by Ray Hudson
“He was pretty impressive, wasn’t he? He can take different shapes, different sizes. He wanted to make an entrance we’d remember.”
I put down the mask and took out the bookmark. One side was totally blank. The other still had those strange words. I wondered what would happen if I tore it again. Would the ink from the letters run into me? Would I start changing? Maybe it wasn’t the bookmark itself; maybe it was Anna.
“Isn’t there something you can do?”
“Not even if I wanted to,” he said. “I think she’s determined that Anna should fulfill the promise in that story.” He nodded toward the bookmark
“It sure didn’t sound that way.”
I put it away as the woman from the kitchen came into the room with a steaming bowl of something that smelled delicious. She placed it on the workbench while that fluttery woman who had been introduced as the Moon’s Sister set a couple of plates beside it.
Ash thanked them as they left.
“The Moon’s Sister has some great stories,” he said, “if you can get her to tell them.”
I started to fill my plate.
“I understand why she is here,” he said. “Nobody can sew clothing as beautifully as she does.”
I handed him the ladle. “Whatever you do,” he continued, “stay away from Summer-Face-Woman.”
“She’s creepy,” I said.
“It’s been a long time since she’s been here. When I was a boy, the elders would tell us stories about her to get us to behave.”
The food, some sort of stew, was so delicious and so nourishing and I was so starved that I hardly paid attention to what he was saying until I heard the words, “And they were all dead.”
“What?” I looked up.
“I said that she’s had many husbands,” Ash repeated, “but every last one of them was dead the morning after she married them.”
“All of them?”
“Every single one.”
“Wow!” I said.
“She wanted me as a husband,” he said with a slight smile, “but I said no.” Then his eyes twinkled a little. “At least not yet.”
“I will definitely stay out of her way,” I said.
“She has a bundle of feathers from the rosy finch tied with a special grass for her magic. It’s what she travels with.”
“What do you mean?”
“If she needs to get somewhere fast, the rosy finch feathers will take her.”
Like my bookmark, I wondered?
“She’s brutal,” he said. “Well, she would be if she’s related to the Raven, which she is.”
I thought it was strange to be getting such friendly advice from somebody who was, well, he was like a prison guard, although he had said this wasn’t a prison.
“How long will it take for whatever is happening to Anna to happen?”
Any answer he might have given was cut off when Volcano Woman stepped into the room. Now she seemed like an ordinary person. Well, as ordinary as your average volcanic goddess can ever be, but even so I felt nervous. I slipped the bookmark into my pocket and tried to shrink into invisibility. Not possible, of course.
“What is it you want to know, young man?”
“I was wondering how long this will take? How long whatever is happening to Anna will take to materialize?”
“Are you planning to go somewhere?”
Of course I was, but I think she was making a joke.
“I have things under control,” she said.
Of course she did.
Of course she did.
25. Booker
Ash had warned me to stay away from Summer-Face-Woman, but that was exactly what I could not do. The next morning, I was sent to the room where the announcement had been made.
“It’s not like it was in the old days,” a woman said as I paused at the doorway, “before there were numbers or crows.”
“Of course not, Sister.”
“How long will it take to complete her transformation?”
“Two weeks, maybe more. Two weeks might be pushing it,” the second woman said. “That girl is tough.”
So it hasn’t happened, I thought, or not all of it.
I felt like I was standing in the rain and getting drenched, without a raincoat or an umbrella, with no shelter in sight, the sky darkening, and a growl of thunder rolling in over a ridge.
I stumbled in. The Sister-of-the-Moon was fluffing up a feathered parka, and beside her stood the woman with the terrifyingly beautiful face.
“Ah!” she exclaimed when she saw me. She raised an eyebrow at my ability to trip on thin air. She stretched out a hand, but not to balance me as I thought. Instead she pinched my forearm and frowned. “You’re a puny thing, but you’ll do. There are things that need to be prepared.”
