The Big Book of Classic Fantasy
Page 145
Uncle Monday asked, “Why would I be skeered?”
“Well, you liable to take sick in de night sometime, and you’d be dead befo’ anybody would know you was even sick.”
Uncle Monday got up off the nail keg and said in a voice so low that only the men right close to him could hear what he said “I have been dead for many a year. I have come back from where you are going.” Then he walked away with his quick short steps and his arms bent at the elbow keeping time with his feet
It is believed that he has the singing stone, which is the greatest charm, the most powerful “hand” in the world. It is a diamond and comes from the mouth of a serpent (which is thought of as something different from an ordinary snake) and is the diamond of diamonds. It not only lights your home without the help of any other light, but it also warns its owner of approach.
The serpents who produce these stones live in the deep waters of Lake Maitland. There is a small island in this lake and a rare plant grows there, which is the only food of this serpent. She only comes to nourish herself in the height of a violent thunderstorm, when she is fairly certain that no human will be present.
It is impossible to kill or capture her unless nine healthy people have gone before to prepare the way with THE OLD ONES, and then more will die in the attempt to conquer her. But it is not necessary to kill or take her to get the stone. She has two. One is embedded in her head, and the other she carries in her mouth. The first one cannot be had without killing the serpent, but the second one may be won from her by trickery.
Since she carries this stone in her mouth, she cannot eat until she has put it down. It is her pilot, that warns her of danger. So when she comes upon the island to feed, she always vomits the stone and covers it with earth before she goes to the other side of the island to dine.
To get this diamond, dress yourself all over in black velvet. Your assistant must be dressed in the same way. Have a velvet-covered bowl along. Be on the island before the storm reaches its height, but leave your helper in the boat and warn him to be ready to pick you up and flee at a moment’s notice.
Climb a tall tree and wait for the coming of the snake. When she comes out of the water, she will look all about her on the ground to see if anyone is about. When she is satisfied that she is alone, she will vomit the stone, cover it with dirt, and proceed to her feeding ground. Then, as soon as you feel certain that she is busy eating, climb down the tree as swiftly as possible, cover the mound hiding the stone with the velvet-lined bowl, and flee for your life to the boat. The boatman must fly from the island with all possible speed. For as soon as you approach the stone it will ring like chiming bells and the serpent will hear it. Then she will run to defend it. She will return to the spot, but the velvet-lined bowl will make it invisible to her. In her wrath she will knock down grown trees and lash the island like a hurricane. Wait till a calm fair day to return for the stone. She never comes up from the bottom of the lake in fair weather. Furthermore, a serpent who has lost her mouth-stone cannot come to feed alone after that. She must bring her mate. The mouth-stone is their guardian and when they lose it they remain in constant danger unless accompanied by one who has the singing stone.
They say that Uncle Monday has a singing stone, and that is why he knows everything without, being told.
Whether he has the stone or not, nobody thinks of doubting his power as a hoodoo man. He is feared, but sought when life becomes too powerful for the powerless. Mary Ella Shaw backed out on Joe-Nathan Moss the day before the wedding was to have come off. Joe-Nathan had even furnished the house and bought rations. His people, her people, everybody tried to make her marry the boy. He loved her so, and besides he had put out so much of his little cash to fix for the marriage. But Mary Ella just wouldn’t. She had seen Caddie Brewton, and she was one of the kind who couldn’t keep her heart still after her eye had wandered.
So Joe-Nathan’s mama went to see Uncle Monday. He said, “Since she is the kind of woman that lets her mind follow her eye, we’ll have to let the snake-bite cure itself. You go on home. Never no man will keep her. She kin grab the world full of men, but she’ll never keep one any longer than from one full moon to the other.”
Fifteen years have passed. Mary Ella has been married four times. She was a very pretty girl, and men just kept coming, but not one man has ever stayed with her longer than the twenty-eight days. Besides her four husbands, no telling how many men she has shacked up with for a few weeks at a time. She has eight children by as many different men, but still no husband.
John Wesley Hogan was another driver of sharp bargains in love. By his own testimony and experience, all women from eight to eighty were his meat, but the woman who was sharp enough to make him marry her wasn’t born and her mama was dead. They couldn’t frame him and they couldn’t scare him.
Mrs. Bradley came to him nevertheless about her Dinkie. She called him out from his work-place and said, “John Wesley, you know I’m a widder-woman and I aint got no husband to go to de front for me, so I reckon I got to do de talkin’ for me and my chile. I come in de humblest way I know how to ast you to go ’head and marry my chile befo’ her name is painted on de signposts of scorn.”
If it had not made John Wesley so mad, it would have been funny to him. So he asked her scornfully, “ ’Oman, whut you take me for? You better git outa my face wid dat mess! How you reckon I know who Dinkie been foolin roun wid? Don’t try to come dat mess over me. I been all over de North. I aint none of yo’ fool. You must think I’m Big Boy. They kilt Big Boy shootin after Fat Sam so there aint no mo’ fools in de world. Ha, ha! All de wimmen I done seen! I’ll tell you like de monkey tole de elephant—don’t bull me, big boy! If you want Dinkie to git married off so bad, go grab one of dese country clowns. I aint yo’ man. Taint no use you goin runnin to de high-sheriff neither. I got witness to prove Dinkie knowed more’n I do.”
