by Jeffrey Ford
Through the fog-shrouded swamps of Taramora they slogged. Chromonis led the way, hand-in-hand with Collo. The moss-hung trees twisted in silent agony. The dark unseemly waters that swirled at their feet, the hunting calls of giant crows, and the death wails of diminutive green cats the size of one’s fist that scurried along the branches, made Hustermann take Maggie upon his shoulders for protection. Like some pasha from her elephant castle, she scanned the shadowy landscape for a sign of Neptune’s Daughter. In her hand she held a pistol, issued by Karst, that fired narcotic darts to tranquilize but not kill the creature. Farso walked beside her mount, whispering instructions to aim for the heart. Around them traipsed the other members of the crew, carrying rifles loaded with the same nonlethal ammunition. Beetle brought up the rear, hauling a rolled up fishing net over his shoulder.
Tall Chromonis, sleek and proportioned as a statue from antiquity, stopped in his tracks, turned to face the others, and sniffed at the fog. His metal nose somehow twitched, his shining brow wrinkled, and he spoke mechanized words whose sound was not without its own gear-born beauty. “I smell a monster,” he said.
Captain Karst looked over his shoulder, and then back to their guide. “Could you be more specific, sir?” he said.
“Very close,” said Chromonis.
“Where?” whispered Karst.
The water at their feet exploded, and up from the mire came an enormous form, a head taller than Hustermann. It shook the mud from itself, the long strands of seaweed hair flinging wet globs of it in the faces of the hunting party. A green-blue form, slick with wet earth, as if the Earth itself had come to life, leaped upon Chromonis and, with one deft swing of its muscled arm, knocked the perfect hunter’s head off in a graceful arc to land spluttering in a puddle. Gear work and springs, party-colored wires and sparks, sprayed from his chrome neck. Maggie was the first to shoot, but her trembling aim succeeded only in wounding both Karst and Collo. As Neptune’s Daughter lunged into the pack of sailors, moving with the grace and speed of a dolphin through deep water, more rifles were fired, more errant shots finding human targets, until all save the girl and Beetle had been hit.
Collo curled into a ball of sleep. Farso halfheartedly reached for his cutlass, but was unconscious before he hit the damp earth. Kekmi twitched once and slumped down. The Fongs’ whistling turned to snoring as they locked in an embrace and remained upright, a twinly dozing triangle. Hustermann pirouetted three times, already dreaming of home and the dance lessons he had been forced to take as a child. When his huge body succumbed to the drug, he fell over like a sack of potatoes. Maggie screamed as he fell, but the creature grabbed her off his shoulders. Beetle watched from his hiding place behind a tree as Neptune’s Daughter carried the girl away into the terrifying shadows of the swamp.
The boy wiped his eyes and came out of hiding. He threw down his net and whistled once, twice, not to the dreaming Fongs but for his friend. Mathematics flew down through the trees as if on a wire in a stage play, his left front leg curled for the descent, and landed next to his master. The dog sat and waited while the boy strained and, with much internal fortitude and a good deal of grunting, transformed himself into the elderly Archer. He knew full well that in this form he would be crippled again and that his cane would be of little help in the swamp, but with a grim determination he stuck its end down into the shallow water and set off in search of his niece, the dog following at his heels.
On a beach inside an ocean cave, whose mouth stared out to sea, lit only by the rays of the setting sun streaming in from the horizon like the faint glow from a lantern, sat two figures on thrones made from dry, woven seaweed. A table, made from the same vegetal effluvia of the ocean, was arranged between the chairs, and upon it set a tortoise shell of sea tea and a huge sand-dollar platter holding fancy jelly and starfish. Neptune’s Daughter sat with her back to the cave wall, and Maggie with her back to the small wavelets that broke upon the beach.
“The tide is rising,” said the creature in a fair voice. She leaned over and poured two nautilus shells of tea. She handed one to Maggie.
“Will you crack my skull like a walnut?” asked the girl.
“Perhaps metaphorically, my dear,” she said, smiling grimly through her overbite.
“When you eat a brain, what does it taste like?” asked Maggie.