“Prepared?” I thought of Hansel and Gretel and the oven.
“For the day of transformation.”
“Wonderful day! Spectacular day!” chortled the Sister-of-the-Moon. “There is so much to be done!” And she drifted out of the room.
I was taken to a large room crammed with sealskins, stones, and driftwood, all of it waiting to be turned into something usable. A massive stone fireplace filled most of one side of the room that, once emptied, was to be converted into a reception hall for the expected guests. Summer-Face-Woman left after giving me instructions. I had made two trips carrying sealskins to a storage area further down the hall when a voice at my feet said, “Nobody needs a fireplace inside a volcano.”
I studied the ball of fur at my feet. At first I thought it was that hyper mouse who had rushed into the room before the raven, squeaking in a panic and shouting, “Make way!” My surprise then at hearing an animal talk had been wiped out immediately by the entrance of the raven himself. But now I was surprised.
“Hello, mouse,” I said, looking nervously down at the rodent.
The creature froze and the hair from its head to its furry toes prickled outward.
“Not a mouse?”
It shook a rather luxurious gray coat back into place and pivoted around.
“You don’t have a tail,” I realized. “Or not much of a tail.”
“It’s not all I don’t have,” he huffed proudly. “But I have what I need.”
He may have raised an eyebrow.
And you are a—” I hesitated.
“A lemming, of course,” he said. “And you,” he asked as he stepped back to get all of me in view.
“Booker John,” I said.
“Where are you from?”
“I hardly know,” I said.
“In that case, what’s your crime?”
“My crime?”
“Why are you here? Mine is not having a tail and being small and liking grass inordinately and . . .”
“Those aren’t crimes.”
“Of course they are. You’re practically bald, by the way,” he said. “That may be your crime.”
“There are two of us,” I said, trying a new subject. “Only she seems to be changing into a raven.”
The lemming tightened and shuddered. “I know. I was here for the announcement. I hate the Raven. Hate him! Hate him! Hate him!”
“She’s not becoming the Raven,” I tried to sooth his agitation. “She’s become a raven, a raven companion. Or something like it. Maybe an auklet. Or nothing at all.”
“Where is she now?”
“I don’t know. I think she’s tired.”
“Sleeping is not a crime.”
“Of course it isn’t.”
“But pride and long division almost certainly are.”
Where had that come from?
“He eats my cousins.”
I had to think twice about that.
“Mice,” he said. “He raises them and eats them. I hate him.”
“I don’t wonder,” I said.
“So what are you going to do about it?”
“What can I do?”
I felt the need to talk. The lemming scampered up onto my
knee, and I told him about our first trip to the island, about Vasilii and the carved ivory fox. How Anna wanted to return it and how at the beginning of our second trip she had. About the boy who was sometimes a boy and sometimes a fox. Remembering him, a talking animal didn’t seem that odd.
“Well, it’s too bad,” the lemming said. “Too bad I can’t swim over to Kagamil and tell the boy. Maybe he could help. But I can’t. Even a little water is too much for me. In fact—” and here he leaned in closer and whispered—“I’m on this island quite accidentally.”
“Accidentally?” I asked.
“Drifted here,” the lemming said in an absent-minded sort of way. Before he could explain further, a shadow crossed the doorway. Summer-Face-Woman glanced at the empty spot on the floor and said simply, “Quit wasting time.”
I had cleared almost everything from the room when it was time for dinner.
“I think you’ll like this,” Ash said as he carried a plate into my cell. He was right. The Woman-with-Six-Sea-Lion-Sons had prepared salmon mixed with fragrant rice and what might have been eggs. I felt rejuvenated after scraping the last of it off the plate. I needed revitalizing because before long I was back lugging stones and driftwood until the room was empty.
