JRZDVLZ

by Lee Klein

  He had been soft, sensitive, silent, acquiescent, almost servile until he sent them up the coast one summer and left a note at home explaining where upon their return they would find sufficient funds for consecutive lifetimes of indulgence.

  Money had been attracted to him as though by magnets, yet having been born into it, he never seemed to have a need for it. His persistent dream had been to free himself of omnipresent desire around him. Or at least attain the open stretches of time the last decade in the pines had provided. For a decade now, he raised livestock and made irregular excursions to Philadelphia for books and other essentials required to pass the days alone. A Swede had built the house with the hope of turning the region into a retreat for anyone with money attracted to the endless protection of millions of pines. But no one came other than a handful of friends who stayed for free during autumn masquerades.

  Education would make me more of a man, Larner said, and I wanted that more than anything, not yet secure in my own odd skin. Cursed at birth et cetera. As I told Larner about the Pastor who had banished me, I watched as lore alighted as real life.

  It was nearly dawn. We neither yawned nor lost our animation. Night grayed as the candles dropped. Day rose like crystalline water, enhanced by thick panes of glass imported from Sweden, a land Larner said was mostly ice.

  “But why did you venture from the island?” said Larner.

  Slowly releasing the rush of words that came to mind, I told him of my clamshell home and creeping development along the southern coast and bay. I mentioned the woman who walked along the beach every day and stood on the balcony holding an unlit lantern through storms.

  “I wanted to talk to her but how?” I said. “She had no face, and yet she sang.”

  I listed my other companions over the years: wind, sand, salt, seaweed, sun, stars, surf, crabs, clams, gulls whose courage I rewarded with scraps of food. Storms, too, I described, great sets of waves, low tides, red seas. I released a century’s worth of impressions of a world that had been my only companion. The mysterious woman who walked along the shore, singing, veiled, holding an unlit lantern, faceless, Larner recognized as the widow of a sailor whose ship had crashed along the island’s northernmost rocks. The entry to the bay was treacherous, so now ships preferred the southern inlet, but it took many disasters before the lesson was learned. Lore had it that a widow walked the beach in search of her lost sailor.

  “But why without face or head?” he said. “That’s not part of the legend.”

  He said there was another legend about a pirate decapitated after helping Blackbeard bury treasure along the northern coast. But this woman was not a pirate. Why would she be headless? And why would she walk the beach forever? And how, without a head to hold a pair of eyes, would she manage to see her husband return from the waters? And if this sailor saw her, even if his skin were stripped by thousands of fish and his bones were encrusted with barnacles, how would he feel to emerge from icy ocean water after so many years to see this woman without a head waiting for him? Would he recognize her? Or, thanks to her fidelity, would he overlook the fact that she now had no head?

  We slept most of the next day. Larner did, at least. I needed only an intermittent hour. Not so with an old man who spent the day snoring as I explored the house, the longest time ever spent inside. It seemed like a labyrinth of endless corridors in which space expanded and with it a sense of possibility. It was like living inside the royal oak I had spent so much time atop on Daniel Leeds’s land, a long trunk with numerous branches, a place that seemed to have a life of its own—a mind, too, and not a cordial one.

  I was sure the house had it in for me, manipulating me toward some unforeseen pitfall. This Larner lured monsters with delectable rabbits, seduced them with friendship and kind words as the monster, like all monsters, stepped from monsterhood toward, it hoped, a semblance of human decency. The host then let his prey wander his endless home and caught the gullible monster in a trap of disorientation.

  Outside, whenever lost, I soared and established my position from above. I was not yet frantic enough to burst through a window, that is, if I could—the Swedish glass seemed so thick an attempt to break it might prove fatal, even for me. Through the walls Larner’s faint ALLOOOs sounded like they originated inside me, achy vibrations in my bones, felt more than heard. If this was what it meant to be a man—to build such terribly branching hallways, to banish and curse, to seek and destroy, to differentiate like this—why learn their ways, study their language, emulate their behavior? Much better to spend time with the greenflies and gulls that worshipped me, the maggots in salt-wet driftwood, the gleaming curves of porpoises, the holy sight of a whale breaching the ocean surface, its spout and spray more serviceable and beneficent than that remarkably odd and varied species that referred to itself as humanity.

