scourge, over the anger and outrage of the forest they had escaped, Vainamoinen heard Tuoni’s maddened cry. It split the green-black night like a bolt of emerald lightning and echoed through the infinite void above. Naaki turned from the river, looked up and back at the wizard who sat astride his broad shoulders. Vainamoinen reached into his robe. “The Water,” he said, pulling forth a small glass vial, a self-deprecating smile playing at the edges of his mouth. “Simple sleight of hand. It was not the real Water.” Beneath him, the huge wolf shook its head. Vainamoinen shrugged. “It took them longer to determine than I would have thought.” “A clever ploy.” A small laugh. “Perhaps. Though for naught if we fail to cross the river.” Behind them, distant thunder, an approaching storm, Kalma drew closer, always closer. Among the rolling swells of the river, Vainamoinen could see a monstrous shape, mottled and looming; waiting. “I fear my previous method of escape would prove…less than effective this time.” “Indeed,” answered the dead wolf. “But the Nameless can only reach you if you are in the water.” Puzzled, Vainamoinen said, “Yes, but there is no way to by-pass the river without Tuoni’s blessing. We must cross over it, or through it. It is the only way.” “No,” Naaki said, “there is another way. The answer is in your hand.” “The Water of Life? How—” “How matters little. It is enough to know that before us courses the river of Death. In your hands, you hold the Water of Life. Pour the Water, Vainamoinen, empty it into river. Then I shall speak words, and you shall sing them. Sing them Vainamoinen, as you have never sung words before.” Naaki carried Vainamoinen to the very edge of the rocky shore, where he unstoppered the vial and poured nearly its entire contents into the black river. As the Water of Life tumbled forth to mix with the river of Death, Naaki whispered and Vainamoinen sang. It was a song unlike any Vainamoinen had ever sung. A song unlike any sung, by anyone, ever. It was a celebration of Life amid Death, sublime, majestic, a song that contained secrets of the kind unknown to mortal man. Profound, immeasurably powerful, Vainamoinen sang the words of a God. For he knew, more than he had known anything in his life, that these were his mother’s own words, his mother, whose aid was forbidden but allowed because Tuoni and Louhi, God and mortal, had made a deal. As he sang, tears of joy welled in his eyes, streamed down his weathered, haggard face. Never in all his life had he sung such words, unleashed such power. He reveled in the might, took pride in the song that was an unfettering of his bright, bright soul. And at the edge of the world, under the brutal, baneful light of an emerald moon, with the thunderous, incessant approach of the Soul Scourge drawing ever closer, Vainamoinen, with his soul’s release, parted the river of Death. When his song was ended, Vainamoinen stared at the passage through the river fashioned by his words, held secure by a power he could not fathom. “Mother…” Vainamoinen whispered. Behind them, Kalma exploded from the woods. For a moment, Naaki stared at the leonine creature with its mane of shadow, took its measure. Knew they were lost. “Go!” Vainamoinen cried. “Go!” With a primal, bestial roar, Naaki’s ancient muscles rippled and he surged forward between the towering walls of water and along the path that Life had fashioned. Kalma followed, over the clearing, to the river’s edge. From Naaki’s back, Vainamoinen turned. “He waits,” he said, “at the edge. Uncertain. I think he shall not—” Then Kalma too, braved the path of Life, the distance between them closing, closing. Beneath him, Naaki stopped, said, “Here is where we must part.” Behind them, Kalma roared. Vainamoinen stared at the wolf. “But we are so close! Look,” He said, lifting the small vial, “I saved a single drop of Water. Once across, I will use it and you will live again. We can—” “No,” Naaki said, “we cannot.” Vainamoinen knew the wolf spoke truth. “Shift your form and run. If I am able, I shall hold the beast long enough for you to cross. But you must go. Now.” “I don’t understand,” Vainamoinen said, his heart breaking, “who am I that you would do this thing for me?” “You are your mother’s son, whom I was sent to ward. And because, once, when I was slain, you sang for me, at the end. Now go.” For a moment only, Vainamoinen held the beast’s gaze. Then a word and Vainamoinen was gone, the form of the aged wizard replaced with that of a great, grey wolf. “Good,” Naaki said, before he whispered a final word in the wizard’s lupine ear and Vainamoinen fled, surged through the impossible passage; strove for Life. Naaki turned, teeth bared. The Soul Scourge approached like a storm, like a primal force of the world. At its passing the walls of water rippled and shook, the floor of the river trembled. Kalma stopped before the wolf, towered over him, looming like the fall of night. Ahead, as he ran, Vainamoinen became the first living being to hear the voice of the Soul Scourge. “You cannot stop me, little god,” the great lion said, “you could not even stay alive! Step aside. My battle is not with you, it is not your soul I seek this day.” “No,” Naaki said. “I’ll not stand aside. Though you are more than I, though your might runs deeper, still shall I fight. For Life.” A growl, soul-shuddering in its fierceness, answered the wolf’s challenge. “You’ve courage godling, but it shall never be enough.” “We shall see.” And so it came to pass, amid the towering walls of water, upon the floor of the river of Death, that wolf met lion in a battle for Life. # The sound of battle was terrifying. Far ahead of the battle, Vainamoinen ran. But as fast as he ran, as far, he could not escape them. He was close now, so close to the shore. To Life. Surely it would be all right to look, surely it was safe. So he turned then, and bore witness to the battle. Across from him, on the far shore of Tuonela, Tuoni and Tuonetar also watched. Behind them, a rotting sea, the legions of the damned were arrayed, spread out as far as eyes could see. They would not brave that path, forged as it was by the powers of Life, but still had they come; to bear witness to the battle being played out on the borders of Life and Death. He had heard the tales of the enigma that was Kalma, knew that no being, ever, had withstood it. In the back of his mind he knew that Naaki too, would fall. Had to fall. No being, ever. And still, knowing that and more, Vainamoinen was not prepared for what he saw. The wolf was torn, not a piece of fur on his immense body remained unscarred. Blood, black in the green light, matted its thick fur, flew from its ragged, shredded body. Even Louhi’s murderous arrow was broken. Naaki limped badly, the beast’s right front foot smashed and useless. Slowly, painfully, the wolf circled the lion, head low, neck hidden. The lion that was so very much more than a lion, was more even than the Gods knew. But even with what it was, with all its deep, deep power, the lion was not unscathed. In its massive flanks white scars were torn, gaping wounds that would have surely slain a lesser creature. Great gaps in its shadow-mane let through the emerald light of the moon. And it, too, circled, slowly, wearily. The lion charged again, merciless, pitiless as time. Vainamoinen’s heart broke and tears sprang to his wolf-grey eyes as he watched noble Naaki continue to fight, eluding, darting, attacking where he could, summoning an endless courage that was torturous to behold, so gallant was it and so doomed. Again the lion backed away, a fresh scar, livid in the moon’s unnatural light, across the side of his neck and face. Well struck, that blow, driving the lion back. Giving Naaki time, time to look at Vainamoinen. “Go,” the wolf said, then the lion too, turned. “Go, now! Let this not have been in vain!” For one endless moment, Vainamoinen met the wolf’s gaze. “I shall never forget,” said the wizard. “I shall never let the world forget.” It was too much, the pain, Vainamoinen could see it in the eyes of his friend. The wolf could not answer, could only watch as Vainamoinen, with a final glance at Tuoni on the far side, flew for the shore, where Life waited. Behind him, Vainamoinen heard the lion roar, felt the world shook as Kalma and Naaki met for the final time. Heard the snap, the triumphant cry of the dead. Knew that it had come too late, that Naaki had succeeded, had won for Life. Surging up the river’s edge, hatred unlike anything he had ever known in his heart, Vainamoinen reached the shore. With a word, he was a man, once more Vainamoinen the Mighty, Wizard of the North. He turned slowly, for he could hear the lion, could hear the urging, pleading cries of the dead. He was smiling as the lion came for him, not so fast this time, not so strong. Naaki had given account, had fought, so very bravely, a battle that would live in legend for eternity. But this battle was his to finish. With Naaki’s help. And his mother’s. Upon the shores of Life, Vainamoinen sang Naaki’s final words. And brought the river down. The water fell like a mountain into the void, crashed and roared and swallowed Kalma whole. For a moment, the Nameless reared its frenzied head. He had denied the beast, cheated it, broke and separated its world. “There is an invader still, in your water,” Vainamoinen whispered. “Find him.” Then the Nameless dove, broke the waters that were his own and was lost. Kalma and the Nameless lost forever. For a long time, Vainamoinen stood at the edge of the world, watching the Gods retreat into darkness, staring out at the black waters that separated Life from Death. He thought of Aino and of Louhi, of Naaki and his mother. So much lost, gained, so very many layers of grief. He had come seeking redemption, a light in his darkness. He had found scorn, treachery, and nobility that would endure for eternity. The wisest man in the world was at least wise enough to know, that for now, it was enough. From behind him Tursas nickered. Vainamoinen turned, stroked the horse’s head gently. “Ah, my friend. Take me home.” And humming, composing, quietly searching for words, the Wizard of the North climbed atop the back of his friend, and Tursas took him safely home. END
It’s a Daily FightMy bouts of depression are less heavy weight slug fest these days and more welterweight stick and move, 24 rounds all blood, no glory, night sweats, moving my feet, jab, jab, cross, my best defense a strong offense, but I’m on the ropes, forearm to forearm, you can’t block it all when they won’t stop swinging, the bell sounds like an internal alarm clock I never remember setting. Round 1 bleeds into 2 and so do I, it may be a long day. Graves In Our YardA mouth full of tombstones, junky teeth, gritty specks from dust to dust, rotten core issues, forlorn ornaments dangle with hashtags, influencers influence no more than before, mass graves down the hatch, virtual funerals, stress briefings, life’s final hour streaming live, a hole in our universal soul, black heart emojis, a fight to the death, loser gets a eulogy. How many times must we say goodbye? Someday we’ll get our forever hello. Faith Dealer I am the wreckage of a single car crash who’s been told there are no accidents and that god works in mysterious ways. To add insult to injury there’s a divine plan we’re all destined to pursue. Divinity is the meringue of amethyst and marmalade clouds whipped against the fading black of dawn. Destiny is a dead end and the real poetry lies in the lines not written. These vague metaphors are the tip of an ice cube melting in a rocks glass, how shallow of a bottom spent licking wounds rimmed with margarita salt. I’ve succumb to less, hollow bones, sunken regrets, all is force fed and laughable, as forgettable as the supposedly unforgotten. To be bogged down in the all so trivial is too fucking unforgivable. Falling Someone else’s thoughts are running through my mind, their blood boils and I’m burned. Dominos are stacked to fall, so tell me why are we standing here? A standstill of mediocre proportions, how epic you’ve made it seem; blown to bits, chunks, bile, nosebleeds, please, just disregard. Painting a self-portrait of me painting myself into a corner. I’m around most days, mentally I’m physically drained. Running straight into the wind forcing my eyes wide open, when the wind finally hits my back I shut them, I hit the sand, then the water, waves of emotion, I’m just another drop in the ocean. First Bored |
Emme Oliver is an 18 year old writer from bucks county Pennsylvania. She currently serves as the editor in chief to her high school’s newspaper The Playwickian and Howler Literary Magazine you can check out those publications here. She would like to thank her family, friends, and teachers for believing in her and nurturing her passion for writing. https://howlerlit.wordpress.com/ https://playwickian.com/ |
Melt
“Careful you’re gonna get it on the carpet”. He angled the seat back so that he could stretch out his legs and balance his elbow on the cushion in between the seats.
“No I’m not” came out in a mouth-full mess and jumbled laughter joined the mixture.
He laughed too and then leaned closer to me collecting the shade of my eyes in his gaze. I stared back but continued gliding the ice cream across my tongue. He looked like he was holding back the question that would end all answers. And I tilted my head a little, hoping he would tell me what was stirring around in the cauldron in his mind. Not a single word left his mouth he just turned up the heat and threw his body back in the seat in frustration. I thought about asking him what was wrong but he didn’t like to talk about anything that would disturb him in the late hours of the night. His insomnia held him like how a toddler holds a blanket. The toddler’s parasitic eyes tear its treasure to shreds and leaves it to wear out on its own.
