Bones of The Moon

by Jonathan Carroll

  I felt his smile through the telephone. «Give Mae a big squeeze for me and tell her I'll be home soon. I'll call you tomorrow as soon as I know.»

  We said good-bye without really wanting to, but there was nothing else to say. Eliot moved around the room, turning on lights.

  «So do you want to talk first, or do you want to eat? I got spring rolls and monk's food.»

  «Eliot, I'm sure glad you're here tonight.»

  He nodded and smiled. «Me too. Let's eat and then you can tell me all about Milan. Was it marvelous? What did I miss?»

  5

  It was no longer hard to keep pace with Mr. Tracy. He walked with great difficulty on three legs and tired much too easily. The snow slowed him even more.

  Pepsi and I wore rough parkas made out of perlmoos hides stitched crudely and haphazardly together. They were ugly as sin and smelled like pumpkin pie, but they kept us very warm and protected against storms which never seemed to end from one day to the next.

  We were crossing the Brotzhool, Rondua's equivalent to the Alps. Thankfully, there was no real climbing involved – only slogging up and down mountain passes on snowshoes the size of road signs.

  Here was our caravan – Mr. Tracy led the way, with four neg-nugs walking directly under him to protect them from the snow. I had no idea why they'd chosen to accompany us this far, but we were certainly glad of it. They were serious little fellows who didn't do a whole lot of joking around, but they kept careful watch over us in their fashion. Much more importantly, they knew every step of the way we were taking.

  Mr. Tracy _let_ them lead us and that worried me greatly. Since the calamity with Martio and the loss of his leg, the dog's whole being flapped like a big flag in a small wind. Whether it was because he had lost his loved and trusted friends, or his leg, or simply the desire to go on, Mr. Tracy had become a kind of tired stranger who wasn't interested in very much of anything. Whenever we stopped for the night, he stayed by us physically but at the same time retreated so far into himself that we could barely reach him. And after many days and as many attempts, we didn't try.

  On the other side of the Brotzhool was Jack Chili. Our job was to get there, face him, fight (I assumed) and try to defeat him. None of us said anything about that part of the journey, but who needed to? We had enough evidence of his capabilities. Plus, since he didn't have to pretend to be Martio the Camel anymore, Chili proved how creative he was when it came to malevolence.

  An example? Every night the negnugs led us to different mountain huts where we could stay. They said Stastny Panenka built all of them when he and his Battle Dogs crossed the Brotzhool centuries before, while searching for the Perfumed Hammer. Both Pepsi and I were so weary when we heard that explanation that neither of us asked for an elaboration on either Stastny or his Hammer.

  All of us were shocked the first time we entered one of these huts, because inside was a cozy, bustling fire in the fireplace and a beautiful meal laid out for us on a table in the middle of the room. But that hut, and all subsequent ones, was empty.

  This happened for a week, at places ten or fifteen miles distant from each other. It was very nice, but also uncomfortable and too mysterious. I found myself eating fast and checking over my shoulder after a while.

  On the ninth or tenth night, we opened a 'tvooden door on to much the same scene. This time, set in the middle of the dining table, was Mr. Tracy's leg – cooked, and garnished with sprigs of parsley.

  A zeppelin began following us. One morning we walked out of a hut and there, incredibly, it was. The kind of dinosaur-like blimp that you see hovering over football stadiums when there's a big game on. Only this blimp flew so low and close to us that the whirr of its black motors could be clearly heard. It scared the hell out of me. How it ever managed to maneuver around in such tight, rocky quarters was impossible to say. But it did, and never went away from that day on. We had no idea who was flying it, or wrhy they were there.

  Our singular band made it across the mountains intact, but we certainly weren't Hannibal and his boys thundering down out of the Alps on golden elephants, ripe for battle with whoever. Mr. Tracy had inconceivably lost his mystical hat and even Pepsi walked with a limp as a result of sliding halfway down an ice field one memorable morning.

  We came off the last broad tongue of snow into one of those great green mountain meadows where fat calm cows grazed. The smell of high pine, ice and wet earth was everywhere – the wind's perfume and gift.

