“Smell that?  Saffron.  When you bed their birds, you can smell it on them.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Thondup turns to face the city as it edges toward the sea on bamboo stilts.  Along squalid cubes and behind windows without panes, housewives lug baskets or tend children and cooking pots.  A group of concubines is approaching.  They pass giggling and saunter away down the plank walk, the folds of their kimonos furling.  Thondup’s tongue swipes his mustache. 

“High time for some of that.”

Below Thondup’s beard, the leather pouch rests under his fist, a brown speck of blood still on his shirtsleeve.  His eyes reflect a dull, belly-inferno.  The other hand is jingling change.  He lifts out a woman’s gold ring. He turns it in the sunset, and then reaches out and tucks it into House’s palm.

“Souvenir.  Don’t let Wonderful see it.”

House twists it against the knuckle of his smallest finger.  He opens and closes his hand. 

“She’ll do better.”

“Than bloody French?  You’d hope so!  Here’s our little, monkey-toting slant now.”

 Thondup pulls French’s silver watch from his pocket and flicks it open.

 “Three-and-a-half hours.”

“We set up?”

“No choice but to find out.  My Ruskies run off or got shot.  That leaves these Samurai.  When we get in there, smile and keep your gun hand loose.  I scratch the back of my head, go for the guts. ” 

An adolescent in a tattered blouse is strutting up, his shadow long on the plank walk.  He halts several feet from Thondup.  His fists are stuffed in his pockets, and a yellow monkey clings to his black curls.

“Nice of you to drop by,” says Thondup.

“Sir?”

“I said, that took way too long, son.”

“Sorry, sir.  Jeweler not easy to find.”

Still resting against the rail, Thondup folds his arms.   

“I like to see the positives.  Weather’s nice.  Nice racial blend here.  I like the long legs on the Japo-Siberian bird.  Got a number of pups by them myself.  You never been with a woman, have you boy?  Not with that thing on your head.  You’re a good–looking kid; sell that ape off.  Get yourself some money.  Steal it if you have to.  Then, they’ll help you climb on.”

Thondup stuffs the watch into his pocket with his thumb.

“I was like you once.  Underfed son of a whore, whipped on by any random john that took a notion to whip on me.  All changed the day I bloodied my own fists.  It’s, what do you call it, evolution.  You know why there’s Siberians way out here?  The Siberian is a cabbage eater.  Lives in the most hellish patch on earth.  But the Siberian forgot how to feel sorry for himself.  Same with the monkey.  Same with the wolf.  House, you know the first thing a new top dog does when he takes over?”

“Kills all the pups.”

“That’s right.  He kills all the pups.  Nature’s got no plan for weakness.  On the other hand . . ..”

Thondup raises one finger and shakes it.

“On the other hand, she don’t tolerate a fool, neither.  Not at all.  Runs through five fools for every weakling.”

Thondup pushes himself from the rail and steps close to the boy.  He places a finger under his chin.  The monkey, tail coiling, bares his teeth. 

“You ain’t a fool, are you?  You just set up on me, son?”

“No sir!”

“Because that would be a very, very foolish idea.  Worst possible idea.  No matter how the cards play out, you got no way to win.  Even if some inbred Japo-Russian maggot ends me, won’t do you no good.   See, I left behind my other two gun hands.”   

Thondup runs a thick finger from the boy’s pelvis to his throat, and through his teeth, imitates the sound of a slicing blade.

“Only one happy ending to this story.  That’s the one where I leave with my pockets full of cash.” 

 The voice drones on, a self-conversant logos giving rise to tile roofs in corn within an expanse rolling and half-darkened, somnolent and mist-sunken.  We are off to photograph the south slope of Changbai Shan.  Or I should say, I am off to photograph the mountain; the rest are off to photograph one another upon the mountain.  A great number of people I have met in China find landscapes, absent the human figure, a bit lonely, and the members of my “photography association” provide no exceptions.   

 Outside the bus, over scarecrows tilting, a red sun rises in mist, warming tarnished autumn fields.  Ridges follow one another in wash: reflections of nearer wooded humps with ponds in their crotches.  Hills gradually squeeze out fields while the fiftyish man just behind the bus driver intones tirelessly into the microphone.  A woman takes over.  She introduces herself and then belts out, “Welcome New Friends; Cherish Old Friends”.  She invites another to the front.  Each person sings or tells a tale or a joke. 