The streetlight above became a pool of reflection in my eyes I saw it in the glare of the windshield. He looked over and noticed it too. His elbows crept over the console and his hands made their way up to a floating strand of hair that he gingerly tucked behind my ear. I kept my mouth pressed against the ice cream and just stared in an awkward form of awe. It was still melting down my hands but it felt more like sweat sticking in the prints of my fingers. It was a sensation that sent a quick quease throughout my stomach. He smiled gently and retreated back to the seat tapping his fingers on his ratted jeans to the music. My ice cream sunk through the napkin encasing the cone, onto my hands spreading a lukewarm puddle of vanilla across my skin.
He suddenly put the car in gear and looped his hand around the wheel. Jamming down on the gas. A jolt shook me and almost sent the remainder of my ice cream leaping to the window. He looked towards me and smirked.
“Seatbelt”.
He drove me up to the trashcan near the parlor and I threw the drowned deliciousness among napkins, empty to-go boxes, and cigarette butts. He turned once again and took us back to the parking spot next to the red volvo which hadn’t moved since we got there. My hands still felt as if they bathed in tree sap and battered breath. My hand moved towards the handle to go get napkins but he touched my arm before I could leave. I jerked my gaze back to his and he gestured to the glove box in front of me. A simmer of irrational panic was sprinkled onto me and I froze in a haze of confusion until he reached out in front of me and pulled napkins out of the compartment.
“For your convenience my lady” He said in an accent that wasn’t quite British or anything else.
“Thanks” I chuckled and met his eyes once again.
He watched me clean my hands. I knew because when the paper stuck to the crevices between my fingers I turned to laugh with him but he didn’t He just stared, not calmly or in admiration. I felt like the smallest bacteria clamming up under a microscope. A calm calculated millisecond before my smile turned to a frown, he zapped the space between us into thin air and kissed me. I turned away letting his tongue hit my cheek and once he realized he wasn’t in the corners of my mouth he sat up, an erroneous demeanor struck him.
“I’m so so sorry, seriously, you’re just so pretty a-and you were so cute with the ice cream, I-I didn’t know what to do, oh god”.
I shut up his ranting with a dividing shout.
“Hey! Hey, it-it’s ok” I told him. I told him it was ok.
He sat back again his hands lifting themselves on and off the wheel tapping relentlessly hoping for a feeling other than what he was feeling. I felt the same way. I sat hands interlocked, waiting for the next word to enter the air. Wondering if it was going to be from my mouth or his.
“Hey, let me take you back to my place”.
I turned to him but felt like I had moved farther away.
“I-I mean if you want to, it’s not far, just a couple turns here and there and then I’ll take the highway, I’ll have you home by 9:00”.
I lingered in the weighted seconds of decision, smoothing over any worry my mind might’ve carried into my stream of thought. And I waited for the light to glow green. I waited for the stop signs to be obliterated. Because he was a friend and friends make mistakes.
And I said ok.
The night was dying down for a Friday. All the bars I’d pass every time my family would drive into town were almost empty and I told myself stories of the few cars that were located with sadness in a lonely lot off of the side of the road. I spotted retail cashiers sweeping up the lint-covered floors in the shopping center. The sign of the 24-hour diner still flickered and it would until the sun hid the moon. The music was blaring timidly in the background but silence was all you could hear. I was itching for a loud noise, someone to start talking on the radio, or even a cough or sneeze. I didn’t even want to reach for my phone out of fear of being rude but if the atmosphere that surrounded us wasn’t being broken what else was there to do? He signaled to merge on the highway and with a quick inhale I unlaced my hands and looked to the driver’s seat.
“Have you ever driven on the highway before”?
He kept his eyes balanced on the road but his ears perked up when he heard my voice again.
“Oh yeah, I’m really good”.
“Ok good” I sat back feeling breathlessly optimistic. It’s insane how two sentences can make you feel like you’ve just ran a marathon. Cars whisked by in colors that the darkness dimmed. He merged with swiftness and we soon entered the never ending concrete path lined by shallow trees. His tires rolled faster, fitting in with the traffic that encompassed us. His hands gripped the wheel steadily and cruised at 60 sending a plastic bag on the shoulder sailing behind us. I leaned against the headrest and dissolved with the music unaware of a hum to a familiar tune. He glanced over at me and giggled, taking me out of my trance.
“You’re so cute” He said it like a relative at a birthday party. My stomach went dry again. The warmth of my blood felt like icicles pricking me.
“There’s barely anyone on the highway” He said turning back to the road.
“Yeah” I responded softly rubbing on the knot in my shoulder.
I was a little kid who believed in the tooth fairy but not the monsters that lived under the bed. Because monsters aren’t real. He started to press the gas and excelled into the stretch of the road that went on for miles that felt like lifetimes. I caught him looking at me again. The look in the parking lot where we were just friends and friends are there for you are don’t want to see you cry. And before I knew it became now and now he’s reaching 80 and oh god I’ve never been this fast not even on the highway.
“Slow down,” I told him. It sounded like a whimper so I swallowed my throat and surrounded more surging words.
“Trevor stop, stop going so fast”.
But he didn’t. He pressed the gas again and the speedometer measured a polarizing 95. Any cars that were in the adjacent lines were dust now in a past that was kinder, safer.
“Trevor seriously slow down”! I started to yell because I thought I'd become an invisible entity especially when he gave me that looked. Every press of the gas devoured me and stripped me down to the nerves that built me.
“Stop”! I screamed in his face. I didn’t dare touch the wheel I knew if I fought he could turn the car over any minute and the rapid cruise would halt, becoming screeching impact, tumbling over and over off the road into the trees, onto the demolished dirt, and glass would scrape my arms, impale my eyes and become the end of all breaths I could take. I shut my eyes, with every blink the lines of the road lost it’s balance to the speed. With every acceleration, the pace of my lungs increased. I gripped my own hands waiting for the nightmare to be pacified.
“Stop, stop, stop…” I closed my eyes and sent a prayer to his ears even though by this point I’d gathered that he wouldn’t listen. Helpless and horrified I sat quietly whispering over and over more to myself than him.
“Stop, stop stop”.
When you can’t breathe and you can’t let go of your petrified lungs and you realize it’s smarter to let the storm whisk you into an uncertain future. When pleading for a perfect situation crumbles into an obvious oblivion. You forget about all the mistakes. You send the regrets to the farthest corners, banishing them because they hurt too much to hold onto. Sometimes you’ve reached the point of no return. Sometimes you can’t win the battle. All you can do is melt.
Tamara Belko is a writer, poet, middle school teacher and author of the forthcoming young adult verse novel, Perchance to Dream. She resides in Rocky River, Ohio with her husband and three children. When Tamara isn’t absorbed in reading or writing, she can be found listening to music with her family, enjoying a walk or learning Thai Chi. |
ALL IT TOOK
A tear
blood pooled
my heart shuddered
Breath stolen, body paused,
I couldn’t comprehend
why
the sweet snuffles of my newborn
eradicated by sirens
Sweating postpartum hormones,
shedding pieces of myself
in a cardiac ward
I was the
youngest
Breasts swollen,
desperate to hold
my baby
An aberration
I had become a case study, the
1 -4 % club
between 30 and 50
I didn’t want to
join
At home a new reality,
taste bile
of tacit fear
kiss my babies
goodnight,
pray tomorrow
I will see Earth’s star
in the East
after closing my eyes
to it setting in the West
It will be years of mornings-after
before my obsessive worry,
insomnia filled nights
recede
to the silent corners of my mind,
where I hush
the whisper warnings
unclench
fists of anxiety,
one
finger
at a time
until I am
immersed in the moment ...
of life’s milestones,
Until I release
control of the uncontrollable
breathe in life,
drink in the elixir
of laughter
finally
barefoot and unbound
MY LOST RELIGION
discover connection within humanity’s
touch, seek meaning in life & love
walk with,
among neighbors
who all bleed red
I turn from doctrine & archaic cannon
millennials of distortion derived from parables
& frail men with dysfunctional connections to now
No man will rule over my body! No man will rule over my daughters!
I turn from oppressive, archetypal figures
& black days mired in hypocrisy
They will not have my devotion
I will not subscribe to hatred and judgement
I denounce that history!
This day I will turn towards peace and purpose,
light and hope, open my heart to the Earth’s symphony
I will spread compassion, love and acceptance &
realize oneness with the universe
SIMPLE CONVERSATIONS
smirks at her own eclectic musical palate,
straddling between Billie Eilish and Twenty-One Pilots,
she can entertain that conversation with middle school aplomb
she sinks her teeth into the “ring of fire” on Friday,
morphs into an old soul on Sunday crooning Sinatra “her way”
Today she wears a tie and fedora.
A simple conversation
Strictly speaking, country is not her thing …
the guy,
the dog,
the truck,
whiskey-- nope,
but
there IS the Man in Black ...
And musing about rap doesn’t ignite the spark either
Too fast,
Too much rhyme,
Why so angry?
A simple conversation,
ruminating about music.
SPACE
just breathe
in this space
growing between
spaces of silence
connections squandered
reborn in the restfulness
cherish moments of family
frantic lives no longer remember
how to live still, how to breath in this world
AUGUST ULRICH - COLD FEETOR HOW I PLUNGED INTO A TSUNAMI AND BODYSURFED TO THE JERSEY SHORE
1/20/2021
Cold Feet
or
How I Plunged into a Tsunami and Bodysurfed to the Jersey Shore
(Cold Feet #1)
The three Hs. Don’t know what I’m talkin’ ‘bout? Too fuckin’ bad. Just go steppin’ on the molasses asphalt of the narrow, two lane State 27 that jettys abruptly to an end just beyond the cliff’s edge.
Ocean, soil, grass, smoking engine oil, and marijuana molecules composing the fugitive atmosphere have roosted themselves on my nasal cavity and the hairs snaking from my nostrils down my upper lip.
At the edge, fissures open and close in the asphalt as weight is added and subtracted from its surface.
Ain’t wise to weigh down the edge with the balls of my feet. It don’t stop me. Worst could happen, if the asphalt edge melts under my balls, is my swan song onto the jags the ocean waterboards endlessly. How far down? Don’t know, don’t care. It’s death so, like, what the fuck, you figure out how high the cliff, how far the drop in your own stinkin’ ‘maginations. Like, I carry around a tape measure wherever I go, yeah, like it’d be long enough – in your dreams.
Looked down and across at the horizonless expanse. Gulls doin’ their thing, hovercrafts Hoovering under the bobbing and weaving surface.
The noise factor? Whaddya expect to hear where complacent solid and combative liquid harmonize under cadaverous gas.
Fuckin’ righteous swells corrugating the surface. Weather report got it right. Red Flags up on all public beaches – well not really up, the flags hang limp in the still of the three Hs.
Georgica crowd, gone. Air traffic control have their air lanes full of the prima donas jousting for position just high enough in the three H gas to blow out their slaves’, and every other poor schmuck’s, drums too poor to heli from and to The City. Those stinkin air lanes, more congested than the westbound L.I.E. on a Sunday night.
Gonna be rad surf for a few days. Swells big enough – more like huge – the likes of which ain’t never seen on the south shore nor the entire east coast. Climate Change! Bring it on! I’m ready. My longboard waxed and ready to ride, Sally, ride. The tide table memorized. Ditch is the place to start the day, then head west or east with the break, depending, and a quick break at Lunch for a lobster roll and a bowl of Manhattan. Manhattan! None of this New England mom’s milk in everything crap.
What I didn’t know, hadn’t heard, was that a mother of all mothers of all swells was jammin’ ‘cross the Atlantic in 64 beat time.
What I did see were the thousands of Hoovering gulls launch up and missile inland, no doubt knocking down a few helis in their paths. Where solid meets liquid, there was no longer any liquid. Solid, it appeared, had ousted liquid and sent it into retreat. Horseshoe crabs were scurrying around piles of junk tossed over the cliff. The jags were dripping dry, their waterboarding on hold, if not for eternity, then at least long enough to drip dry. It was not to be.
What the fuck! Did the texture of the horizonless expanse change? Did a quadruple take and blinked a flock of times. Yeah, there was a texture like fake flagstone siding where the shimmering three H gas should be. Craned up and found the horizon line. Easy to spot. The demarcation were caps of white foam that were rising, pushing the three H gas into an ever-shrinking space.