“Bittersweet,” said the creature, staring into the distance, trying to find the right explanation. “Bittersweet. The knowledge goes down rough and offsets the confection of ideas. And then the memories. The memories burst upon the tongue, bubbles of longing and regret, and the entire repast leaves you tired but wanting more.”
“Why have you taken me?” asked Maggie, sipping at her tea.
“We are waiting for your uncle. He will be here shortly.”
“What would your own brain taste like?” asked the girl.
“Like fire, child,” she said. Her claws had shrunk simply to long nails, and the ocean shades of blue-green that had camouflaged her body were softening into pink. Neptune’s Daughter was now less a monster and more a woman with dark hair mixed in with the seaweed locks.
“Are you changing?” asked Maggie.
“Look,” said her hostess, “here he comes now.”
Maggie stood and turned around to see a small figure slogging, waist deep, through the white water at the mouth of the cave. Uncle Archer’s journey through the incoming tide, through the rays of the setting sun, seemed to take forever, yet took no time at all. Her heart leaped for joy at the prospect of rescue. Only when Archer neared the shore did Math emerge from beneath the water’s surface—first the ridge of his back and then his snout.
“Let your uncle sit down for a moment,” said Neptune’s Daughter to Maggie. “And you come and sit on my lap.”
“I don’t want to,” said Maggie.
“Now, now, do as you’re told or I’ll rip his face off,” cautioned the creature.
Archer, out of breath, nodded to Maggie, motioning with his cane for her to do as she had been told. He walked unsteadily, leaning his full weight at times on the cane, to the empty seaweed chair and sat back into it. Mathematics took up a position at his side. He leaned forward for a minute, regulating his breathing, and took a handkerchief from his damp tweed jacket with which to mop his brow. “That water is frigid,” he said, shaking his head.
Maggie sat very still on the lap of Neptune’s Daughter, feeling as she did sometimes when she was home alone with her mother and smelled the first hint of smoke. The creature wrapped her wet hand around the girl’s neck from the back and applied a light pressure. “Now, Archer, tell the child the truth or …”
He hung his head, closed his eyes, and began speaking, unable to look directly at them. “When I was young, I went to war against the sultan of an eastern land. I was filled with foolish courage, with bravado, until one day in a skirmish at Taramora, I was wounded in the leg. The bullet shattered my shinbone. An enemy soldier leaped into the pit where I lay, writhing in pain, and brought his cutlass down to skewer my head. A friend of mine, a mathematics professor from Kelmore, John Farso, shot the enemy just as the blade was biting into the flesh of my face.
“Farso, mortally wounded himself, dragged me to safety back to our battalion. I spent the better part of a year on a field hospital cot, screwed to the cosmos on morphine for the pain. It was during that time, at night, when those who were not dying slept beneath the big tent, that the ghosts first came to me—the old man with the beard and the girl with the wide eyes. At first, in my delirium, I thought they were real—good samaritans helping the wounded. Then one night the girl walked through the man as the man walked through my cot, and once I was aware of their nature, their ill intent became clear to me.
“Another soldier, who had occupied the cot next to mine for a brief time before dying of infection, also saw them. He told me the story of a millionaire and his daughter who had come to the war-torn land of the sultan to sell guns to both sides. They lived in a splendid house in Tar
amora. The millionaire was not there long before he became enamored of the pleasures of the hookah. He succumbed to the sultan’s special recipe and went mad, thinking he was haunted. One night, mistaking the girl for one of his ghosts, he shot her with a derringer he carried in his waistband. When he came to his senses and saw what he had done, he took his own life.
“I was sent home from the front to recuperate, but they followed me. Even on the most beautiful day, out in the sunshine on a green field beneath the swaying boughs of an oak, they made themselves known. My sister, Elise, cared for me, brought me back to full health, save my limp and scar. I told her about the spirits, and in order to allow me to grow strong, she said she would take them from me for a time. We cut our thumbs and mixed our blood on the deal.”
“But you never took them back,” said Neptune’s Daughter.