  I lay down and put both arms over my face. When I woke half an hour later, I heard laughing and fast conversation. What welcome sounds after so many days of silence and worry! Propping myself up on my elbows, I turned to Pepsi and Mr. Tracy and saw they were talking with an _exquisite_ looking man in a tuxedo and white silk gloves. Even Mr. Tracy looked happier and less done in. He was nodding at whatever the stranger was saying. When Pepsi looked my way, his eyes were all little-boy joyous.

  «Mom, Stastny Panenka's here with all of his men. They were the guys in the blimp. They're here to help us!»

  The man got up and walked over. Taking my hand, he closed his eyes, kissed the tips of my fingers and bowed. What a gent.

  «_Drovo pradatsch, Zulbi. Tras-treetsch_.»

  «Pepsi, would you come here? I don't know what he's saying.»

  Before he came, Pepsi held a hurried conference with Mr. Tracy. The big dog listened more than he spoke. When they were finished, Pepsi took the familiar first Bone out of his knapsack and brought it over with him.

  «Close your eyes, Mom.»

  Putting the Bone firmly against my throat, he said something mellifluous but impossible to make out, as usual. Then he did the same thing to each of my ears.

  «You'll understand everyone now, Mom. Later it'll go away because you're really not supposed to have this power, but for now you'll understand. You'd better get ready because it comes fast.»

  The experience was similar to entering a railway station or airport from a silent corridor or street. Instantly, absolutely everything around me had a voice and was using it every second. The grass spoke of the fickleness of the wind, the clouds of their search for the perfect speed across the sky. Stones, flowers, insects . . . All of them talked over and under and beyond each other in a kind of pleasant cacophony of original voices I had never heard in Rondua, much less imagined existed.

  One of my favorite books when I was a little girl was _Doctor Doolittle_, but I was envious of his ability to speak the language of Gub-Gub the pig, or laugh at the jokes of horses. How wonderful it felt at this new moment to be able to laugh at the jokes of everything!

  After the initial tidal wave of racket, I learned to filter out most of the sounds so that I could pay attention to the lovely looking Stastny Panenka.

  «Vuk and Zdravko will be coming in from the First Stroke any day now. That I am sure of. The problem we have is Endaxi and his Barking Flutes. . . . You never know with them. Look, when you have ten brothers all married to the same woman, you cannot expect them to be dependable! I'm sorry about that. They are good fighters. If they come, they come.»

  Looking proudly at his zeppelin off in the near distance (which seemed to be grazing the sky as calmly as the cows, directly below it, grazed the meadow), he rattled off the names of others who would be joining us on our march against Jack Chili.

  The only thing that made an impression on me was the name/word «Endaxi.» Endaxi meant «O.K.» in Greek. «Do you want another Coke?» «Endaxi.» The question was, in Rondua, who was Endaxi and his Barking Flutes? Within the next few days we were to find out.

  «They look like fire bees, huh, Mom?»

  We had been on a night cruise with Stastny in his blimp and were just returning to the meadow where all of our allies were massed. Hundreds of feet below, campfires burned everywhere. Their flickers and jumps did remind me of fireflies, in a way.

  Looking down there with Pepsi alongside reminded me of the first day we had arrived in Rondua. How much had we changed since then? In
the faint light of the cockpit, I looked hard at my son's profile. His hair was longer and his face was thinner. It was too dim to see his expression, but memory told me it was as vital and open as it had been so many long days ago when we looked out of another high window in the sky and saw giant animals waiting for us below: Mr. Tracy, Felina. Martio.

  But what waited below us now really defied description.

  They had come from every part of Rondua: from cities, hives, forests, towers, nests, caves, under rocks, jungles, deep water. . . . They had come to join us because it was known everywhere that this would be the final battle, the final chance to do what one could to save a world that otherwise was truly lost. Final battles are not a newr thing in the history of the world, but they are still more terrible than anything else. They are the last resort, and only the desperate or the mad ever revert to that. When an entire civilization is pushed to that extreme, nothing could be more dangerous.

  «Would you like to stay up here for a while? We have plenty of gas and everything seems to be under control below.»