What a motherfucker of a swell! The weather service said the biggest ever! No shit! It was high! And don’t ask me how fucking high. Like, I carry around a tape measure wherever I go. Get real. Not that any tape measure I could lay my hands on would be long enough to measure the wave’s height. And it stretched, like, forever in both directions.
Wait a sec. This wave ain’t part of the Cat 5 due to slam the east end in sixteen hours. This is a 64 beat bar timing it out of the northeast heading southwest, not out of the south heading northeast.
So, like any fucker addicted to ocean waves and surfing them, I stared at the oncoming swell, appreciatively, appraising its potential as a ride. Fuckin’ perfection and breakin’ left. B’fore I realized it, the swell was seconds away from washing me, my 60s junk heap Corvair, don’t ask, and longboard off the asphalt and the cliff. Didn’t even have time to get my board off my junk heap Corvair, so I braced myself. Had to bodysurf it. Problem was I couldn’t get a fucking start ‘cause I was standing in molasses asphalt.
Slam! My body seized as the frigid Atlantic caressed me with the touch of a sledgehammer that buried me deep in the swell. That familiar rush of directionless, suffocating, rough, tumbling zero g felt oh sooooo good. Back home. Back in the womb.
The swell was movin’ faster than something or other. I gave a lazy kick to reach the face and pop out for a breath. Wish I had my wetsuit on. Fuckin’ glad didn’t go into cardiac arrest. Fuckin’ freezing. Extended my left arm, angled my body semi-parallel to the swell and was off, screaming along the face way faster than my junk heap Corvair went downhill when floored. If I couldn’t longboard it, bodysurf it was the next best thing. Actually, it was the only thing. Still, was pissed I couldn’t longboard it after all the prep I put into the board for the Cat 5, scrapin’ off the built-up wax and ‘pplying fresh. Had the time to kill, so shot-gunned a few Millers and splifs while I prepped.
What a view. Had to be as high as Everest. Ahead and below me, among houses and motels packed tightly together, were tons of people stampeding like the herds of buffalo before we, Caucs, slaughtered them for good eats – caught a glimpse of the Memory as I screamed past it. Jagger came to mind. Rolling Stones. Shit, nothin’ like rollin’ at all, not compared to this wave or any ocean wave. Guess the Memory was a memory along with Montauk, now. Beach front’d be cheap during or after the cleanup since not one of the people were in position, or had the wits to surf this one out, and were Davy Jonesing faster’n 64 time.
The power of this wave. True Force of Nature. Realized had to be a tsunami, DUH! Realized I was in this for the long haul and was most likely my final act before chumming in Davy’s. Had no complaints. Eh, maybe one. Wasn’t on my board. Couldn’t drop down the face and cutback. All I could do was ride mid-face like a juttin’ figurehead. Fact is, was stuck in one position. Couldn’t do a thing. Maybe change my angle a degree or so. That’s the problem with bodysurfing: it’s optionless. All you can do is scream along the face in one direction, arm extended for control and limited steering. Yeah, it’s exhilarating if you ain’t got a board, boogie board or canvas raft, but it sure ain’t exciting and it ain’t real creative. More like them big tech self drive cars that’re all the hype. Shit! Self-drive cars? Where’s the excitement in that. Fuckin’ boring shit.
The thrill is gone. Pretty quick, too. Can feel my feet, sorta, through the numbness that’s slithering up my legs and lower torso. Chuckled, dryly, that my angry inch was an angry millimeter, at best, or had disappeared completely along with my withered sack ‘o hazels. My wetsuit – if only. Had a stinkin’ Bible of if-onlys – was probly nearby in the trunk of my junk heap Corvair. Great fantasy surfed my mind: Me on my board that was on the Corvair that was juttin’ out the face surfin’ the tsunami – instant fame. Reality TV show, talk shows, ticker tape down Broadway – nah, scratch that if only. Decided it was feasible and flailed my right arm to see if I could locate my junk heap Corvair. No good. The flailing tossed me from my line through the face and back inside. Couldn’t say “under” ‘cause I didn’t go down, just slowed enough for the wave to speed around me. But it didn’t leave me behind and roll on. It kept me as one of its trophies.
Wasn’t gonna let this opportunity go to waste. Opened my eyes and scanned the murk for my junk heap Corvair. Fucking pointless, couldn’t see more’n an inch or two. Slammed my lids shut. Fucking fucked up, fucking terrifying. Lots of solid shit tossin’ and tumblin’ within my vision range. Was a real Wizard-of-Oz-everything-and-the-kitchen-sink – if only – there’s that stinkin’ if only, again – but there’d be no crash landing in Munchkinland from this tsunami. No return to Kansas. No Witches. No Great and Powerful Oz. Probly more’n a shitload of Totos washing-machining around in the wave. Was amazed none of the solids had finished me off. Sighed with relief. I remained unscathed. Fuck no! Live through this and suffocate by drowning, no way. Better to be crushed or crowned unconscious by some large solid object – fast and painless – least my junk heap Corvair could do for all the TLC I gave it. What the fuck did I do to remain alive through all this? Fucking surf! This was making that ninth circle of hell I read about in those Spark Notes seem like, to use some Brit word I picked up off one of ‘em, bloody heaven. Was way past that circle. Was in my own private slow-death horror fest.
Was running out of oxygen; needed some quick. Frog kicked a breaststroke and broke through the face. Oxygen. Maybe not such a good thing, ‘cause I was so concentrated on getting it in my lungs, I forgot to extend my left arm and angle semi-parallel to the face. Down the face I tumbled, bouncing off it, randomly, proving chaos theory in my own chaotic style. Eyes wide open, saw I was dropping fast but I still had a long, long way to go before I hit solid that was the swell’s floor. No, ain’t got no idea how far down I had to drop to solid. Like, I carry around a tape measure wherever I go. Like, I could freeze time to measure. Like the tape measure would be long enough. In your fuckin’ dreams.
Time. Yeah. Maybe. Ain’t it ‘bout time I see my life pass b’fore me and I see that fuckin’ white light at the end of the stinkin’ tunnel? Well, fuck me! No way I’d be that fuckin’ lucky.
Instead, always got sloppy seconds.
Everything went into hyper slow mo ‘cause I had gone into hyper speed and managed to bend Time for my purpose. No! Don’t ask me how the fuck I slowed down Einstein relative-like. I ain’t got a clue ‘n’ I don’t care. Alls I know is that I had plenty of time to think and maneuver myself back into my surfing line.
Don’t know how I did that, either. Think I wiggled and extended both my arms, disrupting my washing-machining. Guess my arm caught in the face and jerked me sideways, allowing me to get my angle back, so I was on my line and figureheading along the face.
Now what? How long can I keep this up? Couldn’t feel my feet at all. Checked my position in the face. I freaked. Had tumbled down. Was low enough to crash through anything higher than – high enough to be higher than my fifty foot tape measure I didn’t have on me. Looked up. Figured I was two thirds down the face maybe more. Hard to tell. Needed to cutback up close enough to the crest maybe even up and over. My stinkin’ longboard – there’s that stinkin’ if only, again.
Wondered if by using my extended arm, it would take me back up the face. Never bodysurfed a swell this big. Only surfed ‘em. What the fuck, ain’t never been on a stinkin’ wave this big before. Guess what I meant to say, was I never bodysurfed a wave long enough or high enough cause what’s the point of bodysurfing anything b’sides shorebreak if you got a board ‘n’ I always had a board. Well, truth be told, not always. First time I went out past shorebreak to surf, not swim, I had me one of them canvas rafts that flew in front of the face that you had to grip for dear life or it’d scoot out from under you. Once you got the hang of it you could kneel on it. Yeah, yuh could steer it kinda sorta by lifting the front of the raft and angling it ‘cause it didn’t have a fin. Sometimes it worked and you could raft across the face for a bit until it closed out or you’d just roll over; the raft would bounce high in the air and you’d bounce against the rocky bottom at Ditch or the sandy bottom at most other spots all disoriented, hoping the wave would take you to shore alive and conscious so you could chase your raft and get back out. Not much different than a board, really, least before some dude came up with the idea of installin’ a bungee leash tethered to a board you slip around yer ankle so when you wiped, you wouldn’t have to go retrievin’ yer board miles down the stinkin’ beach. Instead, the board would crash with the wave and drag you with it so when you finally re-oriented yourself you could pull the board to you, slide back on and paddle back to the yer spot.
‘Course, there was always the danger you’d wipe out, the board’d pop up into the gas, ricochet back down and crown yuh but good. Anyway, never bodysurfed a wave other than shorebreak. Figured extending my arm worked to keep me stable. I weren’t no stinkin’ physics expert. Guess it had to do with physics if that was the right word. Had no clue ‘cause I never made it past eighth grade, dropped out second week, and failed the GED – don’t know how many stinkin’ times. If they had school on boards then I might’uh been interested, but they didn’t, and saw no importance in goin’ to school when surf’s up, which was all the time ‘cludin’ winter thanks to some schmuck who was dumb enough to leave his sporty nazimobile unlocked with a pretty-as-you-please, brand new drysuit stretched out on the back seat. Would’uh taken his board but it sucked for surfin’ the east end. The idiot was an obvious beginner or maybe a diver. Never bothered to find out. Didn’t plan to stick around long enough to get caught. Of course, the drysuit fit me perfectly even if it didn’t. Like, waddya ‘spect, I’m rememberin’ all this shit now ‘cause it’s goin’ through my mind, my mind, while I try to get myself outta this mess.
Huh. Maybe this is all part of that life-flashin’-before-your-eyes yer supposed to have before you wipe out permanently thing. What I wouldn’t give for some shrooms right now and maybe a couple tabs of acid chased down with a few splifs and Millers. Eh. Lesson learned. Never leave yer stash in a junk heap Corvair ‘cause a wave might come along, take it one way and take you another. If only – shit! Again? So many fuckin’ if onlys! If only I had the time to mull through them all and change ‘em to, like, been there done that. Ain’t gonna happen. So, maybe if I angle my arm up toward the crest, it’d cut me back up the face and I wouldn’t have to worry ‘bout hittin’ some building or truck or roof or umbrella or drowning person. So, what the fuck. What’d I got to lose, anyway. Decided to decide to aim my extended arm up ‘cause Time, Time, it ain’t on my side, no it ain’t. Time to give it that ol’ GED try. Weighed the consequences of it not working more to delay my deciding than to weigh my odds of success. Worst could happen is that I tumble down or the wave passes around me, again, and I can’t frog kick myself back through the face.
Like, time to face the Unknown Future than the certain, Now, so I aim my arm up and stupidly catch it in the face, which whips me round so my upper torso crashes through the face and my legs and lower torso figurehead out the face. No good. I swallow a ton of Atlantic and flail my legs which catch on the face and cartwheel my head and arms back out. Before I can cartwheel around, again, I somehow stabilize myself, guess it’s instinct from spendin’ my 22 years ridin’ waves and I’m cutting along the face, coughin’ and sputterin’ ‘lantic from my lungs. Gotta try, again, slow and deliberate this time. I tilt my arm a smidge and sure enough, I inch up the face. It fucking works. I tilt my arm up higher, and up I cut. Wonder if I could do cutbacks. Nah. That’d be risking it. Have to wait till I get where I wannna get, up and over or up near the crest, then I’ll see if I wanna go for broke and surf this mother of all mothers of tsunamis.