Mrs. Bradley didn’t bother with the sheriff. All he could do was to make John Wesley marry Dinkie; but by the time the interview was over that wasn’t what the stricken mother wanted. So she waited till dark, and went on over to Uncle Monday.
Everybody says you don’t have to explain things to Uncle Monday. Just go there, and you will find that he is ready for you when you arrive. So he set Mrs. Bradley down at a table, facing a huge mirror hung against the wall. She says he had a loaded pistol and a huge dirk lying on the table before her. She looked at both of the weapons, but she could not decide which one she wanted to use. Without a word, he handed her a gourd full of water and she took a swallow. As soon as the water passed over her tongue she seized the gun. He pointed toward the looking-glass. Slowly the form of John Wesley formed in the glass and finally stood as vivid as life before her. She took careful aim and fired. She was amazed that the mirror did not shatter. But there was a loud report, a cloud of bluish smoke and the figure vanished.
On the way home, Brazzle told her that John Wesley had dropped dead, and Mr. Watson had promised to drive over to Orlando in the morning to get a coffin for him.
ANT JUDY BICKERSTAFF
Uncle Monday wasn’t the only hoodoo doctor around there. There was Ant Judy Bickerstaff. She was there before the coming of Uncle Monday. Of course it didn’t take long for professional jealousy to arise. Uncle Monday didn’t seem to mind Ant Judy, but she resented him, and she couldn’t hide her feelings.
This was natural when you consider that before his coming she used to make all the “hands” around there, but he soon drew off the greater part of the trade.
Year after year this feeling kept up. Every now and then some little incident would accentuate the rivalry. Monday was sitting on top of the heap, but Judy was not without her triumphs.
Finally she began to say that she could reverse anything that he put down. She said she could not only reverse it, she could throw it back on him, let alone his client. Nobody talked to him about her boasts. People never talked to him e
xcept on business anyway. Perhaps Judy felt safe in her boasting for this reason.
Then one day she took it in her head to go fishing. Her children and grandchildren tried to discourage her. They argued with her about her great age and her stiff joints. But she had her grandson to fix her a trout pole and a bait pole and set out for Blue Sink, a lake said to be bottomless by the villagers. Furthermore, she didn’t set out till near sundown. She didn’t want any company. It was no use talking, she felt that she just must go fishing in Blue Sink.
She didn’t come home when dark came and her family worried a little. But they reasoned she had probably stopped at one of her friends’ houses to rest and gossip, so they didn’t go to hunt her right away. But when the night wore on and she didn’t return, the children were sent out to locate her.
She was not in the village; a party was organized to search Blue Sink for her. It was after nine o’clock at night when the party found her. She was in the lake. Lying in shallow water and keeping her old head above the water by supporting it on her elbow. Her son Ned said that he saw a huge alligator dive away as he shined the torch upon his mother’s head.
They bore Ant Judy home and did everything they could for her. Her legs were limp and useless and she never spoke a word, not a coherent word for three days. It was more than a week before she could tell how she came to be in the lake.
She said that she hadn’t really wanted to go fishing. The family and the village could witness that she never had fooled round the lakes. But that afternoon she had to go. She couldn’t say why, but she knew she must go. She baited her hooks and stood waiting for a bite. She was afraid to sit down on the damp ground on account of her rheumatism. She got no bites. When she saw the sun setting she wanted to come home, but somehow she just couldn’t leave the spot. She was afraid, terribly afraid down there on the lake; but she couldn’t leave.
When the sun was finally gone and it got dark, she says she felt a threatening powerful evil all around her. She was fixed to the spot. A small but powerful whirlwind arose right under her feet. Something terrific struck her and she fell into the water. She tried to climb out, but found that she could not use her legs. She thought of ’gators and otters, and leeches and gar-fish, and began to scream, thinking maybe somebody would hear her and come to her aid.
Suddenly a bar of red light fell across the lake from one side to the other. It looked like a fiery sword. Then she saw Uncle Monday walking across the lake to her along this flaming path. On either side of the red road swam thousands of alligators, like an army behind its general.
The light itself was awful. It was red, but she never had seen any red like it before. It jumped and moved all the time, but always it pointed straight across the lake to where she lay helpless in the water. The lake is nearly a mile wide, but Ant Judy says Uncle Monday crossed it in less than a minute and stood over her. She closed her eyes from fright, but she saw him right on thru her lids.
After a brief second she screamed again. Then he growled and leaped at her. “Shut up!” he snarled. “Part your lips just one more time and it will be your last breath! Your bragging tongue has brought you here and you are going to stay here until you acknowledge my power. So you can throw back my work, eh? I put you in this lake; show your power and get out. You will not die, and you will not leave this spot until you give consent in your heart that I am your master. Help will come the minute you knuckle under.”