  Pepsi shook his head and said there was too much work to do down there before we went to sleep. Stastny quickly gave orders for the eel ladders to be let down. Whatever my son said now, Ronduans hopped to it with an alacrity that shocked me. Had he suddenly, or secretly, become someone I wasn't aware of? Sure, he was Pepsi with the Four Bones, but he had had them an awfully long time and no one had made such a big deal of it before. What had happened? Or rather, what _was_ happening to change Rondua's attitude toward him? Was it the imminence of both Jack Chili and our forthcoming battle with him?

  An hour before, while out cruising the night skies, Stastny had pointed without any big fanfare to a small sparsely lit village in one of the mountain valleys about ten miles from our meadow.

  «That's it. That's where he lives.»

  «Jack Chili? Down _there_?» From up in the sky, the town looked as if it had barely two hundred houses, if that.

  «Yes, down there.»

  «But I don't see anything! It looks totally asleep. Where are all of his troops and forces, or whatever you call them?»

  «Still in the children's heads.» Stastny spoke as if I should have known that.

  «What are you talking about?»

  We motored on for two or three minutes more before Panenka ordered all engines stopped. Pressing a button on one of the glowing red consoles, he brought a brilliant spotlight to life on the left side of the gondola. Shining it back and forth on the ground below, he finally found what he was looking for: a long building set back on the side of a hill in the middle of a thick forest. In that stark unnatural light, the place looked like a bandage on the hill's dark head.

  «What's that?»

  «The Cafй Deutschland.»

  «What do you mean, _cafй_?» It did _not_ look like a place where you drank coffee.

  «Jack Chili gives names to things. Half the time no one knows what they mean except him. He calls that the Cafй Deutschland. It's a madhouse for children.»

  «My God. What does he do to them?» I shivered as if someone had put a cold hand on the back of my neck.

  «To the children? Nothing at all. Don't misunderstand. It's reputed to be very clean and pleasant inside. The children are treated very well.»

  «_And?_»

  «And . . . Chili is able to use the children's nightmares. He taps into what they dream and chooses the parts which he wants to bring into being.»

  «You mean, one of those poor mad children has a dream –«

  Stastny interrupted me with a gentle defeated voice and a hand on my arm. A small squeeze. «A mad child dreams terrible things, doesn't it? Jack Chili enters their sleep, chooses whatever he wants in their dreams, and then those things become his soldiers.»

  «My God! There's no way we'll ever win! Against that? Kids' nightmares? _Mad_ kids? Big bugs with six heads? Rats on fire? Things from horror movies multiplied a thousand times?» I was getting louder and louder, but I couldn't help it. «That's our enemy? Stastny, we're talking about Hell here. If you just take a _normal_ kid's imagination – '

  «Mom, would you be quiet?»

  «All right. I'm sorry.»

  «Let's go home, Stastny.»

  The many campfires on the meadow were reassuring in a small way, but what we'd learned sixty minutes ago was enough to leave anyone in drop-jawed paralysis. The entire ride back, I sat silently in my seat, masochistically trying to remember some of the nightmares _I_ had had as a child.

  Once on the ground again, I asked Stastny if I could speak to Pepsi alone.

  «Honey, do you know what you're doing? Do you know what you're _going_ to do?»

  «I think so, Mom. But first I have to talk with Mr. Tracy to make sure it's all right.»

  «Can you tell me?»

  «I'm sorry, Mom, no.»

  He was facing me and I couldn't resist reaching out to brush the flop of hair off his forehead. «That's okay, Peps. Did you know that you're getting to be a very handsome guy?» He took my hand and, turning away from the zeppelin, pulled me along after him.

  We wove in and around groups of people and creatures who greeted us warmly when we passed, like old friends or comrades-in-arms. They could fly and swim and run impossibly fast. They carried weapons of cunning design that were capable of every wound; of splitting hearts behind any steel.

  There was such a good, united feeling everywhere; no buzz of fear or hesitation, and much laughter. I must admit though that to hear the laughter of some of our stranger . . . allies was, well, disconcerting.

  «Cullen! Hey, Cullen, over here!» I looked hard into the dark and thought I saw Weber Gregston waving to me from a campfire, but I couldn't be certain. I wranted to stop and find out for sure, but Pepsi had my hand and he was in a hurry.