  “ALLOOO!”

  What if I panicked and punished Larner for failing to warn me of the house’s complexities? How ridiculous to survive the night only to have his home incite, by architectural idiosyncrasy, his end? Larner had surely imagined a more strapping beast, with pectoral muscles like a pair of shields, a neck of ropey veins, vibrant brick-colored skin, more a traditional Satan than this ungainly miscellany trapped in its body like the most uncomfortable man.

  ALLLOOOOO!”

  I moved in the direction of his voice but came no closer to it. At first I had sensed bemused appreciation for whatever drew me to this estate. Toward the center of the pines I should stay, venture deeper into it, and more thoroughly enclose myself from those unwilling to accept such an unfamiliar configuration of limbs and skin. A shriek formed within me. Lost in the contorted wings of the house, there was no escape. An hour ago it had seemed a sanctuary, not a living hell. My human heart (autopsy would reveal it) pumped desperation as it restrained a shockwave that would charge these corridors with terror. I sounded like a whipped dog. A scared dependent creature. And hearing it, registering it, an exhalation fogged the air in front of me as though my breath were smoke. A living dragon, they said. If only fire burst from my lungs ...

  Larner called ALLOOO. There I was, a child lost in some crowded marketplace as evening fell and the faces of vendors turned gruesome in the lantern light. I ran claws across my head as though shearing myself, wings back, tail coiled and tucked between heronlike legs.

  “Alloooo,” quietly now, “allooooo,” more like shush shush to ease discomfort. “Allloooo, all’s well, all’s well, I should have warned you from wandering this way. This must be more than you can handle so soon upon ending your exile.”

  How soft the voice, yet all was less than fine. I never expected to display such sensitivities to my new companion. Better to roar and keep him from stroking the stripe of fur across my forehead. Impossible to trust someone who took me seriously, who offered sympathy as though he derived pleasure only from placation.

  I attempted a short roar. But too accustomed to sighs, I chortled, as though I had mastered at last the art of laughter.

  “We’ll take a trip,” he said, “We’ll call on the veiled woman, bring her flowers, woo her perhaps, see if she can’t teach us a thing or two.”

  I envisioned open travel on land with Larner, trees the only walls on either side of the road.

  Late September light—sky and rivers letting out a last gasp— opened a door through which I imagined a more beautiful life. Larner’s own father had not made it past his present age, he told me. His mother had gone a decade before that. Rarely did one reach winter, let alone the depths of autumn. Yet Larner claimed he already occupied the afterlife. I was evidence of his ascent.

  II

  I must have seemed like a walking armoire, wearing scarves, coats, a braided jacket across my shoulders, a hat cut open to accommodate my horns, old boots on my hooves, the soles removed, the uppermost leather tied to my legs with rope. I saw the world through peepholes in a simple mask. I wanted to raise my wings without dislodging the many satiny capes draped across my back. I was Larner’
s guard, dressed like an exploded wardrobe.

  The mist brightened but did not burn off. Once we hit the road to Umbria to the southeast, it was a straight shot from there to the island. A web of sand trails crossed these parts. No maps tracked their layout other than in travelers’ memories.

  Not far from Umbria we met morning sorts, messengers and laborers and farmers. None seemed to notice us until a man stood in the road. He wore faded black clothes so tight they seemed fused to his skin. He had no meat on him, other than a ropey waggle neck. His arms seemed longer than average, the exposed wrists and forearms scabbed and bruised.

  “Tax,” the man said. “Tax to travel these roads.”

  “You cannot tax what you do not own.”

  “To keep you safe.”

  “From what?” Larner said.

  “Pay now or regret.”

  Larner whispered to the wardrobe beside him: “What do you say?”

  “Walk on,” I said.

  “What masked clothing seeks to pass?”

