He could only hope so. Desperate as he was, when the last man clambered down from the canoe, and turned back to help a comely young maiden, the fisherman seized the only opportunity left to him. She was of marriageable age, and the bodice of her dress was stretched taut with her bosoms. Could a maiden be a wet nurse? He did not know, but well endowed as she was, she looked a likely prospect.
“There you go, daughter,” the man said. “Let us find someone in charge here, and we’ll get this travesty sorted out.”
He was a man of some means, judging by his cloak and breeches, and his boots with bright buckles. Not the sort to take much notice of a humble fisherman, but there was no helping that.
“Pardon me, sir,” the fisherman said. “I’m sorry to be so forward, but I must ask you if your daughter could assist me in a matter of great urgency.”
“Excuse me?” the man said. “What is it you want?”
The fisherman hesitated, unsure of quite where to begin.
“Come on then,” the man said, “Be quick about it. I’ve urgent matters of my own to attend.”
“Well, sir,” the fisherman said, “This is going to sound a bit daft, but here on the Isle of the Dead, it happens that the souls of the dead are found in the shells of clams. Like this one,” he said, holding forth his beloved’s shell. The man took his daughter’s hand and drew her close.
“Say again?” he said.
“It so happens,” the fisherman said, speaking more quickly now, “that this particular clamshell contains the soul of my beloved, and if your daughter here, who is such a virtuous exemplar of womanhood, would be willing to let my beloved’s soul suckle on her breast, then my beloved will be restored to her own womanly body, and I would be eternally in your debt.”
“Suckle, you say?” the man said. “Like some common beast of the barnyard? You insult me, sir, and you insult my daughter. Be gone with you, before I run you through with my blade.” The man reached for his boot, from which he drew a knife, the handle of such a size that it promised a formidable blade to follow.
The fisherman backed away. He was unarmed, and, even if he somehow won a fight with the father, the fight would gain him nothing with the buxom daughter. The man swept his daughter into the cover of his cloak, and headed into the crowd. “I shall report him to the authorities,” he said, “and we shall see him in the stocks.”
Ye gods, the fisherman thought, this was going to be difficult. He tucked the clamshell back into the sarong at his waist, and he waited by the canoe, hoping that somehow an opportunity would arise.
While all this was going on, the three birds worked at getting the crowd lined up in rows, which required that the cormorant and the pelican explain over and over again that everyone must line up and be still so that further explanations could be offered. The crow, for his part, did little, other than to let his patience wear thin, and to occasionally squawk rudely in someone’s ear. “Line up, you big rube,” he said, “awwww, right over there.” And he would point with a wing to where a ragged line of the newly dead was beginning to form on the beach.
When at last everyone was in line, the crow uttered a very loud “Kiaaaw!” He strutted back and forth in front of them as he spoke. “First things first,” he said. “You are all dead.” And at this, he laughed—aw aw aw aw aw. “Second,” he said, “I’m going to sing you all a song, the most beautiful song you’ve ever heard, and you will all remain silent and listen. After I’ve finished singing, I will take a few of your questions, with preference given to those who aw-aw-offer me anything bright, shiny, and metal that you might have on your person.”
The man of means stepped forward from his place in the line, with his daughter still held close under his cloak.
“Just a moment, sir,” he said. “Before we proceed, I have a matter of some urgency to report, regarding an insult to my daughter’s honor.”
“Really?” the crow said. “Your daughter’s honor, you say?”
“Yes, sir,” the man said. He hooked his thumbs into the sides of a vest he wore, as if he were a barrister before the high court. “May I proceed?”
“Oh, please do,” the crow said. “I can scarcely wait to hear what you have to say.”
“May it please you,” the man said. “I have been approached by a man wearing the clothes of a pauper, who has insinuated that my daughter would be willing to perform an unnatural act involving a clam.”
“A clam, you say?” The crow looked down to where the fisherman stood at the prow of the canoe. This is too, too rich, the crow thought, and just the sort of mischief to keep things from getting dull. “Please, go on. Of what nature is this unnatural act?”
“Well, sir,” the man said, “if I may, I should like to speak it out in a more private circumstance. Is there somewhere we may retire?”
