by Jeffrey Ford
His wandering in the dark eventually took on the aspects of a ritual. He would wake suddenly from a nightmare involving sharks to the sound of Chelonia’s heavy breathing. After making an attempt to get back to sleep, he would try to initiate a round of love making which would invariably be met by hissing and beak snapping. When this sedative was not forthcoming, he would pat his wife lightly on the shell to send her back to sleep and then strike out in search of food.
No more than a month ago, he had awoken as usual and decided seafood would not do, but that something sweet was needed. Scuttling inland past the stand of lime trees, beneath the flitting of the fruit bats, he arrived at the mango grove. He gathered together a half dozen of the twisted trees’ prize droppings and began eating away at his restlessness. Just as he was digging into the third piece of fruit, he heard the shrill cry of a young tortoise. “Wolves,” he immediately thought, and only hesitating long enough to impale one of the mangos on his beak, he turned around with every intention of stumping back home as fast as possible.
Whereas others might have rushed to the aid of their brethren, Pezimote was no hero. He had not lived so long in the crazy world to end as a delicacy for four legged heathens. Of course, he felt a prick of remorse for what had sounded to be the scream of a young female of the species and also a smaller measure of the same emotion for his own cowardice.
So he charged away at the dazzling rate of a yard a minute. The cries of pain lasted not much longer than the time it took for him to make up his mind to flee. “Soon they’ll be done with the hapless child and come sniffing for more,” he told himself, but his retreat ended as abruptly as it had begun when he heard a rummaging in the stand of bushes that bounded the sandy path to his right.
“No, they’re upon me!” he thought. He stood still, his fear paralyzing any will to escape. Snapping jaws and sharp teeth, claws and stinking fur was the beast that swirled in his imagination. “This can’t be,” he cried in the storm of his thoughts as the noise in the bushes drew dangerously close. The mango still impaled on his beak, he shivered in the moonlight, waiting for death.
He would later be grateful that the mosquitoes that swarmed on her body had not missed her eyelids. When she crashed through the underbrush and onto the path, she was completely blind. She could, however, tell by way of scent that a male tortoise was standing close enough to hear her. “Help me, they’re draining my blood,” she whimpered.
Pezimote dropped his mango and thanked fate for having materialized a tortoise instead of a predator. He was so relieved; he didn’t now hesitate to come to her rescue.
“I heard you call out,” he said to her writhing form. “My first thought was that you were being attacked by tortoise eaters. Of course, I was rushing to your aid.” In this instance, his wide experience did prove an asset. Scuttling to a nearby aloe plant, he broke off a large stem with his beak. “Hold still now,” he said when he was again at her side. Placing the plant between his two front stumps, he squeezed its clear sap out onto her head. With gentle strokes, he rubbed the puddle in widening circles over her face and neck, then on each of her legs. The mosquitoes, drunk from the sweetness of her blood, flew slowly away.
Pezimote gazed down upon the young female. Her red and gold markings stood out in contrast to the overall darkness of the rest of her shell, whose lack of barnacles made its surface shine in the light of circling fireflies. He caught a shadowy reflection of his face in the sheen, and, in that moment, he knew that he would eventually have to ride the ocean swells upon her back …
Pezimote looked up from his paddling to see Belius’ tower looming in the distance. To calm the boiling of his usually cold blood, he brought to mind the vicious sharks that were forever invading his dreams. A hungry hammerhead swam now from ear to ear, circling in his skull. He did such a good job of conjuring the image that not only did it shrink his desire, but he actually began looking back over his shoulder in fear. This specter forced him to increase his speed, and, in record time, he landed on the beach not far from the tower, heaving and wheezing like a hippo trying to climb a palm tree.
As the tortoise crawled up the violet beach toward the path, Belius had just then, in his recollections, reached the point where he was sitting at his father’s wake.
Pezimote dallied for a quarter of an hour in the garden, nibbling strawberries off the vine and gorging himself on squash. He entered into a discussion about the weather with Siftus, who was passing by on his way home from the limestone cliffs, having spent much of the night searching for choice hunks of rock to chisel into art. Finally remembering the reason he had traveled to his friend’s home, Pezimote rushed off in mid-sentence, leaving the mole bewildered.
As always, when entering the tower, he was compelled to rise up on his back legs and walk the way Belius did. He usually kept the strange posture until he was out of sight of his friend. He told himself that he did it out of respect for the minotaur, but it had more to do with envy. Stumbling up the winding stairway to the study, he found only Bonita there, sitting amidst the mess of the day before. The cat was paging through an old volume brought by her master from the lesser world. Shaking her head, she perused the nonsense of humans and giggled quietly to herself. Pezimote took to the stairs again, climbing up to Belius’ bedroom. As the tortoise stumped on the solid wooden door and called, “Belius, are you awake?” Belius was reliving the instant in which Doctor Grey told him, “Inferno”. The doctor then lashed his horse’s rump and the cracking of the whip brought Belius to his senses.
“Belius, are we going to see the ape?” Pezimote called from the landing.