 Most songs are standbys.  “Bitter Coffee”, “The Moon Bears Witness to My Heart” “Play Happily; Play with Joy”.  It’s a medley: rose-scented chansons de tristesse, a few ballads that resound with the space and spirit of frontier areas, along with heady anthems forged during the era preceding the Cultural Revolution:    

 The east is red; a sun is

 rising;

From China emerges Mao Zedong,

He the happiness of the people—

Shout hurrah!

He is the savior of the people.

 Chairman Mao loves the people.

He is our helmsman

Charting the course to a new China!

Shout hurrah!  Lead the way!

 The words, as if recalled from an almost imagined age, are often stumbled over.  I dutifully get up and try a song.  Nobody is familiar with my Chinese pop tune, but all clap along until I hit a wrong note and can’t recover.  We all laugh.  I choose someone.

 On the way back home, it all happens again, but this time washed in 140-proof baijiu and up ten decibels.  Out of bitter experience, I decline.  At the back of the bus, as drinks are pounded, they bellow, yi, er, SAN!

 Bus rides to and from the weekly destinations of our “photography” group always feature this Bus Culture, literally qiche wenhua. 

 Back at home I have a look at my photos.  I can almost re-experience the transcendent emanation of tranquility that emanated from tianshi or the lake within this cooled volcano.  On my desk now, I have a small bit of pressed ash to help me recall.  I couldn’t help but end up with a snapshots of figures that burst into my path and commenced posing.   I get to thinking about this word, culture.  Of course, few people in my own background would think of referring to bus-ride revelry, however colorful or ritualistic, as culture.   But then culture is like a scent in your own house.  You don’t notice it until someone else, stepping among your darling terriers, holds her nose.  “Experiencing” culture—as opposed to floating along in one’s own—tends to be a ride in a raucous wayward bus of miscommunication, minor mishaps, and discordant expectations.  

 For me, the novelty of living in a foreign place wore off after a year or two.  I felt like a battered tug on the bounding main.   Just the language provided daily confusion, turning simple tasks to hurdles.  The word “ma”, as a single example, can mean to belabor someone, a horse, mother, or spicy, depending on the tone used.  And if a fourth tone precedes a fourth tone, better change the first fourth to a second.  I have been guilty of repeatedly mispronouncing a word, with an increasing sense of frenzy, into the faces of bewildered listeners.  Once, I stalked through a market demanding mifan (cooked rice) when what I wanted was dami (the actual grain). 

 After a while though, the sounds of the storm become more familiar, a voice in the background that one understands that one does not need to understand. It strikes me, after all this time, that I am learning something important: at least for me.  That is, to sing and then laugh, with everyone else, at myself.

The Cook, Vault, and Chess

Finley J. MacDonald

House’s navy boots gouge deep as he pushes among weeds.  From naked bluffs, branching, glossy highways follow a black apron like a wide tar pit swallowing heaps of scrap metal, abandoned boats, armor.  A blasted concrete pillbox lifts a warped, metal net.  A warehouse like a patched coffin lurks behind mortars with barrels rusted, tires crumpled.  Closer, in a river of debris, a cabin squats, smoke twisting over the window and flattish roof.  House follows a path though the debris, passing the sheep carcass missing one front quarter and dangling from a tilting, concrete pole.  The hide lies lumpy and glistening over a pile of split, stacked, wood, in front of which tilts the handle of a double-bitted axe, head in a stump.  House lays a hand on the handle, pops it out, and sits down on the stump, drawing off his hood.  While he scrapes the mud from his boots with the axe blade, gulls above yelp and churn against gray clouds.  At his foot, the sheep’s head, mud-caked, bites its tongue.  House rises and whacks the axe back into its spot.

House pushes in through the doorway of the cabin, the tarp dropping down behind to close out the drizzle.  The grungy darkness stinks of rats, mutton, and pepper, and upon walls shedding newsprint hang rusty shearing blades.  Buckets of sheep paint are stacked in the corners, and in several spots on the floor, empties have been set catching drips.  Beyond a doorway to a back room, bedrolls are heaped on a single cot, and next to the window, a lantern whispers smoky light over a dented, unclean bread box, canisters, a can sprouting cutlery handles, a blood-stained chopping knife on a slab of wood, a ladle with its head in a saucer, and a timer with stilled hands.  In the center of the table, a chess board rests in mid-game, pieces alongside.  A number of stumps and stools have been placed around the table.  Beyond the table, a coffee urn, upon two bricks, spews weakly, while a scorched cooking pot shakes its lid.  In a nest of rotten clothing between towers of sheep-paint cans, a tan dog thumps his tail.  He gathers himself and shambles, tail flopping, across sinking, broken planks.  He runs his muzzle up House’s leg.