“Look about you,” the crow said. “What you see here is what there is, and as you can see, there is no place to which we might retire.”
“May I approach?” the man said.
“Oh, yes,” the crow said. “Please do.”
The man took his cloak off, wrapping it round his daughter’s shoulders, and he left her to step up to the crow. With his voice lowered in discretion, he said, “I do not wish to injure my daughter’s delicate sensibilities by saying this for all to hear, but that man down there”—and here he pointed at the fisherman—“asked my daughter to suckle some foul clam he’s carrying around. He’s got some cockamamie story about a soul trapped inside.”
“Cockamamie, you say? I see nothing cockamamie about such a story. Sounds right enough to me. But your daughter, does she have any milk in her breast to aw-aw-offer?”
“Certainly not, sir!” the man exclaimed. “She is virtuous, and betrothed to a man of considerable fortune, an earl, no less, whom she would never dishonor. You insult me sir, with your insinuation.”
“Do I?” the crow said. “Well, good. You strike me as a man who has borne far too little insult in his life. Insults build character, a quality you clearly lack.”
“This is outrageous,” the man said. “Do you know to whom you speak?”
“I do not,” the crow said. “Pray enlighten me.”
“I am Samuel Chowder, Esquire. I am the Viscount of Sark, and I daresay I am your superior in every way, and most especially in character. I demand satisfaction.”
“And you shall have it, as soon as you listen to my song.”
“I will not be put off one moment. Not for you, not for your song, and not for any cause on this earth.”
“Well, that’s a good point, because the earth you are familiar with is quite a long way from here,” the crow said. “And here, we do things my way.”
“Where I come from, sir,” the man said, “we eat your kind.” He was flushed with anger, and fairly trembling with the urge to strike this crow.
“Do you now?” the crow said. “Well, cookie, here, I eat your kind. Isn’t that ironic?”
The man reached down and drew forth the knife from his boot, which he brandished at the crow. “Now we’ll see who’s to dine and who’s to be dinner,” the man said.
“Samuel Chowder, Esquire,” the crow said, “Viscount of Sark. Do I have that correct?”
“Yes,” the man said, “not that it’s any of your business.” He circled to the right, light on his feet, shifting the knife from one hand to the other, a man who knew how to handle himself and his blade. The dead gathered, making a ring around the crow and his adversary.
The crow raised a wing and brought it down in front of himself, shifting into human form, though he still had his crow’s head. A collective gasp came from the crowd, and Samuel Chowder, shocked by the sudden transformation of his foe, stopped moving. The crow grabbed him by the shoulders, and he plunged his beak into the man’s chest. Ribs cracked, the man’s eyes bulged, and the tip of the crow’s beak pierced right through the man’s back. Samuel Chowder’s knife fell to the ground. The crowd shuddered, many of them looking away, while the eyes of others
showed rank terror as they watched. Though his daughter, showing her mettle, spat at the crow, and had to be held back by those around her. The crow pulled back and plunged his open beak at Chowder’s heart. With a wet, sucking sound, he worked his beak wider and deeper into the man’s chest. More ribs cracked. Grown men, shaking with fear, pissed themselves. The crow lifted Chowder right off the ground, and shook him, and then tore his heart right out of his chest. Chowder slid off the beak and fell to the ground. He stared at the blood-rimmed hole in his chest. Something slimy and pale lay there, his very soul, naked and exposed. The crow took Chowder’s heart in his hand and held it up for all to see, thick dark blood dripping down his wrist, and Chowder shrieked when he saw it. And then he fainted.
The crow turned himself round inside the ring of the dead, showing off his grisly prize. He sat Chowder up and slapped him until his eyes opened. “Samuel Chowder,” he said. “Esquire. Viscount of Sark. I always like to say the name before I eat the heart.” He opened his beak wide and put the man’s heart in, and he swallowed it whole.
The crowd, as one, uttered a cry of horror. A man in a red cap fell to his knees, heaving up his last meal, and others followed suit. Men moaned, women wailed, children cowered, and a great amount of weeping swept through the crowd. Chowder’s daughter dropped to the sand, her senses dark.
