We see our creation create. We see the world it creates for us—hills and rivers, cities and villages, ditches and highways. We see the world stretch out beneath the wings of Last Drink Bird Head, bleeding over the edges of the horizon, beyond the limits of our imagination.
Then, with a beat of its wings, Last Drink Bird Head is over those horizons and gone. And we are alone.
We will build again, you and I. We will create once more. Perhaps together. More likely not. But there will be more beauties. More monsters.
Perhaps, years gone by, we will come back here, make our Last Drink Bird Head one more time. But this time, as it flies away, we will find that it is not quite as we remembered, that the echo of its wings is a counterpoint to our memory. And we will run our hands over the workbench. And was it truly so stained last time? So beaten and worn? Had this junk accumulated here?
And then we will realize that, with our backs turned, our Last Drink Bird Head has kept on flying, has kept on over those horizons and beyond. Its colors have kept on leaking. And it is not it, no, not at all, but you and I who have been made anew.
MARLY YOUMANS
Marly Youmans is the author of Little Jordan, Catherwood, The Wolf Pit, (The Shaara Award), The Curse of the Raven Mocker, Claire, Ingledove, and Val/Orson. www.marlyyoumans.com
1. Last Drink Bird Head
I sprawled onto the sand when they shoved me, and one of them jabbed a finger toward the setting sun.
“Go!”
When the tallest, long-bearded but not yet crooked with age, looked as though he would help me up, the others shouted in protest. Still, he slipped a crumpled scrap of paper in my hand.
“It’s directions, Tingling,” he whispered, “from a friend.”
The note’s four words mocked me.
2. Last
The numberless sands went on.
Those old men had branded me infidel and sent me into the desert. My sweetheart, my mother, and my father had been slaughtered. Yet I trudged on and could not die.
In a good hour I came on the oasis of a shop, sign creaking: a solitary shoe, with LAST carved underneath.
The bandylegged owner laughed when he caught me drinking from a basin on the floor. He brought me a brimming pitcher, and I drank while he washed my feet.
Afterward, the last-maker measured them with his hands—the girth of the ball against the girth between thumb and middle finger, the instep between thumb and little finger. Søren whittled two precious spars of wood into lasts, shaping feather edge and toe and heel.
Each day, he flung the shavings into the air, and they sailed away like feathers.
3. Drink
Once at daybreak, Søren gave me the pitcher and sent me to the spring. As always, I drank its bright sweetness and bathed in the pool until the sea sang in my ears.
I slept, cradled by water, and when I woke, saw an angel cutting diagonally away from the fountain. The battered cup was still trembling on its chain.
4. Bird
Søren handed me a pair of veldtschoen, as soft as the down a rabbit pulls for its nests.
“Godspeed, Tom Tingling,” he said. Tears moistened the crow’s feet by his eyes.
“My brother,” I said, clasping his hands. “Søren, mender of soles.”
As I waved farewell, I glimpsed a white bird arrowing into the west, and followed.
5. Head
Desert ended in sea; I recognized its song before seeing the waves. The bird crossed the headland once, twice, and vanished.
Moon shone like a cup above the promontory.
At first I saw a crown of thistle, an ear of barley, a river’s source, a spearhead.
Then moon’s bowl shook the dust of seeing into my eyes.
“Strange,” I whispered.
A giant lay buried to his chin in sand. I scaled his cheek, clambered over his eyelids, and crawled through the mouth, left like a door ajar.
Moonlight sifted through his eyes and lit my path as I wound deep into the brain. Its corridors grew as infinite as the sands outside. The way became a labyrinth of sweet compacted dream—meadows, hills, and lakes. At an unexpected turning, sun filled a valley of apple trees with light. I glimpsed a familiar shape shining in the orchard and began to run.
CATHERINE ZIEDLER
Catherine Zeidler’s fiction has appeared or is upcoming in The Collagist, The Mississippi Review, Best American Fantasy, Hobart and Smokelong Quarterly. She has an MFA from the University of Michigan and a small website catpatz.com. She lives in Denmark.
I
The night’s last drink on the bedside table, where it would sit all night and several more, untouched except for the first hungry gulps, she throws her head down like she is at the carnival, swinging the hammer to prove her strength, but instead of a stuffed elephant the prize is salvation. And he pushes her head in rhythmic bobs and thinks of mechanical dipping birds of the future. He says, why? She doesn’t answer but keeps going until she vomits into her hand, his lap, the bed.
II
We catch the trail at the bird’s left foot. The talon is smooth but the foot is bumpy. We are on road bikes although the guidebook suggested mountain bikes. It’s like riding on cobblestone. Our butts hurt. We start to sweat as the foot slopes into the leg. We look over the sea to the other leg and see another group descending on mountain bikes, whooping and hollering. A cloud of down trails them, fluttering down into the water. The path here is easy to follow. We just keep climbing, up toward the thick white body.
On the body, our tires sink into the skin and the feathers are thick and hard to navigate. The path is marked by blue paint on the stalks but we fear they have washed off in some places, by strong waves or rain. We sometimes ride a long way, seeing nothing but white, afraid we will be stuck on the bird forever.
Halfway up the body we take a side trail onto a wing. It is marked with yellow paint on the flattened surface of the feathers, but the markings aren’t necessary. We follow the coast of the wing out to the tip, and then back along the other coast to re-join the body. We can feel the sea below the wing and the sky above us and the feathers feel like heaven below our smooth tires.
Coming down into the valley of the neck, the long slope makes us reckless and giddy. We taunt each other and crash into feathers, falling from our bikes. We laugh and linger in the bird’s pliant skin, leaning against stalks, gulping water, looking up through the dense white to the blue sky.
Climbing out, our legs are tired and we are already thinking of the long ride back down the bird.
The head is good to us. The skull is close so the ride is smooth, and the feathers feel thinner; we see the sea and sun through them. We stop at the eye to watch our reflections.
The best part is at the end of the beak where a sign shaped like an arrow pointing down has the word ‘bar’ painted on it. We are ecstatic. The guidebook mentioned a surprise but we never guessed.
We lay our bikes down and climb into the open beak. It’s an honor bar so we pour some whiskey and leave some money in the jar. We pull our stools to the edge and look across the water. We drink and agree that we will never have another drink like this. We might as well make this our last drink. We think of some people who would be pleased. We won’t do it of course, but we talk about it over another drink, the bird’s teeth hovering above us, behind us the long gullet leading into the belly.
DEREK FORD
Good Night, Last Drink Bird Head
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