  There were also all kinds of music there, which was queer and lovely and often spellbinding. Time after time I wanted to stop and listen to this voice or these wings rubbed together. There was an instrument that looked like a microscope which sounded like nothing I had ever heard before anywhere.

  But Pepsi wouldn't stop. He jerked me along and seemed impatient when I asked him again and again what that last song was, or the name of the being that was playing it.

  Mr. Tracy had moved very little since the day we'd arrived on the meadow. They had erected a tent the size of a circus marquee for us and he spent most of his time inside either resting or, when he was up to it, conferring with leaders of the different groups which had gathered.

  When we got to the tent, an old friend of ours was there.

  «Goosemasks and coffee, Venice Dancers.»

  «Sizzling Thumb!»

  Beaming, the old man turned and greeted us by waving the Bone-walking stick we had given to him. And because of the recent magic I'd been given, I could finally understand what he was talking about.

  «Did your mother see it?»

  «Yes, everything.»

  I looked at the boy. «Pepsi, did you know about the Cafй before?»

  «Yes Mom, but I had never seen it. I'd only heard about it from Mr. Tracy.»

  «Did you recognize anything, Cullen?»

  «No. Should I have?»

  The three of them passed looks back and forth that said I damned well should have recognized everything.

  I got mad. «All right! I give up. What did I miss this time?»

  Using the walking stick to steady himself, Sizzling Thumb got up slowly. All humor and goodwill was gone from his face as he came up close and looked hard at me.

  «How could you forget that? That's where the others _died_, Cullen! On that hill, when you were all so close.» He wanted to say more, but anger or self-control kept him from continuing.

  Taking him by the arm, Pepsi led him out of the tent. It was the last time I ever saw Sizzling Thumb and I have no idea of what happened to him. When he was gone, Mr. Tracy told me that Sizzling Thumb's only children, Umleitung and Tookat, had been killed in that battle. The day I used the f
ourth Bone to save myself! How well I understood his rage then. Long ago but not far away I had caused the deaths of his family, and now I didn't even remember that happening.

  «Mr. Tracy, if I don't remember anything, what good will I be when the fighting starts?»

  He thought for a moment and was about to answer when Pepsi came running into the tent.

  «Mom, come outside!» His voice and expression said to drop everything and come running.

  One of the few dreams I distinctly remember having as a child was this, and I had it many times. I am sitting outside somewhere by myself. It is a nice day and I'm doing something unimportant – maybe a doll is on my lap and I'm talking to it. For no reason, I feel compelled to look up and there, owning the entire sky – the whole roof and corners of the world above – is a face. I'm scared, but children have the ability to handle anything because their world has no limitations: everything is possible when you're eight. So this face across the world is incredible, but not out of the question. Is it God? I don't know, because I don't remember what the face looked like; just that it was everywhere above me. It is the face of a man; he never speaks but he is looking only at me. The air smells peppery and rich and anything might happen. I wake up.

  Dashing out of the tent behind Pepsi, I smelled it first – peppery and rich. Night had been swept aside by a brilliantly lit sky which was once again taken up by one horizon-to-horizon face. There were so many hundreds of our friends down in that meadow but even combined, they were as microbes in comparison with that omnipotent face. When he spoke, his voice was soft and lovely.

  «Remember me?»

  6

  Dear Mrs. James,

  You will be delighted to know that this is my last letter to you. I am having to resort to paying a certain person to take it out of the hospital and mail it to you. I assume just this once you will have the «kindness» not to report it to the good Doctor Lavery.

  He has explained your decision to me and I understand, but it makes me unhappy. No, to be more precise, it makes me feel horrible, if you care to know the truth. I thought you were the only person left in the world I could rely on. I guess we all make mistakes, don't we? I am sorry, I feel horrible, but that's all right. I will respect your decision and honor it. That is what a shogun would do. Doctor Lavery suggested I begin a diary to compensate for the loss of my correspondence with you, and I believe that I will do that. I find writing helps me to express my thoughts more clearly, whether _you_ have been aware of that or not. The only problem with a journal is that you're the only one to read it, so you can't get any feedback because you usually agree with everything you said. Ha Ha! Good-bye. Mrs. James. Thank you for almost something, if you understand what I mean. Yes, you do know what I mean, don't you?