Took a while, but got up near the crest and could’uh shot over it and find some jetsam to climb on while I wait for the water to recede or some Georgica beach crowd’s heli to copter over me. Nah, they wouldn’t pick me up. Wouldn’t wanna spoil their leather seats with salt water and some poor Bonacker schmuck who ain’t in their social circle. Maybe a news chopper. Of course, on my cutback up the face, I realized that when a wave breaks onshore, it recedes and that undertow can be a bitch. So when this mother of all mothers of a tsunami finally breaks, the undertow’d be tons of times more powerful than a ten-foot swell, and if I was hangin’ on some jetsam waitin’ for solid to surface, or some search and rescue heli to winch me gasward, chances are I’d be too far out to even see it or it to see me ‘cause of the undertow draggin’ me way out into the Atlantic. And let’s not forget about sharks farther out unless the ocean had churned up enough bottom silt to clog them sharks’ gills. Take a while for the silt to settle and the ocean to clear enough for the sharks let alone the other fish to breath so maybe I’d be okay bobbin’ on some jetsam long enough to be rescued. Nah, I figured, better to bodysurf the tsunami. I mean, like, this was a once in a lifetime chance and I bet I’m the one and only person on the entire planet who ever surfed a tsunami, while there’d been and will be tons of folks floatin’ on the high seas hopin’ for a heli or boat to come along and rescue them. This was Guiness Book of World Records ‘n’ stuff. Like, every talk show on the planet would be competin’ for me, and the cash rollin’ in was better than griftin’ and breakin’ ‘n’ enterin’ cause it was legal stealin’. Probly a Hollywood movie in it, too. MEGA BUCKS!
I quaked violently like a dyin’ flounder thrashin’ around the deck of some obese amateur fisherman’s rented Boston Whaler. The cold. I couldn’t feel my legs anymore and I was fuckin’ freezin’. Hoped it wasn’t hypothermia, knew the signs and these were they. Needed to hold out, needed to warm myself. Had no clue how. I mean, like, in the middle of the Atlantic? In not on.
So, what a fuckin’ realization. Didn’t matter if I could or couldn’t feel nothin’ from my waist down. Chances are wasn’t plannin’ to do much of anything b’fore I wipe out for good. Had no plans to see the world ‘cept maybe surf spots, but that cost the big bucks and transportin’ my boards, pain in the fuckin’ ass without my junk heap Corvair. Wasn’t good enough to get a sponsorship. Never would be. Nah, just liked surfin’ for surfin’ and ‘specially on the south shore from Jones sometime the Rockaways to Ditch and the point. Anyway, hated competition and hated watchin’ competition, any competition ‘less the babes were hotter’n whatever you can imagine, and even then, I’d get bored really quick. Always preferred the doin’ rather than the watchin’ others doin’ the doin’. Watched others grift, con, pickpocket, break bones. Listened to ‘em reminisce ‘bout ‘the old days’ and how fucking amazing their teachers were. Seems they all had teachers. Teachers – waste of time. Yeah, spent some time in lock up for blowin’ a couple of cons – nope, not what I mean – when I was a juvi and followed the advice of a ‘pro’. Realized in my second go round ‘pros’, real pros, don’t know shit and don’t know to teach shit. The con, hustle, grift, pickpocket, hit, whatever their specialty just comes natural to ‘em.
Well, if this is it, best I could hope for is some news chopper catchin’ me on tape. Bet it’d go viral and bet I’d become a legend for the books, just like Davy Jones. Legend of the Tsunami Surfer. Nah, maybe not. Rather have the scratch than the legend. What good is bein’ a legend if you ain’t gettin’ any benefits outta it. Better to be a legend like Genghis, Napoleon and Adolph. Least ways they got the benefits b’fore they was offed.
Whoa, mama! Ain’t possible this rollin’ tsunami is gettin’ higher and pickin up speed? Just missed clippin’ a seagull that looked like it was on a kamikaze mission at full throttle.
Finally settled in for the ride, figured I’d look around. Help distract me from my fuckin’ freezing, chatterin’ self. Nothin’ to see, only ocean all around. Seems like the swell’s shrinkin’ but it’s still rocketin’ on, holdin’ its own. Must be over deep ocean.
The three Hs must’uh taken a powder. I’m getting hit by a cool wind. Could be it’s keepin’ the swell formed. Least ways enough for the face to remain high enough for me to maintain my line. Can’t lose it now. Wonder where the fuck I’m gonna wind up? I’m tellin’ yuh, where was this stinkin’ wind when I could’uh used it? When I wasn’t fuckin’ around with hypothermia and shakin’ my breakfast, harder than Bond’s martini, yeah, martini. He got that wrong. That’s with Gin, ain’t no Vodka in a stinkin’ Martini. Look it up if you don’t believe me. And these stinkin’ idiot sophisticates and cityiots come preenin’ into the bar all sunburnt bronze and ev’rything asking for Vodka martinis like it ain’t got it’s own name only can’t remember it now – too fucking cold. What’s the matter with its stinkin’ right name. Guess it’s fuckin’ too lowbrow for these masters of their own self-glorifyin’ to call it anything other than a martini.
Wonder if they’ll find that asshole’s fucking corpse in the trunk of my fuckin’ junk heap Corvair? Doubt it. ‘lantic’ll see to that, I hope. If only – there’s that stinkin’ if only, again. Well, it’s kinda apt, ain’t it? If only that fuckin’ rich kid hadn’t caught me liberatin’ his drysuit for my betterment. I mean, like, the kid had no clue. Just to look at him. His fuckin’ bronze tan and his fuckin’ gleamin’ grill that was 10,000kw blinding even on that overcast day. Not to mention, stinkin’ perfect.
Yeah, some stinkin’ rich kid who spent his entire time in the gym pickin’ up boys, probly. All big and well put together and stinkin’ rich. The dude just happened to park his nazimobile on the wrong beach on the wrong day and wander back at the wrong time. Really didn’t wanna get caught. Really didn’t wanna resort to my survival instincts, been on a streak lately and needed to cool it, I got too many ‘explained’ and unexplained corpses fillin’ the Star instead of social shit like parties and such. Even made it into the Times. Maybe went nationwide, don’t know. Don’t care to find out. Wasn’t lookin’ forward to adding another. No worries, it wasn’t a problem any longer. All them stinkin’ corpses pilin’ up under the water – thousands, maybe millions – unless by some quirk, my stinkin’ junk heap of a Corvair’s trunk don’t open and they find the rich kid – should’uh just let me take his drysuit and go buy another; but no, the asshole thought I was a stinkin’ pushover and comes at me with his fists. His fists! What a fuckin’ idiot!
Me, I always got a stinkin’ wrench on me. Great weapon, wrench, and always get away with havin’ it, even on pat downs – the one good thing about a junk heap Corvair that’s, like, older than my dead mother would’uh been if she were still alive – got what she deserved, the fuckin’ alky – is that it’d always need to have this and that adjusted to keep it runnin’ so always gotta carry a wrench.
First thing, I go for was Rich Kid’s grill, turned them 10,000kw whites into a sea of strawberries with their seeds shinin’ pretty as you please. He crumpled, surprised and woe-is-me-ing ‘cause, I’m guessin’, though it was obvious, he was expecting some fantasy of a fistfight, wrestlin’ mano a mano kinda thing he was sure he could win. Sure wasn’t ‘spectin’ some dude who’d pull out a wrench. Sure he thought this shit never happened on the east end in the summer when ev’ryone had to be stinkin’ rich and frolickin’ in the ocean mists and the worst crime was gettin’ busted for drugs or drinkin’. Anyway, he was burbling and sputterin’ strawberries for mercy, holdin’ one hand up, palm out, and the other wrapped around his former grill all sticky and gooey with strawberry crush, as if he was tryin’ to save his already shattered grill.
It was a good laugh. Turned his entire head into a strawberry stew then threw him into the junk heap Corvair’s trunk and lit outta there and, well, didn’t have time to get rid of him till today. Surfs been too good to pass up. Was gonna do it today, and you know the rest. Here I am bodysurfin’ the mother of all mothers of all tsunamis and freezin’ my stinkin’ ass off.
The tsunami’s risin’, again, and leavin’ me too low. Gotta cut up to keep near the crest. Gotta concentrate on the face so I don’t wind up back in the soup. Angle my arm up a tad and sure enough, I shoot up to the crest, which is gettin’ higher and higher by the second. Once I know I’ve got a good line, I scope out ahead of me. Way down below and approachin’ rapidly is shoreline. All that sand pin-cushioned with the full color spectrum of umbrellas and fast moving freckles, like, right outta some disaster movie, tearing inland away from their umbrellas. This don’t look like anywhere along the south shore. A boardwalk, maybe Coney but don’t see no Cyclone.
Fuckin’ Jersey! Gotta be, fucking Jersey. What the fuck! I hate Jersey. Surf sucks, people suck, can’t drive worth a shit. Garden State, yeah right! Fuckin’ should be called Swamp State the way it stinks all the time. Now more than ever the way this tsunami is freight trainin’ toward the shore. Sure will be the swamp state in a couple of minutes.
Fuckin’ wow. Gotta cut ba – Holy fucking shit! I’m headin right for . . .
. . . THE END
Kit Copperfield’s Caper with Kids
This time it was the exception. I was standing right next to him because he was wearing a long coat, too much for the current temperature. The coat flopped open, and the weapon came out, an assault rifle. He started to raise it. I slammed the barrel downward. I spun him around. I jammed my knee unto his crotch. He dropped his hands. He dropped the gun. He dropped to the ground. By the time he hit the floor, two of my associates were there. They cuffed and dragged him off the floor by his collar. One of our guys had the weapon.
****
I retired from the New York State Police, but within the first few weeks I became restless. My daughter, Dixie, was in law school. I had a good pension, but I knew I could use a few extra bucks. An occasional job in the area of security or investigations would suit me fine. It would help with my financial obligations, and keep me from going nuts.
The agency, Brown and Grey, was well respected and well connected. Their reputation for getting good results and for confidentiality brought in the best clients. They offered me a chance to work for them on an as needed basis. Of course, because I was only five feet-four, 115 pounds, and a woman, not every job was an opportunity for me. On the other hand, the boys, Brown and Grey, knew of my record on the New York State Troopers (The NYS police were divided into groups called Troops, so they were called Troopers). I had received some accolades for my work as a detective, so Brown and Grey would call me in, not only when they needed someone who didn’t look like a cop, but also when they had a problem that wasn’t exactly black and white, or brown and gray.
Oh, I haven’t introduced myself. My name is Kit Copperfield. I say that I’m descended from David Copperfield, you know, the Dickens kid, and you would be surprised how many people believe me. As a matter of fact, other than my deceased husband, and my daughter, I don’t know of any other person who was born with the name.
My husband’s father, Homer, came from somewhere in the Deep South, who knows how long ago. Homer the second, my husband, joined the NYSP, charmed me, married me, fathered a lovely little girl, named her Dixie, and got shot dead by a bank robber. Since then, it was me and Dixie and the Troopers. They all loved me, and I loved them all.
The recent capture of the assassin was so successful that Brown and Grey gave me a bonus, in green. Based on this, I thought it was about time for me, and Dixie, to do a little shopping in the Big Apple. I phoned her at Albany Law School, and told her that I’d pick her up after classes on, Friday. It was all set, then I got a call from Suzi at Brown and Grey. “Kit can you hold for Mr. Brown?”
“I’m here, Suzi”
“Mr. Brown, I have Ms. Copperfield on line two.”
“Kit, we have something that is right up your alley.”
“What is it, Bob?”
Maybe I forgot to tell you that Brown and Grey are Bob and Ray, yes, just like the old comedy team. Come to think of it they kind of sound like those guys did when they did the commercial for Piels beer..
“Kit, we have a missing girl on our hands.”
“Isn’t that better handled by the cops? They have the systems to deal with this sort of thing.”
“This is different. Very prominent family, and the girl wasn’t kidnapped. She ran away with a guy.”
“Is she eighteen? You know that there is nothing we can do if she is.”
“I’m told that she pretends she is, and she acts like it, but she is only seventeen. The other complication is that the boy is also from a very well-known family, in politics. Everyone wants to keep this private. We need you to go to New York and meet with both families on Saturday morning. Can you do it?”
It sounded like an all-expenses paid shopping trip for Dixie and me. “I’ll be there. My daughter and I were planning to be in New York this weekend anyway. There is no problem if she comes along is there?”
“Not at all. We’ll cover all the expenses.”
“I’ll call you on Saturday evening with an update. You won’t mind if we call you from a good steak house, will you.”
****
I drove from my house in the Finger Lakes to Albany, arriving about three in the afternoon. Dixie was waiting at her apartment with her luggage. That girl doesn’t travel light. “We’re only staying for two nights, you know.”
“Mom, one case is empty. I’ll fill it up for the ride home.”