Chowder gazed dully at the crow, his jaw slack. The crow uttered a loud belch before he spoke. “By the way,” he said, “in my capacity as King of the Dead, I hereby decree that your daughter’s betrothal has been, shall we say, annulled.” At this, Chowder’s face took on the aspect of a tragic mask, and Chowder uttered a howl of despair. Tears ran down his ruddy cheeks, and the crow opened his bloody beak wide and laughed, “Aw aw aw aw aw.”
The crow stood tall, and grew himself taller by a cubit, so that he towered over everyone. “Get back in line,” he thundered to the crowd. “Line up behind this tasty morsel of meat.”
When they were all in line the crow said, “Listen to my song. You have something inside you that wants out. Let it go, for it’s of no use to you now.” His song began as a series of twitterings and clicks, of rasping moans and rattles from deep down his throat, growing louder and louder, until it became a harsh chant—kaw, kaw, kaw, kaw—that went racketing on and on and on. They listened, their chests juddering—kaw, kaw, kaw, kaw—and though the sound curdled the very marrow in their bones, and made them want to run to escape it, they found they could not turn away. Something within them responded to the crow’s insistent chant, something that rose up from deep within their bodies, something that had been wrapped round their hearts their entire lives and had never been separate. Now this something must leave them, called out by the song of the crow, and there was naught they could do to stop it. One by one, several by several, and many by many, they coughed up their souls. Slimy with mucous, pale as pearls, squishy as squids, their souls fell out of their mouths and landed on the sand. And as the dead watched, their souls burrowed into the sand and disappeared.
“Any questions?” the crow bellowed. But the newly dead were left dazed and even further confused by the loss of their souls. Dozy and stupid, they stared at the crow, who again laughed his terrible laugh, “Naw aw aw aw aw.” At the crow’s command, they marched up to the pyre of bones, blank-eyed and ashen of face, and they climbed onto the fire. From time to time, the crow spied a pendant or a scarfpin he fancied for its gleam of metal, or a pennywhistle or a pair of tongs, and he plucked them away, and tossed them onto a small pile of such things near his feet. When all the dead had heaped themselves onto the pyre, the crow blew on the embers to make them grow, and in no great amount of time the sacred fire blazed high again.
The fisherman had stayed at the canoe, but as soon as the dead marched away, the fish eagles beat their wings and ran the canoe to the other side of the inlet. He was left entirely alone, save for his beloved clam. “I’ve failed you, my darling.” He was close to tears, but rather than surrender himself to weeping, he began to hum an old Portuguee song, as much to himself as to the soul he held in his hands. It was the song of a man whose life is on the sea, and who longs for the woman he left behind. Or maybe it was the other way around, for his command of the Portuguee tongue was slight, and perhaps it was the song of the woman left on shore, searching the horizon for the ship that will bring back her man.
At the pyre he saw the crow tearing at the bodies there with his savage beak. His skin was shiny with sweat, and glowed a deep red in the firelight, but he was as impervious to the heat and flames as the phoenix. The fisherman lowered his eyes from the sight, and he walked up the beach to where Samuel Chowder, Esquire, had tried to defend his daughter’s honor. Ye gods, that horrific scene would never have happened had he not approached them. He was cursed no matter what he did, and not one step closer to the restoration of his beloved’s body.
There was, however, one small thing to be gained from this otherwise dreadful evening. The fisherman picked up the knife of Samuel Chowder, Esquire, and it was a fine blade indeed, forged by a master, and honed exceedingly well. There was a lot a man could do with a blade like that.
“Come, beloved,” he said to the clam, “let us take a swim together, and then we shall retire for the night.”
The fisherman slept poorly after his swim. In his dreams he was troubled by a deep cough, as if his lungs were trying to turn themselves inside out.
§
The pelican, too, scarcely slept that night, troubled as she was by the violence of the crow. The cormorant had climbed on her shoulders as always, and he promptly fell asleep. But she felt him tucking his head as far into his wingpit as he could, and she knew he was afraid. Low bird on the totem pole, she listened to the crow snore, his belly fat with his grisly treats. The comfort of the heat from the pyre felt undeserved. Her bill was wide open, and within it, tears fell quietly down her old-woman face.