The stove shakes.  Squatting in front, a black man is whopping a too-large chunk of firewood, driving it into the stove with his fist.  The wood breaks through, thumps into the fire bed, and sparks flood out the door, the firelight reddening the dewlaps under the man’s eyes, the nose wide and flat under hair like grey lichen.  Without closing the stove door, he pushes up, and he tips the damper slightly.  He places his hands on his hips.  The stove pipe whooshes with flame moving within, clicking as the metal expands.  The old man turns.  His shoulders give a jump, and he places a hand upon his chest.

“Slip up like that!  Stop a man’s heart.”

“You got a heart, Cook?  Nothing left of you but dried-up leather and sea salt, is there?”

“Why—I am all heart.  How goes that drilling?  Tell me we rich.”

House strips the coat from his shoulders and lifts it to a rusty spike. 

 “We may be.  Ayway, we drilled through the lock.”

“You don’t say!”

“Used up every last one of fifty bits.”

 “But the vault—it ain’t open?”

“No it ain’t.”

“So?”

“We just sit awhile.  Left the smith there, dribbling in some acid.  We just let her soak awhile.  When she spins, you shine a light in there and line it all up.  Then she opens.”

“I’ll be!  Hope it pops before we all hanging from poles like the sheep out there.”

“We got time.  Junior Childes won’t risk his boats in this.  It ain’t propitious.”

“Pro-what?  What the hell’s that mean?”

“Means it ain’t good.”

The cook slams the stove door.

“Then say good, for heaven’s sake.”

“Nothing wrong with putting a little lawyer-man’s point on it.  I’m going to need them kinda words when I’m wearing a suit every day, smoking store-rolleds at the end of an ivory holder.”

House steps around a bucket catching drips and sits down on the stool closest to the stove.  He draws a firearm from the waistband of his trousers and lays it on the table.

“Got a rag?  Got to wipe down my piece.”

“You gunslingers.  Think cloth grows out on them island bushes.”

The cook sidles along a wire strung with socks and looped from the stove pipe to a low beam. 

“I got but a couple left for my dishes.”

He shuffles to the table and lays the cloth in front of House.  

“What is that rude-looking piece?”

House ejects the clip from a three-screwed hunk of stamped metal.  He pushes out the brass cartridges onto the table, lining them up, six in a row.

“Something to make peasants run hollering across a field.  Makes a big boom but won’t hit nothing unless you’re right up on it.  I fired on some massive birds down there.  Just cocked their heads and flapped up slow.  Reminds me.  I got some eggs in my coat.  If they ain’t broke.  You can fry me up a couple in the morning.”

 House lays the clip beside the line of cartridges, and the dog follows him as he steps to his coat.  He holds out the bottom of his shirt and sets in five brownish eggs from his coat pocket.  At the table, he lays them one by one in a bowl, and he hands it to the cook.

“You want them eggs scrambled or fried?”

“Fried.  Nice and greasy, along with some toast and mutton chops.”

“We got no bread.”

“All right.  Eggs and steak, no bread.”

  House sits down and takes up the firearm.  He wipes and turns it, checking the exterior plate, hammer, and tab-style trigger.

“Now,” says the cook, gimping for the stove.  “When I was on the Ellie Mae, we all toted sawed-off shotguns. Loaded up with buckshot.  You can knock over anything with those, boy.  But like you say, you gotta be right up on ‘em.  A heap a them’s what we need for that Junior Childes.”

“Wouldn’t do no good.  You ever waste a man, Cook?”

“Just one time.”

“What time was that?”

“Probably before you was even born.  How I got this limp.  Aboard the Ocean Pig.  In harbor, about to offload our Chinese sugar, rum, cloth, guns, whatever else.  It was like this, rain coming down a little.  I’m sleeping one off in the cook shack when I hear pah-pah, poppety.  I stuff my legs in my drawers, git my piece, and go busting out.  I can hear men galloping every which way, but I can’t see a thing.  I come creeping around a corner and there he is, out in the light, wearing a hood.  I just stand there—don’t know if he’s one of us or not—and blam, I feel a little slap here on my knee.  And he’s a-backing up, fiddling with his piece, dropping shells.  I raise up. Blam, blam!  He’s still backing off, eyes like teacups.  And then the piece drops, and the knees go.  I come up, keeping the piece on him.  He’s laying there on his back.”

The cook holds an imaginary gun in both hands and takes a step, staring at the planks.