“Yes, yes, a moment,” he answered. He tried to roll his massive body out of bed but found that searching through the past had caused him slowly, over the course of the night, to drive his horns right through the headboard and into the stone wall behind it.
“Come in, Pezimote. I need your help. I’m trapped.”
Together they worked out an escape for the minotaur which involved the tortoise pulling at his legs and Belius using his hooves to push out of the predicament. It ended, after a prolonged bout of grunting and cursing, with the horns sliding free and Pezimote stumbling backward against the opposite wall.
“Have you eaten yet?” asked Belius, helping his companion off the floor.
“Not a morsel, I’m famished,” said Pezimote.
They ate a light breakfast of clover soufflé and barley broth, smoked a quick bowl of the petals and then left the tower, taking the path through the woods that led to Shebeb’s cave.
Shebeb the wise, the merciful, the healer—all of these appellations had been bestowed upon the ape who lived in a cave amidst the thicket of blabbering trees. There wasn’t a creature within miles that didn’t, itself, or a member of its immediate family, owe its health, and in many cases its life, to the primate’s potions, poultices or scalpel. To all, he was an enemy of pain, a friend to life. Sometimes, merely a rough touch of his hairy fingers could mend a broken wing or draw the fever from a victim of disease. He knew how the ants breathed and why the bees had to dance or die of starvation. With his pink ear against a patient’s arm, he could hear the rush of blood. Only because of his monthly treatments of herbal compresses could Siftus’ failing eyes still distinguish between sunlight and shadow.
Mosier, the patriarch of the crane clan, after being attacked by an alligator, could be seen in the shallows, resting blithely on a prosthesis Shebeb had whittled from an elm branch. He set bones, removed thorns, counseled the mad, and, when death was inevitable, would administer his secret potion that hastened the end but eliminated the fear and pain. For all his services, he asked nothing in return. Some said that he did it because it offered a steady string of subjects to observe and study. Others believed that his empathy was so great, he could feel the distress of each victim and was unable to rest himself until things were set right. Whatever the reason, no one was ever sure because he spoke very little and never left his cave unless he had to.
In stature, he was almost as tall as Belius, but his shoulders were much wider. His stomach hung out in front of him like a destination the rest of his body was traveling to. Long grey hair covered almost every inch of him, save his palms and soles and ears. His gaze was placid, as was his demeanor. The only time he ever showed emotion was when, during a difficult operation, he would be momentarily uncertain of an incision and put his scalpel down to think. Then he would step outside the cave, leap up and grab a low hanging branch of one of the blabbering trees and swing and screech and pound his chest with his free hand until the answer came to him. Although he looked suspiciously like a man to many of the creatures who had seen them, he didn’t wear any article of clothing, with the exception of a golden tasseled fez that Belius had given him for once having dislodged a mouse bone from Bonita’s throat.
For one as quiet and contemplative as the ape was, it was a mystery to all why he chose to live amidst the clamor of the blabbering trees. Distant cousins to the cypress of the lesser world, these trees were notorious for their twaddle. They murmured and whispered and mumbled all day long, never making any sense. What his neighbors did not realize was that he used strands of the long stringy moss that was indigenous to them for his sutures when sewing up patients after an operation.
All of his instruments and medicines were adapted from nature. His scalpels were razor thin slivers of onyx he hammered from off the wall in a far flung passage of his cave. To check temperatures, he utilized an unopened bud of the telmis bush. If a warm blooded animal’s temperature exceeded the danger point, the heat from their body, as they clenched the stem between their teeth, would cut the bud’s gestation period to only a few minutes, resulting in a beautiful pink bloom of a warning.
The medicinal herbs he administered were grown by Belius in the garden near the tower. Other useful items (toadstools, snake venom, etc.) were gathered from the wild during a journey that he took early each spring. The cadavers he studied with exquisite patience were donated by their former owners, who, having once been treated by the ape, appreciated his work and hoped that their mortal coils would benefit his future efforts.
When Belius and Pezimote entered the cave, they found the ape sitting at his huge granite desk on a tree stump chair, gazing at a mess of shrew brains laid out before him on a palm leaf. With one hand he held a half-eaten banana, and, with the other, he scratched his head beneath the brim of his fez.
Belius hated to interrupt the physician at his studies, knowing the aggravation he, himself, felt when friends would drop in just as he was penning a crucial passage of The Cosmology.
The minotaur cleared his throat as a gentle attempt to draw the ape’s attention.
Shebeb slowly tore his gaze from the labyrinth of convolutions sitting before him and looked over his shoulder. “Please come in,” he muttered.
“How are you, Shebeb?” asked Belius.
“I’m well.”
Pezimote nodded but gave no greeting. He was wary of the ape ever since Shebeb had asked him if he would consider donating his carcass to the medical cause when he died. “I refuse to die,” were Pezimote’s last words to him four years earlier.
“What is it, Belius?” asked the ape.
“I’m sick.”
“Explain.”
“Well, there’s a darkness inside of me I can’t get rid of. It’s as if my worst enemy were sharing my body with me. I can’t concentrate. I sit for hours and stare. I sleep too much.”
“Headaches?” asked the healer, rising from his chair and shuffling up to grasp Belius’ wrist.