On Friday night we stayed in New Jersey. I phoned the client to setup a meeting for the next day. On Saturday morning we took a train into Manhattan. We booked a room at a boutique hotel about three blocks from Times Square. Dixie hit Fifth Avenue, and I took the subway downtown to Wall Street. I was to meet with the clients in an office provided by a big law firm.
The parents of both of the runaways were present, arguing about who caused the situation.
“Your son should have been trained to behave better.”
“Your little sweetie vamped him. I don’t know what part of her body she used.”
“Now just a minute, you can’t talk about my daughter like that.”
I jumped in. “Folks, folks, if we don’t settle down, and start being polite to each other, we won’t get anywhere. These kids are just like kids everywhere, full of hormones. So, in this case, we should try to focus on why these kids took such a drastic step as running away.”
It didn’t take long to get the answer. The fathers were not only political rivals, they were also business competitors.
As things settled down I suggested we establish some rules of conduct for our meeting. First there was a possibility that a crime had already been committed. The boy, Hayden, may have committed statuary rape, whether he thought the girl was eighteen or not. Since there was also a possibility that illegal drugs were involved, I got both sets of parents to agree that the focus of my work would be the safe return of each of the kids, and that no criminal charges would be brought by anyone.
The second rule was that even though the fathers were at swords points about everything, they should all tell me all they know about the situation, and that everything they told me should be true. I agreed to keep to myself anything I was told. The last thing I wanted was for one father to use the situation to obtain an advantage over the other. All was agreed and so I said, “Let’s get started. The boy’s name is Hayden, what is the girl’s name”
“My daughter’s name is Heather.”
“Ok, now whose office is this?”
Heather’s father said, “It is not either of ours. We have borrowed it from a mutual friend, a lawyer.”
“Swell, let’s start with Hayden’s family, mothers first. Mama you just sit over here. The rest of you clear out until I call you.”
Hayden’s father protested. “Shouldn’t you interview my wife and I together?”
“I don’t think so. You may each have a different perspective. The more different perspectives I have, the better chance I have of locating your children. And, while you are waiting, I suggest you pull out your phones and check on any credit cards or bank accounts your kids can use. I assume that in every case you also have access to these cards or accounts.” Interviewing all four parents and looking at financial transactions showed me that there was more than just a Romeo and Juliette story here.
It turned out that:
(1) Mrs. Smith (we are using Smith and Jones here for obvious reasons) and Mrs. Jones were roommates and Sorority Sisters in College. They had become close friends. The competition between their husbands was a problem in both marriages.
(2) Each of the kids had a joint bank account with their mother, and each had withdrawn a thousand dollars on the day they disappeared. With two grand in cash, they could get quite far away before they had to start using their credit cards. So far there had been no credit card transactions by either of them.
(3) These were smart kids, maybe too smart for kids
(4) Each kid had a passport, but they usually didn’t carry them on their person. The parents felt the passports were safe at home, but they would check. I thought it was dumb they hadn’t already checked.
(5)The fathers had known each other since childhood, and had been in competition with each other since they were old enough to be Boy Scouts. Not that they actually were Boy Scouts. Boy scouts went to camp. These guys went to the country club.
(6) Both kids had cars, but that was the first things the parents checked. Both cars were in their garages. The kids must have been using public transportation or had rented a car. The first ting Monday morning Brown and Grey operatives would check all the possibilities.
The whole set up seemed crazy to me. It looks like the mothers were supportive of their children’s relationship. On the other hand the fathers had forbidden the kids from seeing each other. The fathers were fierce competitors in business and in the political arena, but they had a Wall St, lawyer who was a mutual friend, and who lent them the office for this meeting. I needed to talk to this big shot lawyer friend. I wondered if he was a Democrat like Heather’s father, or a Republican like Hayden’s father. “I’m sorry. I didn’t catch the name of the person who lent you this office.”
“He is the lawyer, Victor Johnson.” (Once again a false name for the same reason.)
Saturday night I called Bob Brown. I explained the difficult family relationships. I told him, “If I had to live in that situation, I’d run away too.” We talked for some time and put together the elements of a plan. I spent Sunday contacting the operatives we needed to canvass those facilities that might provide us with a lead. Nobody travels without leaving some trail. We needed to find out where that trail started, or, if we got lucky, where that trail will end.
My other thought was that these were kids, and kids talk to their friends. I sent several our more subtle folks out to find and pump their friends.
On Monday morning I called Victor Johnson’s office. I was told that he was working at home and, when I indicated that it was urgent that I speak with him today, they gave me his home number. I phoned and a woman answered. “Do you have an appointment, Ms. Copperfield?”
“I do not, but I was hoping Mr. Johnson would see me. It is about the disappearance of Hayden Smith and Heather Jones. I am a private detective hired by the parents to locate the youths. I believe that Mr. Johnson would be able to help me since he knows both families.”
“One moment, please.”
It was only a moment. “Ms. Copperfield, this is Victor Johnson. I will be pleased to meet with you. Come as soon as you can.”
He gave me the address, and I called a cab,
When I reached the house I was greeted by a middle aged, robust man in a corduroy jacket. “Ms. Copperfield, come right in. I don’t know how I can help you, but you have as much of my time as you need.” He showed me to a room that was a home office, study, and library all in one, but it wasn’t a law library. The shelves contained great literature, history, biography, and philosophy. Johnson saw my amazement at his collection and smiled at me. “The law library is in my office downtown. I haven’t had my nose in a law book for years. By the way, this is my son Franklin. He is just out of school and is joining my firm. We are home today so that I can get Franklin up to date on some of our clients without being constantly interrupted. But I do not consider you an interruption, by any means.”
I said hello to Franklin and he said. “How-do-you-do Ms. Copperfield. I believe that I know your daughter, Dixie. I just finished at Albany Law, and we were in some of the same classes. She is a lovely woman.”
Franklyn was a type, all best money could buy, all the best clubs, and a place in daddy’s New York firm. I thought that he was handsome, sophisticated and self-confident, but not as smart as daddy.
“So nice of you to say so, Franklin. I don’t recall Dixie mentioning your name, but we really don’t see much of each other. I live in Canandaigua, in the Finger Lakes, and she has her own place in Albany. She loves Albany Law. “
“Albany Law is a fine school, and Albany is a nice town,
I smiled and mad a little joke, “Well. if you plan to settle there I’ll mention it to Dixie.
Daddy spoke up, “We’re grooming Franklyn for the New York office. ”
I said, “Say Franklyn, were you a pal of either Hayden Smith or Heather Jones?”
“The two of them are a bit younger than I am, but I knew Hayden from the Club. He is a very good golfer. I also spoke with Heather on occasion around the pool. She made quite a sensation there, if I may say so. Fellows of all ages were attracted to her.”
I said, “You wouldn’t have any idea where they would go to, shall we say, be together?”
Lawyer Johnson said, “Good grief, you don’t think they have eloped? There are damned few places that a seventeen year-old can get married.”
I said, “I know, and we have those spots covered. Our agency does a lot of tracking down young lovers. It’s SOP for us in these situations. That being said, I don’t think they intend to tie the knot at this time. I think the plan is to teach their parents a lesson in being parents.
So the bottom line is that you don’t have any idea where they might have gone?”
“Not at all.”
“Well than, perhaps you can give me the names of some folks at the Country Club who might know more.” Franklyn gave me a few names. I thanked him and daddy, and told them that I might be back, and took my leave.
As soon as I could get to a secure phone I dispatched one of our guys, who looked like he belonged to the posh set, off to the club too snoop. Then I had an idea. I called Brown. “Young Hayden is apparently interested in golf. There’s a tournament in Hilton Head this week. Is there someone near there that could show some photos around, and see if the kids just took off for a golf vacation?”
Tuesday all the reports that came in were negative. The bet was that the kids had borrowed a friend’s car. We kept the pressure, soft sell in nature, on the friends. On Wednesday, our golf guy (I think he paid Brown for the job), got out his PGA cap, his pink golf shirt, his checked Bermuda shorts , and headed for the tournament. Early Thursday morning he phoned me. “Kit, they are here.” Thursday, before noon, I dumped my bag with the bellhop at the hotel in Hilton Head. There was a message from Brown waiting for me, one word “Bonus.”
I met with our operative, Burt Woods, (no relation to Tiger) at the bar. When a meeting is detective to detective, we always meet in a bar. Burt started his report. “You’re not going to believe this but they each have their own room in this hotel. They are not sleeping together.”
“Are they in the hotel now?”
“I don’t think so. I saw them go out to Harbor Town this morning. The golf will end around six, and they’ll probably stay till the last ball is sunk. They are real enthusiasts. Our best bet will be to catch them at the last green.”
Burt was apparently somewhat an enthusiast himself. He thought sitting on the eighteenth green all of the afternoon would be fun. But there didn’t seem to be a better solution, so we went to watch golf.
On the way, Burt asked, “Don’t you think we should notify the parents?”
“I would like to talk to the kids first. The fact that they have separate rooms supports my idea they are trying to send a message to their crazy parents.” So we waited in the hot sun.
Six fifteen rolled around and the last golfer headed for the bar. I would have liked to do the same, but there was no sign of our young couple. I asked Burt, “What do you think happened?”
“I have no idea. I was sure this would work. Maybe one of them got sick or something and went back to the hotel early.”
I said “Let’s go.”
****
Back at the hotel, my room was ready, so I checked in. During the PGA tournament it’s almost impossible to get a room without a reservation made months ahead. Brown and Grey don’t seem to have to worry about that, just like there were tickets to the tournament waiting for Burt at the desk when he checked in the day before. The questions in my mind were (a) how did the kids get here if they didn’t rent a car and (b) how did they get a room and tickets. My bet was that someone set this whole thing up, but (c)why?
As I turned from the front desk, Burt took my bag and handed to the bellhop. “Put this in Ms. Copperfield’s room please, Jack. Kit come this way I want you to meet someone.” It was a big guy dressed in a suit with a bulge under his arm. “Kit this is Bill Reed, the house detective.” I knew that Brown and Grey were very kind to the staff of certain hotels. Bill would get a generous check in the mail with the request that he share with other important members of the staff. The head waiter, bartender, and Jack the bellhop would get their share.
I shook his hand. “Nice to meet you Bill.”
Burt said, “Tell Kit what you told me.”
“Ye know, Burt asked me to keep an eye out for your kids, but ye know I haven’t seen them since the left this morning. I checked their rooms and their stuff is still there so I guess they’ll be back, but I been watching them for a few days. They’re usually down at the pool by this time.”
I said, “Well okay, let’s wait for a while. Maybe they stopped for something to eat.”
Bill said, “I don’t think so. They got a dinner reservation for seven. It’s almost that now.”
“Bill did you see what they were driving.”
“I did. It was a Buick convertible wit Jersey plates. Here’s the number.”
“Burt, get out to the golf course and see if the car is still there. Remember, this is still a confidential investigation, so be careful about asking questions. Bill, thanks for your help. Please keep everything quiet, and you know we’ll appreciate it.”
I went upstairs and dialed the office. The night team was on duty. I asked them to check the Jersey plate number as soon as possible, realizing that it would be morning before any info was available. Then I went to the bar. I ordered a CC manhattan on the rocks. I don’t know how people drink martinis. Gin gives me a huge headache. The bartender placed the amber liquid in front of me. “Ms. Copperfield, I have a phone call for you.”
I took the phone. “Kit, why don’t you have a cell phone?”
“I don’t need one, Burt. You can always reach me at the bar. What’s up?”
“The car is still here. It looks like a rental. We’ll have to see who rented it.”
I told Burt to come back to the hotel and meet me in the bar. I finished my drink and the bartender brought me another one without my asking. “Ms. Copperfield, I have another phone call for you. “Kit, why the hell don’t you get a cell phone? “
“I had one Bob, but I lost it the first week. I can’t afford to spend that kind of cash for a phone every week.”
“Come back to New York. The parents got ransom calls today.”
****
A new type of case, a new set of procedures, a new group of operatives. I was sure that, back in New York, Bob and Ray were working to put together a new way to deal with the kidnaping. I wasn’t sure that I would still be on the case. When I got to the office on Friday morning there was quite a gathering of what they call “the kidnap squad”. These folks were trained to negotiate for the release of the captives. They work under the theory that if the kidnapers are successful without some difficulty, they will be back for more. They have found that this absolutely true in cases they have handled in Central and South America. Most of those cases are assigned by insurance companies that sell Kidnap insurance to business people who travel or live in those areas.