“Now, I shoot him, I put a hole in the deck.  So I just look at them pretty, blue eyes.  Yellow-haired kid.  Ain’t no more shooting now, just my mates hollering back and forth.  My knee is leaking a little, but I don’t feel nothing.  And then pretty soon, them blue eyes ain’t seeing me no more.  But for years I see them.  Still do sometimes, before I drift off.”

House lifts the piece up toward the steamed window, where the mutton carcass hangs blurred in thick glass robbed from the corpse of a military transport.  He squeezes off an imaginary round.

“That’s why they hood a guy before they stand him against the wall.  Cover up them eyes. You never want to look at the eyes.”

The cook takes up a ladle from where it sits on the table, draining into a saucer.  He pulls the lid off the cooking pot, and his fist winds through the steam.

“Now you tell me.  Thondup and the rest of you all right behind?”

“They’ll be here.  They got something to take care of first.”

“Not that there’s any hurry.  This mutton stew gonna be like a chopped tire less it simmers near an hour more.  And you git no bread.  I set out the last loaf on the table, go out to fetch some wood.  When I come back in, two rats as big as house cats going at it, chewing that bread down to a nub.  They just set up there on their haunches a minute sizing me up, and then they haul off for the back room, one of ‘em with chunk under his chin.  Never even knocked over a chess piece.”

The cook lifts up the full ladle and sniffs the stew.  He blows on the broth and sips.  He dunks the ladle back into the pot and lifts a tin pepper shaker over the stew.

 “This here is some rough mutton.  A whether lamb, I tell that French.  Comes dragging back a nine-year-old ewe with her teeth all gone.  Not that I complained.  That French fierce like a mink.”

House lifts the coffee cup by the rim for another sip and shakes his head.

“French is a hassle.  In fact, he is a detriment.  Always got to make everything ugly.  Chewed on the smith’s ear the whole time.  Not the smith’s fault we couldn’t get at those tumblers.  They can’t make bits that hard nowadays, not like back when they made that vault door. You go so far in, and then it’s black metal dust and no progress.” 

House folds the cloth around the firearm and sets it on the table before the chess board. 

“Cup me some of that coffee, Cook.”

The cook draws his hand into a soiled sleeve to lift the pot off the stove.  With one hand on the table, he leans to fill one of the tin cups.  He slides the steaming cup in front on House, shuffles back for the stove, and sets the coffee pot on the brick seat.  House reaches across the table, pulls a spoon from a can of cutlery, screws the lid off a canister, and dumps three spoonfuls of sugar into his coffee.  He stirs, and then sets the spoon on the table.  He lifts the cup by the rim, blows, and sips, and sets down the cup.  He raises his leg, and drops a boot on the edge of the kindling box next to the stove.  From beside the chessboard, he picks up the captured, black knight and raises it under the lantern.

“You play, cook?”

“Not so much.”

“When I was inside, used to have these chess tournaments, prison-wide.  Every man in that prison would have something riding on the winners.  Took months.  You’d write your move on bit of paper and roll it, send out the bars on a string.  That was the system.  Might have to make its way clear over to the on death row, but it would get there.  This old escape artist in solitary, Spandarian, was a legend.  Best not to bet against Spandarian, aye?  Played a real defensive game.  Get your forces mobilized and then you’d find youself twisted up, short a piece or two, and then, checkmate, game over.  We all reckoned he was unbeatable.  But you never know.  A politico named Pepper landed in screwland and took the crown.” 

“Chess ain’t much of a game for boats.  Pieces fall over.  Me, I like cards.”

“Chess beats cards to hell.  It’s like a fight.  Just you and your will to win across from your enemy.  Choice of weapons: chess pieces.  More I think about it, the more it reminds me of life.  Right now, Childes and Felix Silver are the kings here on these islands.  You and me, damn sure pawns.   Now, if you’re a pawn, you most likely come to a bad end.  Like that yellow-haired kid with them baby-blue eyes.  Shit, you never ended that kid.  He wound up dead because he was somebody’s pawn.” 

House sets the knight beside the chess board, picked up a pawn, and holds it in two fingers.

“But once in a while, a pawn, he makes it all the way across, and he gets to be something different.  That’s what’s about to happen to you and me, cook.  We are going to be the pawns that made it across the board.”

“Better late than never,” says the cook. 

He places the lid on the stew and lays aside the ladle.  House sets the pawn beside the board.

“What are you going to do with your haul, Cook?”