  “It is my dear friend, Mr. Merriweather,” said Larner. “Burned in a fire not long ago, he must wear fabric rubbed with soothing lard and herbs.”

  “Show the burn or both shall wear funeral shrouds.”

  The man revealed in each hand a small blade.

  “Now, now,” said Larner. “If Mr. Merriweather reveals himself, you will cause no trouble?”

  “We must be sure he’s no escaped prisoner or kidnapped kid.”

  “Mr. Merriweather, it is your choice,” Larner said. “Shall we sport him a trifle or show him what had once been your hand?”

  This man who demanded taxes reminded me of Dade, though worse off. The eyes were sunken and his exposed scalp was reptilian, the flesh like sunbaked earth. He seemed in misery. Yet he was accepted as human, no matter how he maintained his humanity.

  I could overcome our obstacle with a swipe. We could be on our way. But it’s better to become human via humane treatment of humans. Even such a questionable one.

  I worked a claw out from a sleeve of the braided coat.

  “Does this please you?” Larner said.

  My fingers were long and overknuckled. At each end were conical nails, sharp and thick, more like horns than fingertips. I clicked their ends together.

  The man leaned in to inspect my hand. I aimed a finger at his nose.

  “I trust you’ll let us pass,” said Larner. “Quite a misfortune for Mr. Merriweather here, but as you can see, misfortune is often accompanied by unforeseen benefits, such as protection from bandits on the path to Umbria.”

  The man stashed his blades in his belt, behind his back. “Fires turn hands to that?”

  I snapped my hornfingers and pointed the longest now at the man’s heart. “We owe you no answers,” Larner said. “Let us pass.”

  “Or pay with your life.” I let some rasp enter my voice. I regretted the threat, but I enjoyed the pulse of anger, the risen strip of skin along the uppermost part of my spine.

  “Anyone asks, tell ’em you okay by Branley. Way is paid. Your way is paid.”

  “Thank you, kind sir,” said Larner.

  I returned my hand beneath its garments and growled to speed the man along.

  Larner stopped me and whispered: “He may slip around an unknown path and gather a posse to meet us in Umbria. We must move now in secret.”

  I unfurled my wings and the garments fell to the ground.

  “Lie upon the sturdiest cape,” I said.

  I took up its corners and tied them together so he lay bundled in a makeshift sack. I wrapped my tail several times around the knot and secured it in my claws, and then I spread my wings.

  In the distance, pines gave way to beach and water. In the other direction was the tower of Larner’s home, the path we’d been walking, perhaps even the man we encountered, scampering to Umbria. “Mr. Merriweather” could drop Larner far below to the underbrush, but he trusted me. He could have ordered me to dispatch the thief. A sickly meal. Those purple wrists. An intruder upon the race of man, more so than someone with horns, wings, and scaly skin.

  My wings open and strong, flapping a few times and then soaring as we descended, our path through the air rising, rising, and falling though clouds. Wet with mist, we saw silent breakers on the coast, boats in the bay, a tall cargo ship perhaps conveying the widow’s century-old husband lost at sea.

  Larner, if he fell through the fabric of the cape, his bones would snap, never to appear in the stories of grandsons, the heirloom legends. His own mother had brought such life to the stories. When she told of the nor’easter the night the thirteenth son of Mowas Leeds was born, young Larner smelled the rain that lashed his cheeks and saw lines of liquidy steel travel parallel to the ground. When she said the words lightning flashed, he covered his ears ahead of the thunder. He closed his eyes from fear when she told of the beast feasting on its mother, the midwives, and the children before shooting up the chimney and into the rain, washed clean of gore.

  Larner now peeked over the edge of a cape, as though in the basket of a one-man airship, and heard the surf as I brought him down gently on a dune.

  The cape sprawled open and Larner rolled onto sand and grasses. We made it in a fraction of the time it would have taken in wagon and ferry. And we made it apparently undetected. No armada waited off shore, cannonballs pounding the dunes, skiffs filled with men intent on capturing and displaying me for profit.