As I entered the room, Bob stopped the conversation and introduced me to the group. “Kit has been working this case as a missing person up to now. We suspected that the victims had eloped or something like that. Kit let us have your thoughts. I know that you’re not usually involved with this type of case, but somehow this doesn’t sound like a typical kidnaping.”
I had been thinking this over during my flight. “It’s odd as hell, Bob. These kids have been missing for a week. We found them on Wednesday. They were happy and free on Thursday morning. I was setting up a situation where I could casually meet them on Thursday afternoon to see wat was going on, but they disappeared sometime late morning or early afternoon that day. I have to admit it, right under my nose.”
Bob said, “Well what do you folks think” Various opinions were expressed. With the final idea being that:
(1) Someone saw an opportunity develop and took advantage of it by grabbing the kids
(2) Someone who knew the victims lured them to the golf tournament for an opportunity to grab them.
(3) The kids themselves made the ransom calls.
I weighed in for number two. “These appear to be good kids with nutty parents. I think someone they know set up a vacation for them. They knew their fathers wouldn’t let it happen so they each grabbed some cash of their own and headed to Hilton Head. They had separate rooms. They spent their days at the golf course and around the pool. It was the most plutonic elopement of all times. But I don’t think they could have set this up for themselves. They had a car but they didn’t rent a car. By the way, the car had phony plates on it. Some body wanted them to have a car that couldn’t be traced back to anyone. Someone probably made the hotel registration. If we can trace these things we’ll find a kidnaper.”
Bob said, “Okay, let’s check these things out. Kit, get the troops moving.”
****
I called Bart, who I suspected was still enjoying the golf. He has a cell phone so it wasn’t hard to reach him in the first tee. He agreed to check on the hotel reservation. I suggested that he also get a list of any other hotel guests from the New York City area. Sometimes you can catch a big fish with a net. Then I got hold of the guy in charge of contacting the car rental companies. “Please have your folks go back and see if any of them have a car missing or if someone rented a car to be picked up by Hayden Smith. By one o’clock I had an answer from both sources. The hotel reservation was made over the phone by a Robert K. Kent with a credit card. A car picked up by Hayden Smith, to be returned on Monday next, was rented by Robert K. Kent, with the same credit card. The card was issued by my bank. I ran down to my branch and talked to the branch manager. “Let me see what I can find out Kit. He was back at his desk in a few minutes. “The card was issued in response to a mail promotion. Mr. Kent is a longtime, large depositor. It appears he just returned a promotion card.” I looked up the address and phone number in the phone book.
On the phone Kent told me that he didn’t request a credit card from that bank. He did get a bill of sorts from that bank, but he didn’t owe anything so he tossed it. He planned to ask about it the next time he was in the office. I drove by Mr. Kent’s house in Manhasset. His mail box was on a pole at the end of a long driveway, not visible from the house. I was beginning to get the picture. It was a picture of a very clever person.
I returned to the office to drop off the company car and call for a hotel for a room. There was a message from Bart Woods. I called back and he answered immediately. Maybe I should give a smart phone another try. “Kit, I knew it was too early for even you to be at the bar, and I needed to let you know I wasn’t spending all my time watching golf . I checked around at some of the other hotels down here, and there was a Robert K. Kent at a place about a mile away from where the kids were. He checked out on Tuesday. The bellhop said he was tall, well spoken, expensively dressed, about twenty-five, beard and mustache, and a big tipper.” A ray of hope. What next?
****
Next I thought, a cocktail. Then Suzi buzzed me on the conference room phone.” Kit, you have another call, a Victor Johnson.”
I grabbed the phone. “Mr. Johnson, what can I do for you today?”
“Ms. Copperfield, I’ve heard about the latest developments in the disappearance. As close friend and consultant to the family, I would like to be brought up to date.”
“What exactly is the latest development you have heard about?”
“Why, the kidnaping, of course.”
“I see. Well, Mr. Johnson, if you don’t mind me asking, just what is your relationship to the family?”
“Not at all, my wife is a second cousin to Loren Smith, and I’m Godfather to Heather Jones. By this time you must have noticed some discord between the fathers. I’m sort of a mediator to try and keep the marriages together.”
“Okay, the kids were last seen on Thursday morning. They never returned to their hotel for their things, and haven’t been seen since. Brown and Grey have assembled their kidnap team and are working on a strategy right now. One of the things I would like to do is talk to some of the kid’s friends. I would like to start with Franklin.”
“That would be a great idea. Franklin is a very close friend to Hayden and Heather.” This was news. I thought Franklin told me he didn’t know either of them well. “Unfortunately he is out of town at the present. He’s a big golf guy and is down on Hilton Head until Monday. I do have his number. You could give him a call.”
Daddy gave me Frankie’s number, but I didn’t want to call him just now. Just so you won’t think I’m a total Luddite, the first thing I did was find a computer and look up the website for the Johnson Law Firm. Franklin wasn’t listed among the firm’s attorneys, yet. Then I called Dixie. “What’s up Mom?”
“Honey, does Albany law have a year book or something like that?”
“Why do you ask?”
“I’d like to get a photo of a recent grad, Franklin Johnson.”
“I know where to get that. Give me a half hour, and I’ll send you one by email to your office.”
“Thanks dear.”
Suzi was still in charge of the place. I told her what to expect. “How many copies do you need?”
“If I could get ten in a nice folder, that would be great. And send a copy to Bart”
“The ten copies will be a breeze. The folder may be more difficult.” But Suzi worked her magic and, after I called Bart Woods and filled him in, I was out the door.
****
The next morning saw me on my way back to Hilton Head. Bart picked me up at the airport. “I showed the photo Suzi sent me to the folks at the hotel where Kent is staying. He’s still registered there. They say it looks like him except for the beard and stash. On the other hand, at the kid’s hotel he was seen at the pool and eating with the kids, no whiskers.”
“Let’s stop at Kent’s hotel and see if we can spot him.”
He was there at the bar. It looked like he was waiting to meet someone. Bob Brown had got me the phone number that was used to verify Kent’s credit card. We leased the bellboy’s phone for $20 and called the number. The bearded Franklin Johnson answered. Bart said “You are lucky you have just one the Indian sweepstakes.” Franklin hung up. And then we got lucky. Someone, who looked like he might have been involved in the Indian sweepstakes climbed on the stool next to Franklin. They started talking, and Burt and I mad plans to follow the guy when he left.
I borrowed a car and a cell phone from the hotel, courtesy of Bill Reed, and Burt and I set off and on piggy back. We tailed the guy to a small bungalow just off the Island. He parked the car, and we waited. As dusk began to fall we figured we should assail the house , but we needed more than just the two of us. Suzi failed in this event. There just weren’t any B&G folks available on such short notice. Then we called on Bill Reed. At about eight he and two other huskies showed up. Time to move in, but we didn’t have a warrant, so we improvised.
I went to the front door and knocked. I asked if Hayden and Heather were home. The guy grabbed me, and hauled me in the house. I yelled, “Help.” My scream was heard on the street. We had a reason to move in. Burt came to the front door and started banging. Bill and his pals were picking the lock on the back door. The front door opened and Burt was issued in at gun point. As he closed the door, I turned and pushed the guy with the gun. The other guy grabbed me and the two huskies came up behind the bad guys and smacked them on the head. The hoods went to their knees and then down face first. By the time they came to they were tied tight.
“What now?” Burt asked.
“You guys just wait here. Remember that Brown and Grey are paying you by the hour, so just relax and keep a sharp eye on these guys and the road. We don’t want to be surprised if there are any other accomplices. I’m going to get Franklin, and bring him here.”
Franklin was the one who was surprised when he saw me. It was easy to convince him to accompany me. When we got back the kids were having pizza and Pepsi, Franklin started accusing the two gangsters of forcing him to participate in the Kidnap plan. It seemed he owed them some substantial money from a gambling situation. Of course the thugs said it was Franklin’s idea. I phoned Brown and suggested that he get the parents down for a meeting the next day. More pizza and Pepsi was ordered.
****
Brown brought donuts coffee, orange juice and four confused parents early the next morning. Their first question was why the kids did what they did. Hunter said, “Well, Franklin said he had won this fabulous trip to the tournament, and he couldn’t use it. We knew you wouldn’t let us go so we just went. Maybe we were trying to show you that you couldn’t control us. We didn’t know we were going to be kidnaped.”
Brown took charge. “I think that the reason we are here is we have to decide what to do now. Three people could be charged with kidnaping. One of them is Franklin. If we charge these two monkeys we have to charge Franklin as well. Do we want to do that?”
Mr. Smith said, “What you are saying is that we may want to let these two go to keep Franklin out of jail.”
Brown said, “Exactly! Think it over. It’s your call.”
The four parents decided to take another cup of coffee and go outside to discuss the situation. Shortly they were back. Smith was he spokesman. “As long as these two agree to disappear from the face of the earth as far as we are concerned, we are prepared to consider the whole matter a misunderstanding.”
I thought that maybe the families might be getting closer together.
.
unsuccessful
Okay. 2020, you are gone. A new year, and anticipation that staying-in-place might be exchanged for going maskless, being with family in person, actually doing my own grocery shopping, had me wanting to subscribe to 2021 with its thirty-day free trial. I checked ‘yes’ on January 1st. Oh, it is a 31-day month. Well, as these first thirty days of calendar pages are being tossed in the trash, it seems not too much is quickly going back to the former-normal, so I sent an email saying I’d like to cancel my subscription to 2021. I think the look of 2022 has a nicer presentation, and I’m certainly not going to void 2021 but just not be a paying subscriber.
Trying to annul 2021 turns out to be worse than the website that offered much but made it hard to cease being a participant. My inbox reply said:
“Dear Sir or Madam: While I received your request to cancel your subscription to 2021, due to high volume we are experiencing long waits and we cannot begin to even process your request until December. We know this is inconvenient, but so many wanted the free trial that our computers just couldn’t handle the overload. And, of course, we are short-staffed, due to the pandemic, although our operators do work out of their own homes. I realize you think a press of a computer key could initiate the process, but we outsource and the overseas operator is still learning how to do this in English, the language you requested; our employed operators in other parts of the world are undergoing training in reversing the subscription orders, which is very confusing to them. They’ve been trained to Process and not Reverse.
Bear with us for all these upcoming months; it’s possible you even might find that you actually begin to enjoy 2021 and be pleased that you are already a subscriber. Of course you realize that, after your thirty-day free trial, you will be automatically billed while your subscription is active; I assume you read the fine print offered in six different languages. Thank you for being a customer and allowing us to take our monthly fee from your bank account, which you provided in case you enjoyed your free trial. Once, in December, or so, when we’ve reduced our high volume waits, we will notify you that your subscription and payment has ended.”
Under Arctic Ice (This is How you Drown)
“We are on vacation. Adventure right? Cause we go where the fuck we want?”
I love her reasoning - ‘Why the fuck not.’ Not even a question. Just another dissident comment on top of the viewing platform overlooking the Arctic playground, where the only color comes from the three different flags on the five different ships in our view. The UK’s X and + slowly down the strait within a few feet of the cracked jagged frozen teeth riven by the earliest icebreakers, China’s rectangular red covering about half of the metallic steel already anchored in the “bay” which is in actuality a lake, and the Maple Leaf flying from the back of the last three small ice runners, returning in circles before they dart back east into the number glaciation - the paralyzed Hyperborean.
“No, they are on vacation.”
“Do you really want to be on a ship like those people? On a big ole American ship red white and blue dripping down the sides? Because, you know, you can work for like, a bank or something. Maybe take some oil tycoons and tax evaders here on a bizness trip.”
“The US doesn’t have routes up here.”
“You can bring some underage girls too in fine fur coats. Really anything you could fucking want.”
“Oh please fucking stop.”
“Skull-fuck polar bear carcasses.”
Her sarcasm allows me to retreat inward, settling in the pockets of my skull where nothing ever happens. She’s a Pragmatic Idealist. Alternatively I am self-conscious and nervous about my diffident choices. I settle on; she believes. I sometimes think I fell in love with her because I wanted to be her.