The cook pulls a stool in front of the stove and sit down.  He gouges a pocket knife into the bowl of his pipe. 

“I’m going to buy me a boat.”

“Not me,” says House.  “I seen all I want to see of boats.  Boats mean work.”

The cook taps the pipe on the edge of the kindling box. 

“I never been afraid of work.  Slung hash on everything that floats since I was twelve years old.  Fishing boats, merchant vessels, cruise ships.  Bandit rigs.  How I got hooked up with Thondup.  Cooked on a sub during the war.  Been to China and back I don’t know how many times.  The only kinda boat I never worked on was a slaver.  Man, I’m tired of all that.  Mostly of saying yessir, nosir.  That and listening to men gripe about food.  I just want a little trolling rig, something small enough I can handle.  That gonna be my home.  Sell me just enough fish for fuel.  Eat what I catch.  Cook it up on the boat.  Fresh, batter-fried haddock.  Shark steak.  When I don’t have nothing to do, going to do nothing.  I don’t want to hear a sound except waves and birds.  I don’t want to see a thing but sun and sea.  That is the best life in the world.”

“Not for me.  I was reared up in a village.  I like a pig feast with a lot of wine and women.  If I never ate haddock or shark again in my life, I’d be just fine.  I’m gonna get in a boat long enough to make my way to a South China island.  You can buy a cottage by the sea for nothing like the price of your boat.  Women there got black eyes and hair down to their asses.”

“Hope you make it there.  Me, I’m too old for women with hair down to their asses.”

The cook draws a tattered, paper bag from his shirt pocket, unrolls it in his lap, and drops two pinches of dry, powdery matter into the bowl.  He rolls up the bag and pushes it back into his shirt pocket.   He pokes the stuff down in the bowl with his thumb.  He strikes a match, and the flame jumps as he puffs at the stem.  The dog is sniffing House’s thigh.  House drinks his coffee and ruffles the matted forelock.  Out the window, beyond the sheep carcass, the ocean comes furrowing from under a bank of fog.  The rain is coming harder now against the darkened window, runnels working their way down the glass.  In the room, droplets plop into the paint cans, the stove pipe sizzles, and rats scratch and thump in the walls.  Not far away, two quick reports are followed by a third, delayed shot.

The cook lifts his pipe.

“You boys sure like to waste your shells firing away on them poor birds.”

“Naw,” says House. 

He dumps the dregs from his coffee cup onto the floor planks.

“That would one less mouth for you to feed, Cook.  Old Frenchy going to shake hands with the devil.  Slide me over some of that that smoke, Cook.  I’m gonna roll me one with some of that newspaper.” 

Harbin, Heilongjiang province, China: a gritty metropolis.  Ice-crusted neighborhoods with baozi steamers billowing in doorways skirt expanding building projects.  Faces pass pinched and creased by time and Siberian winds.

Nowadays, the city’s main claim to fame is its International Ice and Snow Festival.  Someone once told me that part of the Chinese Zeitgeist is a taste for goofy, child-like fun.  The Ice and Snow Festival surely fits that bill.  Picture a Disneyland of glowing ice cubes, inhabited by dancing bears, bunnies, and the inevitable students posing for photos.

For those who favor museums over goofy fun, there’s Unit 731 Museum.  If you wish to visit, I recommend brushing up on the history.  Factories of Death by Sheldon Harris is an account of the Japanese Kwangtung Army’s biological and chemical warfare program in China from 1937 to the surrender of the Japanese in 1942.  A documentary can be found here.

Unit 731, also known as the “Epidemic and Water Purification Unit”, was a biological and chemical experimentation center for the Kwangtung Army situated in a suburb of Harbin called Ping Fang.  At the time, occupied Harbin was the northern industrial hub of “Manchukuo”, as the Japanese designated the northeastern region of China known as Dongbei.

In Ping Fang, in the heart of winter, a low pall fed by columns of coal smoke looms over battered factory buildings.  At the squat guardhouse, show your passport to enter free.  Before you, at the end of a wide, brick lane, extend the wings of an administration building: rusty-ashen and black-windowed.  As you approach, the aging bricks seem to exude a muted sense of brutality.

Within the administration building, exhibits are restrained.  Objects unearthed from the rubble sequestered behind glass.  Gas masks, test tubes, spent shells, and viscera hooks.  In the memorial hall, slate plaques bearing victims names line two, long walls.