  Tumultuous surf pulled back from flattened land, leaving a glassy stretch that lightened until salt-spray and foam slid shoreward again before it pulled back again, tumbling shells and driftwood toward the horizon.

  “Have you flown me to the moon?” said Larner. He had never visited the ocean here, needing no rest from his island in that ocean of pine.

  Sand moved more than one thought. With no one to dig out the excess, the hole where I had stayed was almost filled. The clamshell roof had fallen. Not much of a sanctuary.

  Larner studied me now in the open light of day. I could tell he thought I seemed weathered. The flesh of my face was covered in fine short hair beneath which it seemed scaly, neither mammal nor reptile. My wings were smooth, pale, nearly transparent flesh.

  We stood there in silence as he looked at my spread wings.

  “Have you always been this way, Mr. Merriweather?”

  “This name brings me joy, but is it my first or last name?”

  “We could say the first is Merry and the last is Weather?”

  We started along the shore toward the widow’s house. Larner walked easily while I stood straight, my senses, like those of the rabbits I had devoured, set to detect the least threat.

  “You trusted I would not drop you,” I said.

  “I worried more that the capes had been weakened by moths or wear unknown.”

  “Ended by a moth, your whole long life. It is terrible, yet I find it amusing,” I said.

  “A marvel how you mirror my speech. Part ram, horse, kangaroo, pterodactyl, and apparently part parrot too,” he laughed. “In your mouth, protected by such teeth, no doubt one may find a chameleon in place of a tongue.”

  We walked to the south. Some boats on the horizon were too far off to discern us.

  “Much more to go?” Larner said.

  “Shall we fly?”

  The sun overhead was a pale orange disc, the clouds more like smoke than anything innocent, gray celestial vapors beyond which it was surely blue, and beyond that all was more difficult to understand than my existence on this beach.

  We walked along the flat sheen between shore break and beach until I started toward the house. It was half-consumed by sand, or protected by it like bulwarks against storm seas.

  “From that balcony there she waits each night with a lantern,” I said.

  “How come no brave soul interprets the light as an alarm, the woman signaling for help as her house sinks into the sand?”

  “It is possible she does not exist.”

  “Do you believe that?
” Larner said.

  “We will see if we enter the house.”

  “You are brave now.”

  “Your company makes me so,” I said.

  We walked to what we assumed was a second-story window— no telling how many stories lay beneath the sand. It could have been a tall tower once, only its uppermost reaches now exposed. It must have been glorious.

  The windows were shuttered but unlatched. We stepped into the shadows. The floorboards had warped. It smelled musty, briny, like dried seaweed, in places sulfurous. Undulating yellow bands seemed to hang in the air.

  “I detect an underlying scent of seagull corpse,” said Larner.

  “No one is home,” I said, “but her presence settles on my skin like dense fog.”

  “No man senses such things. Consider yourself lucky.”

  “Or cursed.”

  Upstairs, there was a large open room, empty of everything other than doors that opened on a view of the sea. I cracked one and then the other. Sea air rushed in and Larner’s fear decreased.

  “It feels like being on a ship run aground,” he said. “It will sink beneath the surface thanks to our weight.”

  “Just an abandoned house on the coast,” I said.

  “Maybe the sailor returned and they left for a distant shore?”

  “Every night she returned and stood on this balcony, even through the worst storms. If I had imagined her, she must still reside in my mind. If I see her and you do not we will discover her origin.”

  “A scientific experiment that only requires a night awaiting the supernatural,” said Larner.

  Afternoon sun revealed blue sky. Far over the ocean, tremendous clouds stirred white capes and surf. From the balcony, we watched the shore to the north, waiting for the breakers to assume the shape of a gown. The sun moved behind the house—we would not see it set from where we were. Throughout the afternoon, like a gunship on the horizon, a steel-gray storm—in places black— signaled distress. We did not mention these dark formations or interpret the lightning. We were too far away to hear thunder. We enjoyed its entertainment, thankful it had missed us by miles. The house would have withstood such a storm, protected by the dunes that devoured it. Protected, threatened. It was almost night.