I pluck her earrings a few times with my index finger, and she turns closer to me with a scrunched up frozen raw face. I was worried about frostbite, but Airea insists your blood is enough keep you warm - just don’t let it stop.
That’s why I think I will die first. I would choose to not have frostbite, and counter it by putting on a coat or hat, or realistically just going inside. Airea will just believe she won’t get frostbite, and would be naked in a snow pile avalanche attack and be as warm as if she was in a bathtub. Maybe it was an advanced form of meditation, but I was almost sure that she was not human, which makes the love so much stronger.
“Holy Hell! Look at the puffins!”
Airea follows my outreached hand to the puffins popping up in the middle of the lake. I’ve never seen one in real life, but I know what they look like, but I do not know their habitat, or really anything about them.
“Wow, they are way bigger than I thought!”
Airea looks back towards my dumb excited face and I wish that her piercings in her ears, nose, and mouth shined more spectacularly than her eyes. No matter what was said, they always had a shimmer of empathetic sadness, or just some decent understanding, that was surrendering. Through the irony and derision, I always understood that at a fundamental human level, she was ‘saintly.’ And I hate reducing my lexicon to the word ‘saintly,’ but nothing comes close to describing her accurately. I once told her she was ‘saintly,’ and she took a knife to my throat. This is while she and I were still just dating. She told me, ‘Never call me saintly again. The path of God is saintly, the path of god is genuine, heartfelt, and authentic.’ I still haven’t found a better way to say it yet.
“Those are not puffins.”
I watch some more breach the surface directly next to the boat and see their breath rise along the starboard side of our vessel.
“What'd ya mean? Those are puffins.”
“My god dude, they are huge. Puffins are like, bird-sized.”
“Well do you really know? Have you seen one?”
One solo puffin emerges from the water and immediately takes a wing and unzips itself from the head. I watch the limp puffin skin skim along the water behind definitely a human swimming toward the English ship.
“You could not have predicted that.”
“What? Oh! I’m sorry I didn’t tell you that puffins are like duck-sized and don’t live in Canada!”
Yea I sometimes - well I was going to say she makes me look like an idiot but really, it's basic information I should have known. I am an idiot. But that is not to say that I am not smart. I just have no foreboding actions. I can figure out puzzles and riddles and I fucking hate myself for this reason. Airea is not only a Pragmatic Idealist as I said before, but also an Informant if she wanted to work for the FBI, a Rejecter if she was entrapment, and a Sociopath that can understand anything, and yet still willingly observes the chaos and “entropy” because she is an expert at erasing. I call her The Eraser and she smiles and we fuck afterward, and then I call her The Destroya.
“HEY! OI! OI!”
She knows how to raise her voice, and everyone knows to answer to it.
“Yes! Hello!”
“Where did ya get those puffin suits eh? How do you get one of those, those puffin suits?”
Jeez she is so insulting as she is curious.
“They just gave them to us, just for fun.”
Motherfucking bloke just swam away.
“What do you think he meant just for fun?”
“I think that means hunny that they wittingly adorn those suits as some sort of amusement. It’s a choice that they make to look like that as their reinforced impressive totally human decision.”
“Those costumes are to make me want to mate with them?”
“All clothes are. All of life is one mating dance in infinite parts.”
“Are you telling me we should not be wearing clothes right now? So as not to be playing into the mating dance of life?”
“Baby you don’t need the progression and rebellion against logic to get me naked.”
“Jeez you’re romantic.”
“Hey you two! We are anchoring here! Go grab your shit!”
Industrial cruises became trendy a few years back and were now considered straight up fashionable. Due to the inherently dangerous routes, and its rarity, the exorbitant costs never dropped substantially, and thus allowed only the rich, who have seen enough of the Already World to tour these polar waters. Except for us.
Kinda. Airea and I hitched a ride on an old half oil tanker half cargo ship out of Anchorage, then slept and fucked most of our way through the Bering Strait and then we sorta woke up somewhere on top of Canada. This is the last thing I could remember, of course, if it happened. I realized, while scanning the unvarying Open Ocean and mechanical glaciers in repeat, that if I think it, I can remember it too. Like the breaching whale, and the pod of dolphins that glittered in the purple sundog.
Back in the day anyone could board a commercial ship – if you cooked and cleaned. Now you need to be in a union. Something about being unsafe and the corporation overlords wanting people to be unhappy. Airea and I unionized years back. You are still supposed to be part of the Oil Tankers Union or Cargo Haulers, but they make exceptions for other people who support the cause, if they trust ‘em. I actually met Airea at our local Communist meeting in Burlington, and then we encountered each other again at a meeting in Tucson. Unless she was a fucking nark, and I already made the list, there was a beautiful reason for it. On our first “date” (we went to the carnival and got stoned; she hoped I would join her monkey wrench some dam) we both decided to quit our jobs (I had been working at a Make-Your-Own t-shirt shop; she was working as a dishwasher,) and work at the factory in the heart of the city our other comrades had said was always hiring. We coveted the humanity, we needed the surroundings, and they wanted us there – so we signed up for the Industrial Players Union, paying the first dues with the money we would have spent on smokes. Quit smoking that day too.
We crunch the ice as we climb down the frozen ladder. Airea jumps from ten feet up and lands. I wait until I’m my height up and jump. The ice with a fine dusting of loose snow catches my feet, like falling with magnets. It welcomes me into its landscape as an itinerant monument, but I worry it does this to maybe imprison me and kill me.
Airea pulls her hair into a ponytail, except for a small amount she never ties up, and has colored purple and blue using paint, sometimes lead free.
“You two have my sympathy,” An Able seaman yells from above, “You sure you wanna be dropped off here?”
“Yes. Definitely.”
“Best of luck.”
“Yea fuck off.”
I had already asked Airea if we wanted to get dropped off here, or rather, why the fuck we were getting off here. I had thought we would travel back to Anchorage, or maybe further south to Victoria or Seattle. I had grown in attachment to Anchorage, and really only agreed to the trip with the stipulation we would in fact return. I might have even called it my Favorite City. I had never felt so alone and responsible for my own isolation in my life. The extraterrestrial charm of going to the store, or even getting into the bed was maddeningly mesmerizing, because nothing is comparable. Taking off a hat and brushing out the cold flecks of honesty that melt into the carpet will always be a cinema, of some overwhelming heartache until the next icing. It reminded me of Burlington, but VT still just felt a little too close, too well known. Going to Alaska is as close to disappearing as you can without completely exhausting yourself into the oblivion.
I even saw a moose behind our house. In Tucson I sat on our deck and watched rodents run from their reptilian assailants.
Airea though needed to keep moving. Anchorage was never home, neither was Burlington nor Tucson and especially not Hoboken. Whatever she wanted though...I assumed I would be happy with it. Airea sometimes seems independent, in a good word, or selfish, in a bad. But during the five years together, my assurance that I was to be protected and tended to steadied into fact. The contradictory cooperative psychopath - my love.
“Where to now?”
“I told you, we’re on vacation right? Let’s go check out the lake.”
I stare across the constant ripple of the water. It’s autumn now, but it feels more like spring. The air is tonic, and the sun screams in the sky, but it is not blinding. The ice absorbs the light deep below the surface - there is no reflection.
“Come along now dear.”
We walk side by side around the lake for maybe a mile, not saying a word. I occasionally look up and watch her old green rucksack bump up and down, left to right, loose on her shoulders, and watch her hair sway the opposite way as if she is one wavelength unto herself. The Laws of Physics.
“Hey, The Laws of Physics would be a cool band name.”
She laughs a titter, but it is sincere.
“I hope it isn’t science themed.”
“Maybe anti-science themed.”
“Decon-Post-Anti-Futural-Hardcore? I love it. Learn the guitar.”
“Maybe I’ll play the organ.”
“Actually, I think some apocalyptic instrument made out of rocks, melted metal, and rubber that produces the sound of radiation might be more suitable.”
“Sung in a new guttural language.”
“Purely for art’s sake. Since you won’t be playing to many people.”
“Sometimes I think we are anarchists…”
We stop and look at each other. Airea frowns at me and I try to keep a straight face. Within three seconds we are laughing ourselves into curls and then wrestling into the ice. I get a face full of some still fresh snow and sit up squinting the sting away from my tender red face that Airea kisses until it returns to a healthy pulse.
“I think we are close. I saw some puffins go this way.”
So they ARE puffins.
“I know what you are thinking...the humans in puffin costumes. I should have been more clear.”
We continue on and I ignore the ice melting in my boots until I realize the melted pool in my sole is startlingly warm.
“I think this is the spot.”
How she determined one singular spot existed is inexplicable and straight strange. This entire landscape looks identical. The only difference is some land is ice and some land is not ice and is water.
I follow her finger down to the water’s blurred surface. I bend my knees and put my face right next to the water. I breathe on the icy strands in the lake and they begin to disappear, allowing for a clear view of a small trail, leading down towards the bottom of the lake. Maybe ten feet further I can make out the faint alternating glow of light, emanating from the sides of the underwater gully.
“What the fuck is that?” I turn around, almost concerned, but concerned enough to spin too quickly and let the weight of my bag bring me to my back.
“I think it’s the tour.”
Without hesitation, Airea takes two steps forward and places her boots into the water. She brings me a giant smile. Her teeth reflect the sunlight. Her whole face does. She has been given go and down she goes, with poise, descending underneath the water.
For the next five minutes I think she is dead. The first two minutes is spent still lying on the ice, waiting for her to resurface. The next minute, I actually start to believe she is dead, and I wait for her morbid bubbles to reach the air and pop. The next minute, I contemplate how I can dive down into arctic waters and rescue her. My non-existent swimming capabilities frighten me though, and I start to panic. The water will always scare me. The last minute that I thought she was dead was spent stripping off my clothes. I read somewhere if you have to go under, you don't want your clothes dragging you down, and you are going to want something warm. I’m down only to my underwear and way-too-thin socks when Airea’s head sticks up.
“Are you coming in?”
Stunned to silence, with my hands still on my socks, my voice box crackles with static.
“Eraauuuh...What?”
“Why did you take off all your clothes? I mean, I’m not complaining at all but…”
“I thought you fucking drowned! I was going to save you! How...what?”
“Put your clothes on. We’ll be down here for a bit.”
“Are you not hypothermic?!”
Airea looks confused, and angles her neck to stare at the water.
“Uh, no. The water’s just like any other water. Wet is its distinguishable feature. But only when you get out ya know? Now come along. Put those clothes on.”
It takes me a few seconds before I start to move and gather my frost stricken clothes.
“Backpack too?”
Airea nods her head, and then dips back under.
When I first began swimming lessons my mother forced me into during a particularly hot summer in Omaha, I was too frightened to breathe through the snorkel while I was in the water. I would stand on the edge of the pool, and take ten huge breaths in and out, and on the eleventh, hold in a maximum lung-capacity’s worth of oxygen.
I repeat the process. The eleventh breath brings me into a jump and I fall through the water. My feet immediately slide on the ice underneath, and I glide down through the gully until Airea stops my easy slide and picks me up. She looks like an ice goddess within the reflective nimbic spaceship of alternating and blending greens, purples, and blues.
“Pretty cool right?”
“It’s stunning.” I mumble not letting in any of the water into my mouth.
“You can talk sweetheart.”
“It’s-” The water fills the spaces between teeth. Some is swallowed in the anti-gravity.
I feel myself drowning. The laughing eyes of Airea force mine closed as I kick frantically up towards the surface. My damn bag and clothes weigh me down, and only permit me a few feet towards safety with a spastic leap. The worst part is that I was sure Airea would never lead me to harm, and here I am drowning in front of her, while she manages to stay serene, and self-possessed.
I find traction on the icy hill and accomplish a few steps before I feel my hood pulled back by Airea.
“What are you doing!” Bubbles spray toward to her face.
She brings her hand under my nose.
“Look.”
There are bubbles escaping from my nose, and being pulled back in. I am still breathing. Like the anxiety of my youth, when I couldn’t breathe for an hour sometimes, and then realized a moment later that I am not dead, I understood the stressor to be only the disbelief that everything is fine.
The displaced air had shattered the light in incredible 360 and I lose all sight of what is around me. Then Airea grabs my hands, and my hyperventilating slows to an even pace.