“They would not return to me, Maggie, I swear,” said Archer, tears in his eyes.
“You know the reason they would not return to you,” said the creature. “Tell the girl your secret, the thing that protects you,” she demanded, raising her voice so that it echoed through the cave.
At that moment, the breaking wave at Archer’s back crashed upon the beach and Collo came leaping out of the water. In three incredible bounds he was across the sand and in the air. He landed on the creature’s face, wrapping his arms and legs around her head and biting into the smooth flesh of her brow. For an instant, she released her grip and Maggie ran to her uncle.
Neptune’s Daughter struggled to her feet, trying to pull the monkey loose, but by then the others had risen from the water and were charging the monster. Kekmi, the Fongs, Farso, Karst, Hustermann, and the headless Chromonis bolted into the cave and knocked her back into her seaweed throne. She struggled wildly against the strong sailors’ arms that held her down.
“Hurry,” cried the captain.
Archer hobbled away from Maggie to the melee, reached into his pocket and took out the derringer. He leaned over and pulled the trigger, once, twice, three times, setting three small fires at the base of the seaweed chair. The flames jumped up as if he were lighting a pile of three-year-old tinder. “Maggie, come to me,” he yelled and held his arms out as he returned to her. She ran, jumped up, and he caught her in midair. For a moment, he teetered, thrown off balance, and then he grunted and righted himself, hoisting her up over his shoulder. She saw Math pick up the cane with his mouth and follow.
As they trudged out through the ever-deepening water from the mouth of the cave, she looked back at the flaming pyre of crew and creature, a pulsating mass of burning flesh and steel. Violet smoke poured out of the blaze, filling the cave, but the only sound was that of twin whistles, twining, knotting, nearly becoming a blossom before dissipating.
Just before they submerged, she saw the whole chaotic inferno as a huge orange ball floating in the dark, and then the water came up, or they stepped down. Archer limped slowly, relentlessly across the ocean bottom, breathing bubbles like strings of pearls. Maggie saw lamprey wriggle in the lime-green light, herds of sea horses flit here and there all of one mind, toppled columns of a sunken palace, the sleek immensity of a whale passing a hundred yards overhead.
The movement of the water around them soothed her and made her weary. She reluctantly closed her eyes, knowing that what had happened had not been right. Already half-asleep, she looked one more time and saw the path through the forest at night. The wind was rustling the leaves. The lantern at the observatory receded in the distance. She hugged Archer tightly as he carried her back to the house.
In the morning the sun came up, round and bright orange. Out to the east there was a ship with three yellow sails on the ocean. Archer and Maggie stood in the drive as the girl’s father stepped out of the shiny black car. He stood tall and rigid, little, if any, expression on his face.
“Come, Maggie,” he said. “Say goodbye to Uncle Archie and let’s be off.”
Archer motioned to his brother-in-law to follow him, and then turned and walked away a few yards. Her father did as was requested and joined Archer out of earshot of the girl. Maggie watched intently, trying to overhear what was being said. At first, her father shook his head and said, “I can’t.” Archer brought his arm up and wrapped it around her father’s shoulders. He leaned over and whispered in his ear for a long time. When he pulled back, his brother-in-law nodded.
“Get in the back seat, Maggie,” said her father.
She did as she was told.
“But don’t close the door just yet,” he added.
She watched as Archer whistled and Mathematics came running from the back of the house. He petted the dog on the head and rubbed his ears. He then clicked his fingers at the height of his chest and the dog stood up on hind legs, resting both front paws against Archer’s chest.
His master spoke to him quietly, and then said, “Go!”
The dog bounded over and leaped into the back seat with Maggie.
The car door closed. The car pulled away down the long drive.
Archer woke to the sound of the leaves rustling above the observatory. He leaned forward and removed the bowl from the hookah, tapped it against the side of the table and then fit it back in place. Filling it from the cane head and lighting it, he considered his dream. As he took in the smoke, he had a vague memory of Randolph Mondrian in a comic pratfall scene from The Marble Lark and smiled. Across from him, the girl Quill sat, deep in sleep, wrapped in the hundred colors, while next to him, directly beneath the orange lantern, the old man sat, his white beard rising and falling with his chest and enormous gut, napping like Santa the day after Christmas.