When I finally stumbled back, I was asleep before I knew it. The next morning I scrubbed the floor of the empty room using water from a wooden tub and a brush that was like rough hide. I worked on my hands and knees until lunch, making repeated trips to refresh the water from a cleft in the rock wall. It had felt good talking with the lemming, and I kept hoping he’d return. Instead, Summer-Face-Woman showed up every so often, towered over me, touched my brush with the tip of one of her sharply pointed boots, and wrinkled her nose in disapproval. The floor looked good to me. But, apparently, not good enough because she had me scrub it again. After that I had to haul whale vertebrae in for chairs or stools around the perimeter of the room. No matter where I put them, I had to move them somewhere else.
Late that afternoon, Summer-Face-Woman took me into a much larger room where she said Anna’s final transformation would occur before a crowd of guests. This room had a vaulted ceiling with its own hatch at the top. The notched-log ladder, however, was nowhere in sight. At the head of the room there was a raised stage where beautifully carved whale-vertebrae stools had been arranged. There were two high balconies entered from an outside hallway. The room was impressive and, thankfully, practically empty.
“Here is where the scaffold is to be built,” she announced as she raised an arm toward the closed hatch at the summit of the ceiling. “All the way to the top.”
Yikes, I thought. Who’s going to get hanged?
But as she talked I realized that what she wanted was a scaffolding with layer on layer reaching to the roof. It was to be constructed from dozens and dozens of driftwood branches stored in yet another room. I had seen them, but assumed they were firewood. I carried the first load of branches into the ceremonial room, sorted them into sizes, and then returned for more. On my third trip, with branches up to my eyes, I rushed along the corridor, made a sharp turn, tripped on a frayed grass mat, and sent the branches catapulting into the air in every direction. A rush of heat swamped the hallway as Volcano Woman brushed a stick from her shoulder, made a slight adjustment to her gown, and stood there. She didn’t zap me into ash or anything. She just stood there.
I was too petrified to apologize.
“I’m glad you’re making yourself useful,” she said as I picked up a branch.
“I look forward to seeing your mask when I return.”
I gathered up a few more fallen branches, nodded to her, and continued on to the ceremonial hall.
She was leaving? Maybe escape was possible.
I fell into a troubled dream that night in which the great ceremonial hall was a museum packed with fossils of small lizards and leaves, footprints, and birds. There was a white fossil fish swimming against the current of the rock. It hovered almost completely still while everything around it moved. I tried to stand that still. “Is it real?” I remember asking. “More real than a painting,” came the answer. I awoke to what I thought was a thin line of morning creeping into the room. Buried inside the volcano, of course, there was no way to know if morning had actually arrived. I went back to sleep and slept until I heard a voice outside the door.
“It’s about time,” Anna said as I opened it and she stepped into my cell. “What are we going to do?”
26. Anna
If I had expected to wake up the morning after the announcement in a nest of feathers, I was mistaken. Whatever was happening was taking its time. For two days from under my sea otter blanket I had been gently prodded by the Moon’s Sister. I had listened to sharp commands from Summer-Face-Woman to “get up and quit loafing.” I had responded by pretending to be delirious which wasn’t hard to do whenever I thought about turning into a raven. Finally, I had crawled out of bed.
“You sound like yourself,” Booker said as I walked into his room, his cell. His expression suggested he had expected me to be covered with duck down.
“Of course,” I said, feeling defensive. “Who else would I be? What are you making?” He was holding an oval piece of wood.
“I’m replacing the mask you broke,” he said. Before I could say anything, the Sister-of-the-Moon arrived with her arms full of feathers.
“Ah,” she gushed, “you are up. Wonderful! I need you to do a fitting.” And she unfurled a beautiful bird-skin parka. “It can be exhausting, these changes,” she continued. “What’s happening to you. I should know.”
I followed her to my cell. She had pretty much taken over the room with containers filled with bird skins, various threads, and pieces of cured and dyed materials of one kind or another. She handed me the parka.
“Do you think it will fit?” I asked as I marveled at the intricate designs along the sleeves.
“I’ve had you measured,” she said.
I didn’t like the sound of that one bit.