“You wanna keep going?”
I am starting to understand that I have no substantial opinion or consequential selection today. Obviously, if I said I want to go back, I could, but since I am already totally thoroughly past my initial expectations, my opinions now seem, at least to me, obsolete. How am I supposed to really analyze my desires and wants when what I at least “enjoy,” was thought to be impossible?
Airea turns around and keeps my hand tightly in hers, leading us down through the expansive crevice. She brushes her fingertips on the crystals as if they were an instrument that produced an orotund, resonant symphonic melt, rather than a dampened echoless thump. I don’t touch them, though I marvel at their complexity. Every single one on my right side for the next ten minutes gets at least half a second of attention, until my neck starts to hurt, so I look up. The lights either bounce back from the surface of the water, or they actually seem to block the sunlight. If I were able to move with slightly less difficulty, I would believe I was still on land. A few small spheres of brown, held together, float above me as Airea grasps her index and middle finger in her right palm.
“Whoa. Are you alright?”
“Oh yes.” She turns to show me. “Just a small cut.”
As she squeezes, another drop of blood leaks out her finger, cut off by a lack of supply, and then floats perfectly round up toward the surface like gasoline. She reaches up to grab it between her fingers and holds up the tiny orb. Up this close, you can tell it is red. She inverts her hand and squeezes its center so it can continue to float up like a ring around her finger.
“Pretty eh? Blood Rings! All organic materials, no carbon footprint. no animal testing…if you don’t count me as an animal.”
“I don’t.”
She gently rolls it off her index finger and throws it towards the surface.
“Well you should,” she says, poking me in the chest as if she could disparage me truly.
I turned to look behind me if there was anything besides phosphorescent glow, but there wasn’t. As bright as it was, the radiance behaved more like a shadow or aurora, than actual illumination. The cool haze literally lit our path though as we descended deeper into the arctic sea. To both sides of us, there were now two incredibly high walls. Either our descent quickened, or the creviced sides were growing out of the icy earth with immense force.
Soon there was nowhere else for the glow to escape - the walls curled inward to form a cave. While there were fewer crystals emitting the flush light, the tunnel completely confined the rosy, the verdant, and the ideal sea, though the area was no more or less bright.
The cave changed its trajectory toward the left as we continued on. I wondered if at any moment a reverse-flashflood would sweep us deeper into the cave. A bubble might break, a current might slip, and suck us down deeper into the arctic. A faint but sonorous bass of a mumble crawled up from further down the cave. Airea stopped and jutted her neck out to see. I worried the same thoughts troubled her.
There were times down in the American Southwest when we heard about some hiker or hikers caught in some ravine. There were rarely survivors. The ones who did never hiked again. One man, a Tucson native straight up moved to New York City the next day after being released from the hospital. A few years ago I heard from an old friend who said ten people ‘wrapped themselves in a watery death.’ Two families at the same time. Two fucking lineages removed in approximately 46 seconds. Some people don’t know, including my friend, that the water doesn’t kill you. The rocks kill you.
A slight push of pressured current forces our step backwards. Since we had been in the cave, the water seemed transfixed as air on a windless day, and only now did we realize it was before, overtly motionless. The rumble erupted again, louder this time but no clearer.
“Should we get out of here?”
“Hold on.” Airea said. “Just wait a minute.”
Her curiosity is going to get us killed.
But before I could desert back up the hill and out of the cave, the rumble distinctly became muffled voices. A group of puffins waddled into our view from around the bend in the cave. Seven of these people came up in a straight line and all waved at us simultaneously.
“Where are your suits?” They all wondered.
“Too cheap to pay for them?”
I wave back at them and Airea kind of tries to smile.
“You two can turn around we think. There’s not too much more down there,” The lead puffin said.
“Absolutely nothing interesting down there,” the puffin in the back called up.
“How far down does it go?”
“Oh we just went down another 200 meters or so. I mean, how many underwater arctic crystals can one see in a day before they all start to look the same?”
“Well what do you wanna do Airea? Just turn back?”
Airea looks back at me and scoffs.
“We can see uninteresting for ourselves.”
“Well alright,” says the second puffin. “Mind if we squeeze by ya then?”
Airea and I squeeze our bodies flush against the wall, fitting our heads and limbs in between the crystals to allow those fat puffin suits enough room to waddle. The lead puffin drags its wing across Airea’s face accidently and she rigs up her face. The second puffin shuffles through, but as it steps past me, it trips on my foot and adjusts too far to the left, puncturing a hole underneath the wing. The pressurized suit releases its reserve of air, hurtling the second puffin directly into the leader. The lead puffin screams as it is shoved directly into the crystals. Both suits now are spraying wildly not only air, but also blood. The rest of the crew abandons the Single File Rule to help and discover the “advice” really is a command. I close my eyes and flash through dire stupidity and try to find comfort in Airea’s stoic utterances.
“Ooh. Oof. Urg.”
They sound nothing like the gurgled screams of the puffins. Airea clutches my arm and hauls me further down the cave. After the screams’ ringing vanishes, I open up my eyes to see seven dead real people in sagging lifeless suits, and a wall of blood, blocking out the light from the crystals they were impaled upon. The blood hung there like a peaceful undulating mobile, slowly dispersing and creeping through the tunnel. I could not speak from the terror, only shudder. Nothing I had ever seen remotely could compare to this. Another whole bloodline gone. I can see Grandfather Grandmother Father Mother Son Daughter and I think an Aunt. I have the sudden urge to contact my Uncle. Luckily, Airea is undisturbable, and is unnerved only at the sight of twins.
“Well it looks like we are going this way,” she says.
Fucking kidding me?
She starts walking further into the cave, and I have no choice but to follow her. I wait for a few seconds first, to see if a hand reaches out for help through the blood, but it does not. It is always the rocks. Well crystals specifically this time I guess. I think for a second they might be idiots, testing the Grim, the Grave, and the Wretched itself, and then remember that I do not know really anything without doubt, and probably would have suffocated myself if Airea didn’t tell me I couldn’t. That’s the not the first time Airea doubted my own mortality.
Can you drown if you don’t breathe in the water and it’s only a pure lack of oxygen? Would that just be suffocation? Not that it mattered. A coroner would say it was the wounds, nothing oxygen-less even mentioned. The coroner would say it’s always the rocks. We’ll tell someone when we get back to the surface.
I rush after Airea who had gotten farther down the trail than I thought. No possibility to get lost here though, on one path. I catch up with her and hold her hand. She still leads, dangling her hand behind her legs. The cave now has contorted itself into tighter and tighter turns and I begin to get dizzy, not from the spinning, but from the complete lack of due north, something I can, without a doubt, always locate.
I notice the cave ceiling pulling upward, and the floor downward, like a large trumpet. Airea and I step out through the flare to what could only be described as a unbounded courtyard of underwater evergreen trees, illuminated by the soft glow of blue and yellow fog containing tiny bright white spots like stars. Upon looking up, we can see the caves’ spiral, corkscrewing towards the top until out of sight.
“Nothing else to see here. Bullshit puffin fuckers.”
“Don’t speak ill of the dead.”
“They must hate trees.”
There is no trail here - the path fans out to encompass the whole forest floor.
“So do you think we are, like, at the bottom of the ocean?”
“Hmm,” Ariea thinks, “I think we must be. I can’t tell how long we have been walking, but I bet so.”
“Well which way? Straight ahead?”
“Sure. Sounds good. I don’t think it really matters. I bet it all goes to the same place.”
“Then why don’t we find out if that’s true or not?”
“Yea?”
“A zigzag?” I say, tracing the path with my finger.
“I’m proud of you kid.”
The evergreen forest floor did seem to occupy an infinite space in all directions. But in all of its beauty it did appear to be sameness, much like the crystals. Individually beautiful, but when viewed together, a mass-produced image made for humbling the hollow humanity. The fog’s flow even seemed to be on a timer, or a set wavelength. But at this point, I was getting very tired, and my feet were starting to hurt, so my judgments might be a bit harsh and unfounded, as Airea still maintained an incredible wonder for the forested oceanic floor.
“I am a little confused how we are going to get out of here though love.”
“I told you already; it will all lead to the same place.”
“This isn’t a ride. This is still natural as strange as it is.”
Airea did not stop walking; instead she took a sharp left turn behind a tree.
“This way!”
“I thought they were all the right way!”
Airea was correct either way. The trees began to disperse slowly, and the fog became brighter and thicker. She quickened her pace until soon she was at almost a jog. The fog obscured everything from view, and had lost its colors to develop a mantling grey sliced with beams of refractive white light. Airea was now long out of sight and I began to shout.
“Hey! Airea! HEY! Where are you?!”
Just when I almost began to panic, the fog broke. The trees fell into order. The light narrowed. The fog suppressed into a wispy smoke, hours after a fire, hovering just over the ground. The trees rose in straight lines of view, equidistant to one another. And in the middle of my view, a huge morning sun directly down the center of the road we were now on.
“DUDE? You see this?”
“Where are we Airea?”
She didn’t have an answer for me.
“There’s no way we like, transported or something,” I say.
“No no I think we are still underwater. Look.”
A small particle floated by - too slow and stable for pure air.
“Feel.”
My body vaguely swayed, and I felt lighter than I would on the surface. I exhaled to see. Bubbles rushed out of my mouth and ascended skyward.
“Told you.”
“How can this be? I mean Airea. There are fucking houses here.”
The small one-story bungalows perfectly placed and compulsively colored in pastel pinks and blues flanked the sides of the road as far as the horizon line. Each one built exactly the same, and each one comforting in its surreal and strange behavior.
“We’ve been before right?” I ask.
“I can’t really place it, but yes, it certainly feels that way.”
“It reminds of Hoboken. Out in the burbs where we had the funeral.”
“Hm. It does appear to be similar…to that place.”
Something so familiar came from that suburban block in the early hours of the day. As we walked down the underwater road, I needed to tell Airea something she would hate. I never believed in God. I much preferred Santa and the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy because I wanted to believe in something very few people did anymore. And not many people thought the way I did, so it felt like a rebellion, without the blood, the pictures, and the oath. I don’t believe in God because I could never imagine someone with that power, that oversight. Moreover, I could never accept anything would want to do this on purpose. I am not an atheist though, because I judge my ruling based on insight, and ignorance is no way to fund your beliefs. Nor am I agnostic as the beliefs I do have are well regarded, passionate, and poised - I could never consider myself a Religion of Shrugs. The rest have at least one deity, so how could I truly choose one or another. No, I am somewhere underneath them all, and far enough removed that they all can occupy the same erroneous space called Wrongness in my head.
Regardless, I say:
“Hey. I mean. This must be what heaven feels like. For like the first few minutes. Or what it looks like. If it existed. Like, what it would feel or look or be like if it was true and real and we were dead. I am so convinced we are nowhere near Earth right now even though we are so far…into it.
She stops walking and swivels on her heel – looks me right in the eye. And then punches me right in the arm.
“If heaven existed. No dude, this is all just camouflage.”
We stood motionless for a moment, wondering which door to knock on first.
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ANIL KUMAR
ANNA DEH
ANOUCHEKA GANGABISSOON
ANTONINA ROUSSKIKH
AUGUST ULRICH
B.I.V.
BOB DAYNES
CHRIS CASCIO
COLLEEN J. PALLAMARY
DR. DOUGLAS YOUNG
EDWARD L. CANAVAN
EMME OLIVER
HARRIS COVERLEY
JEFF BURT
JOHN DORROH
JOHN ROSS ARCHER
JR
KEITH MOUL
KEVIN R. FARRELL
LAURA JOHNSON
LIA TJOKRO
LOIS GREENE STONE
MEGAN LEE
MERLIN FLOWER
MICHAEL COYLE
MITCHELL WALDMAN
MOLLY KETCHESON
MOLLY LIU
NALIN VERMA
NGANGO MILAZ
NIKKI NORDQUIST
RALUCA SIRBU
RC DEWINTER
SANDI LEIBOWITZ
SCOTT CLEMENTS
SUZANNE S. EATON
TAMARA BELKO
TERRY SANVILLE
TOM ZOMPAKOS
VAISHNAVI SINGH
WILLIAM OGDEN HAYNES
YESSICA KLEIN