She fought against him. She felt that once she was before her own altar she could show him something. He glowered down upon her for a spell and then turned and went back across the lake the way he had come. The light vanished behind his feet. Then a huge alligator slid up beside her where she lay trembling and all her strength went out of her. She lost all confidence in her powers. She began to feel if only she might either die or escape from the horror, she would never touch another charm again. If only she could escape the maw of the monster beside her! Any other death but that. She wished that Uncle Monday would come back so that she might plead with him for deliverance. She opened her mouth to call, but found that speech had left her. But she saw a light approaching by land. It was the rescue party.
Ant Judy never did regain the full use of her legs, but she got to the place where she could hobble about the house and yard. After relating her adventure on Lake Blue Sink she never called the name of Uncle Monday again.
The rest of the village, always careful in that respect, grew almost as careful as she. But sometimes when they would hear the great bull ’gator, that everybody knows lives in Lake Belle, bellowing on cloudy nights, some will point the thumb in the general direction of Uncle Monday’s house and whisper, “The Old Boy is visiting the home folks tonight.”
María Teresa León (1903–1988) was a Spanish writer and activist who was determined to break down barriers her entire life. She was a feminist and often contributed articles to magazines that dealt with culture and women’s rights. She used the pen name Isabel Inghirami for these articles. Isabel Inghirami was the name of a wayward widow in the book Maybe Yes, Maybe No (1910) by the Italian author Gabriele d’Annunzio. It is quite possible that León felt a bond with the character, as she chose to live her life in a way that opposed the norm. In 1933, León started the literary journal Octubre with her second husband, Rafael Alberti, a poet. The couple was exiled to Paris in 1940, and the project abandoned, but León never ceased writing, hoping that soon her work would receive recognition. The story “Rose-Cold, Moon Skater” first appeared in a collection of the same name.
Rose-Cold, Moon Skater
María Teresa León
Translated by Marian and James Womack
The fir trees skate on the ice.
R. A.
KNOCK, KNOCK.
“Who’s that, bothering me so early?”
“Moo! It’s me.”
And in through the window came the cow that the stars use as their messenger: a bluish cow, with two red patches and little golden horns. A cow who knows every balcony in the city and how to get in through all of them.
“Rose-Cold, let’s go. It’s time. There’s snow on the Moon. They’re saving a crater and some lemon sorbet for you.”
“Hurry up, quickly! Let’s go to the Moon, you blunt-headed cow!”
They went up to the clouds on the white smoke from a chimney-pot. And from there, they climbed through a window onto the Moon.
The window of the Moon’s house was covered in frost. It was a little pine cabin, where you couldn’t fit anything more than just your face. The wolves took it down to the earth one day to frighten little children, but no one was frightened. It was just the scarecrows that noticed. Ever since then, there have been straw men wearing hats in the gardens, set up to make the moon laugh, and the birds, and the children.
Rose-Cold, first-class skater, winner of titles at every possible distance, who had invented the sport of filling corridors with snow confetti in order to be able to use her skis and skates before winter had come, and who was bored of looking at spiders, greeted the Moon. And the Moon said:
“Rose-Cold, I’ve organized a little competition for you. The Four Seasons Cup. All the signs of the Zodiac are invited, as well as the Great Bear. We might even get some shooting stars coming through. Look at how much snow there is on the railings. I’ve asked the North and the South Pole to fill my house with snow. The comets, with their broom-tails, will move it all around and cover everything. All the volcanoes are already covered, and the Dream Peak, and the petrified circuses. The competitors will be: Smoke from Trains and Smoke from Factories; Steam from Horses and Oxen; Human Sighs; Dogs Barking, and Glances at Balloons on Quiet Evenings. Would you like to meet them?”
Rose-Cold started to quake. They were much faster than her, these competitors were.
Smoke from Trains came.
“Hello, Rose-Cold. Do you remember me?”
“I’ll be faster than you, Rose-Cold.”
Steam from Horses and Oxen came along.
“How did you get up to the Moon?” Rose-Cold asked.
“We came here on a simoom, I think, or else on the topmost seat of a Ferris wheel, alongside a woman who was always asking what time it was. I don’t remember too well.”
“And what is that, always stretching, stretching and turning red?”
“We are Human Sighs. Be nice to us.”
“You look ridiculous, so skinny and disproportionate.”
Now Smoke from Factories came in, wearing a red scarf, and knocking everything down that was in his path, pushing the stars that watched him out of place.
“You weren’t waiting for me; you wanted to start without me. I think that’s not on. Is this why I give you my chimneys, why I let your rays rest a little? No, no, and again no. I can’t allow this to happen. That’s it, no more beautiful smoke twisting in the skies.”
“No one forgot about you. They were just introducing themselves,” Rose-Cold said.
“Oh, is that you, moon-skater? Prepare to have your socks knocked off.”
And the Smoke tried a little training walk.
“Are you happy that so many of your friends come to me to die?” the Moon asked.
“To die?”
“Of course, they die here; they’ve just used up all their strength back on Earth. The water that sleeps in the rocks evaporates when the moon is on the wane, and I gather it all; and the water in still ponds, with all its choruses of frogs; and all the bonfires on St. John’s Eve; and all the smoke from the houses by the shore, lit up at night, calling their sailors home. Everything comes to the Moon, and everything falls silent here, falls silent for ever.”