Taking one more toke at the nozzle, Archer’s reason sped off like a whippet through the forest. The exhalation, when it came, would be the violet yoke of a crushed pearl, and its sweet aroma would gently awaken his sleeping niece to the now darkened observatory, the last firefly, the wind in the leaves, and the snoring of her uncle.
I borrowed the title of this one from a mystery novel my mother had worked at, on and off, through those years preceding her illness and subsequent death. The characters and content here are mine. The only item I remember from her manuscript was a woman who played an instrument that produced waves of air requiring her to wear different colored glass prosthetics over her fingers with which to sonically manipulate the currents.
Some of the characters aboard The Mare were lifted out of stories that my grandfather had told me about his time in the Merchant Marine. For instance, on the ship he served on there was a pair of Chinese brothers, twins, who worked in the kitchen. At dinnertime, as they delivered the meals throughout the ship, they would whistle back and forth so that each knew where the other was and they wouldn’t collide. One of the brothers died during a voyage in the Indian Ocean and was buried at sea. At sunset, after the burial, my grandfather told me that the remaining brother went to the side of the ship and whistled out over the water. A few seconds passed and then a whistle came back from off the ocean.
My grandfather was also very interested in grafting fruit trees, and we had many different varieties on our quarter-acre of property. Over the course of years, he grafted into existence a bluish tinged fruit he called Neptune’s Daughter. What connotation the name had for him, I can’t recall.
The Delicate
The Delicate is pale, limbs pipe-cleaner thin, with a head as shiny hard as beetle-back. Violent, in utero skull tectonics have led to a precipice of brow, a compression of matter past the point of truth. His eyes are crow eyes, and his ear holes winding tunnels to nowhere.
He comes in the latter days of afternoon, through blowing snow, dressed in black, while Schubert’s “Eighth” plays magically in the background. He comes to suck the breath out of passing fancies and to treat the infirm of mind, the particularly annoying, to a long sleep.
“In order to take the waters,” as he explains it, he comes to a resort town on the edge of reason. Beyond it, the wilderness stretches north to the frozen pole. God has never drawn
breath there—the domain of bat-winged demons whose skin is the ringed wood of oak trees. These creatures fly out of the forest at night to snatch up children, their little legs kicking to the moon. To live in Absentia is to live with a soul that is liquid lead.
Perhaps it is the manner in which he holds his cigarette or maybe his distinguished apparel that immediately ingratiates him to both the guests and staff of the Hotel Providence. At his request, they call him Harding Jarvis and marvel at his grace and facility with foreign language. Though his face is more a cow skull than a thing of flesh, no one seems to notice except the woman who cleans his rooms. She knows him by his aroma—roses over bad meat. When he knows she knows, he wheezes into his wine glass.
No matter who Carlotta confesses her fears to, they brush her off, saying, “Herr Jarvis? Not possible. My dear, you are disturbed.” She makes it a point never to enter his rooms when they are occupied. Sleep to her is death, say the toothpicks holding open her eyes. She lasts only three days before she sits down and closes them. To sleep is warm and beautiful, but the chair she sits in is at the foot of Herr Jarvis’s bed. There is so much dirt on the floor—four ounces of fly meat on every windowsill.
He returns unexpectedly from an afternoon of playing whist with Madame Fesh of the colorful muff, Barlin the local logomancer, and Meme Haspin, taxidermist to the landed gentry, and discovers Carlotta asleep in the chair. With little pomp and less circumstance, he sucks the life out of her. The process is long and painful, and he doesn’t spare her a minute of it. After hanging her withered corpse, like a wrinkled garment bag of flesh, on a peg in the closet, he sits down to smoke his clay pipe. Before long, he moves to the writing desk, where he takes up his pen and records the essence of the maid he has just ingested. The first phrase to crawl out onto paper is, “Insouciance is the engine of regret,” and from there it is a smooth plunge into lyrical facility.