I slipped it on. It fit perfectly. I couldn’t believe it was going to be mine. After she took a few measurements, I removed it, put on my ordinary clothes, and sat down. I picked up my weaving. It was getting better. Who am I kidding? It was phenomenal. The old woman in the kitchen had hinted that I could learn gut sewing next. This is the new Anna, I thought, the real Unanga Anna.
And the fighting? That afternoon I went for another lesson. I managed to throw my instructor. He was one of the sea lion sons of the cook, but he wasn’t a blubbery sea mammal. He was actually a pretty good-looking guy. I might have distracted him a bit when I gave a passable imitation of his mother calling him for dinner, but he was about fourteen times my weight, so what I did was pretty remarkable. I don’t think I’ll ever be good enough to floor him without tricks, but I had already learned one or two. Summer-Face-Woman was in the hall when I left. She had seen me outfox the instructor.
“You’re learning quickly,” she said. “Walk with me.”
“I probably shouldn’t have tricked him,” I confessed as she led the way down the hall.
“It’s what I like about you,” she said as she placed a bony hand on my arm. “You are willing to do the unconventional. You are willing to take risks.”
That sounded like me.
“You know what you want,” she continued, “and you have the courage to go after it.”
She seemed to know me pretty well, until she added, “We are more alike than you might think.”
We had reached Ash’s workshop. She followed me inside. We had the room to ourselves.
“Be careful around him,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
She meant Ash.
“Just that he may tell you one thing and do the other.”
He had already done that. He had taken us to the Volcano Woman suggesting she might help, but she had done just the opposite.
“I think he was glad to see us come back,” I said a little defensively.
; “Of course he was,” she said. “Just be careful. That’s all I’m saying.”
She left me then. I wondered if I hadn’t judged her too harshly. If she looked snarly, well, people can’t always help how they looked. I mentioned this to Booker the next day.
“She’s super dangerous, Anna,” he said. “Ash warned me about her.”
“What does he know? He’s not on our side. He just does whatever the Volcano Woman tells him to do. He hasn’t done anything to stop what’s happening to me.”
“Do you want it to stop? You don’t act like it.”
“Don’t underestimate me, Booker,” I said. “I know exactly what I’m doing.”
27. Booker
That evening the Sister-of-the-Moon sent word that Anna would be having dinner with her and Summer-Face-Woman. The same happened the next day. After Ash and I had eaten our meal the second evening, we climbed up the entrance pole in the main room and sat down outside. Far below us, the sea moved against the shore. The volcano itself seemed to tilt into the sea. The sky went on forever. The long evening light lingered across the hills. I tried to remember something my mother had said about the angle of the sun at the horizon. Something equal to something. What would she think if she knew where I was?
I looked toward the eastern end of the island. Maybe there were still berries left for the Kagamil people to pick. I imagined myself hiking there and getting their help to escape.
“Would you like some dried fish?”
He laid out a few pieces of red salmon.
We just sat and nibbled a little dried fish and said nothing. Then he asked, “How is the scaffolding coming?”
After I had moved all the branches into the ceremonial room, Summer-Face-Woman had given me instructions on how to lash them together. I began by making a base from the heaviest branches. It had four cells across and three deep. Each cell was large enough for me to stand inside with my arms stretched out. She returned now and then to deliver a good shake and make certain it all held together. Once she was satisfied, I moved up to the second row. By the third day, the grid extended halfway to the ceiling.
“Okay, I guess,” I said. I wanted to talk about Anna. She still wasn’t growing feathers. Her nose wasn’t morphing into a beak. Although, when I thought about it, she was turning her head less and less and now just jerked it from one direction to another. She wasn’t building a nest—although she made little caches of odds and ends, flakes of obsidian swiped from Ash’s workroom, small coils of sinew lifted from trips to the storage rooms, things like that. Things she didn’t need at all. Twice she had told me I was paranoid when I warned her about Summer-Face-Woman.