Pezimote backed away from the two, taking a seat in the waiting area near the entrance.
“Headaches, eyeaches, heartaches,” said Belius.
“Bowel movements?” asked the ape.
“Scanty and hard as diamonds.”
“Have you been eating?”
“Light meals.”
“Are you still smoking the digitalis everyday?”
“I’ve cut down considerably,” said the minotaur.
Pezimote drew his head inside his shell, but the laugh escaped and echoed throughout the cave.
“I see,” said Shebeb with a frown. He took his hand off Belius’ wrist and laid it across his forehead between the horns. “Nausea, vomiting, dizziness?”
“No … but my anger—I’m angry a lot lately—my anger and my sadness manifest themselves sometimes in physical ways.”
“So you feel frustrated. Am I right?” asked the ape, nodding as if he already knew the answer.
“Yes.”
“I see, I see. Not surprising. Do you have the day free?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I’m going to have to do exploratory surgery. Take off your jacket and roll up your sleeve. Wait over there, I’ll be with you in a few minutes.”
“What’s the verdict?” Pezimote asked. He could see from Belius’ heavy breathing that the minotaur was shaken.
“He’s going to cut me,” Belius answered, sitting down next to his friend.
“Does he have to remove something?”
“No, exploratory surgery.”
“Sounds serious,” said Pezimote.
“Where’s Vashti? I thought she’d be here,” said Belius, leaning his head back and nervously tapping his horns against the wall behind him.
“I haven’t seen her today. But for Vashti not to keep an appointment, it must be something terribly important.”
“Yes, yes,” Belius grumbled.
Shebeb was busy moving around the cave, cleaning his instruments and lighting extra torches to make the work area brighter. After a considerable time of preparation, he called Belius over next to the flat slab of marble that was his operating table. Although he hated the sight of any creature’s blood, especially that of his friends, Pezimote followed in order to offer moral support. Now he also wished Vashti were there, she being much better at such things, knowing just what to say to instill courage.
The ape left them standing near the table and went to a more distant part of the cave. When he returned a few minutes later, he was carrying, in the palm of one hand, a small wooden replica of a castle. The tiny building was no more than four inches high and three wide. He set it down on the marble slab. Belius and Pezimote leaned over it, marveling at the minute detail of lattice and turret and cupola.
“I want you to meet my assistant,” said Shebeb to Belius. Reaching up, he pulled a hair out of his head. With the end of the stout grey strand, he tapped on the gates of the diminutive structure. “Thip, come out,” he called in a rough whisper. “We have work.”
Almost instantly, the gate came down on microscopic strands, like a drawbridge opening. An insignificant speck of black hopped out of the palace and into view.
“Thip, the flea,” said Shebeb as an introduction and waved his hand in the direction of the dark atom.
“What’s he do?” asked Belius.
“He’s an explorer,” answered the ape. “He has made more than two dozen voyages in the name of medicine. I make a cut in your arm and insert him and his raft into your system. He will travel the rivers and channels of your bloodstream, taking notes in an attempt to give me an idea as to what’s wrong with you.”
“One cut?” asked Belius.
“That’s all. One cut and you won’t feel a thing. I’ll administer the hepbane and nightshade mist before I begin.”
“That doesn’t sound too bad,” said Belius, looking over his shoulder to Pezimote for encouragement. Pezimote could only shrug.
“It must be done, Belius,” said the ape. “Your problem is an internal one, I’m sure.”
“Well, if it must be done. How long will it take?” asked the minotaur.
“No more than two hours. When the operation is done, though, you must donate ten drops of your blood to him. That’s his price. Do you agree?”
“A small price if it will lead to a cure,” said Belius.
Shebeb slid Thip’s home out of the way. “Get up on the table no
w and lie on your back,” he said.
At his work area, Shebeb measured out the right amount of leaves of each of the plants that would combine to form the anesthetic. He then crumbled them into the bottom portion of a halved, hollowed out coconut shell and set them on fire with a piece of kindling he lit off of the torch burning directly above him. An orange mist began to swirl up from the burning concoction. So as not to imbibe any of it himself, he quickly fit the top section of the coconut over the bottom. He set this down on a tray along with a scalpel, a monocle made from the cornea of an eagle’s eye and a pair of delicate tweezers that were a cat’s whisker bent in half. “Please, you must now retire to the waiting area,” Shebeb told Pezimote.
The tortoise stumped Belius on the shoulder and then dragged himself away, wishing he had packed a lunch with which to pass the time.
Belius looked up from where he lay to see that almost his entire field of vision was eclipsed by the ape’s huge head. He hoped for at least one confident smile from the jutting jaw but none was forthcoming.
“Belius, when I open this coconut in your face, I want you to breathe in as deeply as possible. Ready?”
Belius nodded, too nervous to speak.
Shebeb lifted the coconut off the tray and opened it just a sliver beneath Belius’ snout. “Breathe in and hold it as long as you can.” The orange vapor seeped out of what looked like the laughing mouth of a coconut head. Belius inhaled deeply, taking the full dose in one breath. He held it in like a diver with a hundred fathoms left to ascend.