She sorely missed Raven, who was aloof and regal and a friend to no one, but who nevertheless conducted his affairs in an orderly manner. Raven had ruled here for a thousand times a thousand years, and a thousand days more than that, since long before the Kiamah. Before the Kiamah, the fish eagles had brought only the souls of the dead on the canoe, nestled together in baskets like so many shelled oysters. In those times, the sacred fire was a beacon to guide the canoe. The birds had simply taken the baskets up and down the beach, tipping them over gently so the souls could burrow into the sand and form their clamshells. Afterward the birds gathered at the beached canoe and talked amongst themselves, drinking lotus blossom tea they warmed on the sacred fire, and listening to whatever gossip the fish eagles brought from the material world.
All this and more the pelican remembered while the cormorant and the crow slept. The Kiamah had come from the bottom of the sea, where he birthed himself from all the evil in the souls of the dead who were killed in the War of the Gods. Those warriors were so consumed by battle lust that they beheaded their captives, and did not tarry to give their own fallen so much as a prayer before they threw them all overboard. This evil sank to the bottom of the sea, and gathered there like quicksilver, festering for a hundred times a hundred days, until it formed a serpentine line of oily muck, and became the Kiamah. On a black night when the moon was no more than a sliver of silver, the Kiamah rose up to the surface, his long, sinuous body leaping into the night sky, and he swallowed the moon first thing. The pelican saw the moon disappear into the mouth of the beast, and she was so frightened she dove to the bottom of the inlet without warning anyone. This was her shame, which she carried always.
The moon was salty, and in his thirst the Kiamah swallowed all the lakes and rivers, and with them he swallowed the Old Gods, Otter and Turtle, Frog and Dragonfly, Goose and his lesser cousin mallard, and all those who kept their lodges on the banks and in the water. The Kiamah gnashed the Old Gods between his teeth, grinding them with his molars, and killing them once and for all. The pelican and the cormorant escaped by making themselves small, and hidin
g in Bear’s navel, who was asleep for the winter. Next the Kiamah swallowed the mountains and the forests, and with them he swallowed the Old Gods, Bear and Sasquatch, Cedar Man and Coyote, Wapiti and his lesser cousin deer, Rattlesnake and Ant, and all the rest, grinding them to blood and pulp with his molars, devouring their spirits, and growing ever larger and more powerful. This time the pelican and the cormorant escaped by hiding in Orca’s blowhole. Next the Kiamah swallowed the sea, and with the sea he swallowed the Old Gods, Salmon and Orca, Shark and Squid, Crab and Starfish, Mussel and his lesser cousin oyster, and all the other gods who swam or scuttled or clung, and these too he gnashed into blood and pulp, until they were no more, and their spirits were devoured. This time the pelican and the cormorant escaped by hiding in the clouds, from whence they watched the Kiamah grow ever larger with all he swallowed.
Last the Kiamah swallowed the air, and with the air he swallowed the Old Gods, Eagle and Owl, Heron and Hawk, Swallow and Flicker, Hummingbird and his lesser cousin flycatcher, and all the rest, gnashing them, grinding them, and devouring their spirits. Only the frigate bird escaped entirely, for only he of all creatures who flew could fly far enough and high enough to leave the spirit world behind. The Kiamah devoured all else, save for a few of the birds, who flew into his mouth and hid between his teeth. These few, the pelican and the cormorant, and Raven’s lesser cousin the crow, they also survived, and with them Raven, who was the only one of the Old Gods left alive. The Kiamah agreed to let these few live if they would do his bidding. He let Raven go on ruling the Isle of the Dead as he always had, with the pelican, the cormorant, and the crow as his servants, as they had always been. So to them fell the task of harvesting the souls of the dead, who arrived now on the Isle of the Dead with their bodies intact, as the Kiamah decreed.
This also did the Kiamah decree, that the bodies of the newly dead should be burnt upon the sacred fire, so that the heat of that fire might sustain him, and the smoke of that fire might cleanse him. He sent Raven and the pelican and the cormorant back to the Isle of the Dead, but the crow he drew aside, and to the crow he boasted that he was greater than any god, old or new, and he told the crow to be his eyes and ears on the Isle of the Dead, for he did not trust Raven, who might well seek to avenge the deaths of the Old Gods.{4}
The Alehouse at the End of the World Page 11