The placards will inform you that Chinese victims at 731 were dubbed “logs” by the Japanese, a reference to the Unit’s official cover as a lumber mill.  Russian prisoners and later Allied prisoners were added to the Chinese, also to be injected or otherwise exposed to cholera, anthrax, bubonic plague, small pox, among other diseases.  As infections advanced, prisoners were selected for live vivisections that degeneration rates might be monitored.  In other experiments, the effectiveness of explosives was tested on victims staked out around detonation points.  Others were frozen, and limbs were sawn off in a macabre exercise in data-mining.

It was within Unit 731 that Japanese technicians developed a means of dispersing bubonic-plague-ridden fleas over a populace.  Subsequently, ceramic shells full of infected fleas were dropped around nearby Chinese villages.  Later, personnel arrived masked and gloved to perform autopsies on the dead and dying.

Besides Unit 731, lesser known units were imbedded in cities across China.  Notably, Unit 100, called the Warhorse Disease Prevention Shop, was established just south of Changchun.  Unit 100 was largely occupied with researching diseases and chemicals for destroying crops and animals, but human prisoners were also used.

In Nong An, a group of Japanese doctors established a clinic at Beiguan school, ostensibly to combat the plague, which had “cropped up” in Changchun suburbs.  Entire neighborhoods were called out for inspection, and each individual running a fever was taken.  Locals joked morbidly that anybody ushered through the front door of Beiguan School exited the rear a corpse.  In order to avoid being picked up, inhabitants attempted to reduce temperatures with potato slices under the armpits, while women applied heavy, pallor-disguising makeup.

Virtually none who worked within the walls of 731 or other centers saw justice.  A deal was made, and the American military came into possession of 731 documentation.

You might ask what value lies in dredging up such detestable history.  I would argue that the value of reminders like 731 is that they stand as antidotes against the self-congratulatory, paternalistic, but ultimately violent mindset at the root of imperialism.  Periodically, the publishing of Japanese textbooks reduces the Kwangtung Army’s incomprehensible ravages in China to a footnote.  The Chinese, understandably, become infuriated that an entire generation of Japanese may grow up completely ignorant of that historical context.  The bliss of ignorance is an opiate the modern world can scarcely afford, given the price paid for war and imperialism over the last century.

After viewing the museum, you may walk the footpath encircling snow-muffled craters remaining from the Japanese attempt to eradicate every trace of what had been done here.  Perhaps 100 meters away, battered incinerator stacks project from a disfigured wall.  Flanked by snaking trees, the administration building, too solid to demolish easily, stretches out before you.  Between you and the administration building, a pillar of rubble juts from the snow, an austere memorial to the innocents.  A sentinel standing guard against “The Dark Ages of the Mind” that would have the ghosts of tragedies past returning to shake man from his self-imposed stupor.

Sanctum

Finley J. MacDonald

All rise.  Heads tilt toward a marble woman about whose ankles coils a thick serpent.  At her waist, the priestess’s head weaves.  Each chanted syllable dies a slow, drifting death beneath the ceiling.  The priestess turns to face kneeling supplicants.  Flat hands rise between candles taller than her head.  Her hands drop.  She turns, and her steps echo as she proceeds across the space and then through a circular doorway.  An instant later, from the same doorway, three figures emerge.  The first—white-robed, shaved, trailing incense—is followed closely by a young girl with golden hair and a bowl wider than her waist. 

The hindmost figure, a woman with a stringed instrument and bow, turns aside and settles into a chair.  Her hair is arranged with metal barrettes.  The bow is still, the eyes flatly inscrutable.  The instrument tilts; the bow dips.  Notes, one flowing into the next, pour saturnine and resigned from a woman swaying as if in a trance, one hand rocking at the bridge of her instrument. 

Coins are clattering. 

The girl with gold, curling hair follows the incense-fanning guide among the small congregation, and coins tumble into her bowl.  When the girl reaches him, Mouse drops in the four coins with the squares cut out of the centers—which the host had earlier pushed into his palm.  The incense bearer and golden-haired girl pass out the round exit.  A moment later, the same incense-bearer returns, leading three shaven youths in white robes.  They bear smaller bowls filled with paper slips.  Incense rising up her robe, the usher with the gray, shaven head stands where the priestess had.  She is staring directly at Mouse.  The girls go handing out slips of paper until everyone, except Mouse, has received a response from the oracle.  The chamber lacks air.  Mouse feels light-headed.  At last, the doors swing open. The congregation flows into the isles.  Light shining on her stubbly head, one of the youths stands in Mouse’s path, hand out to receive his.  Mouse stares at black, female eyes.

“Please come.”

“Where to?”

“The high priestess requests it.”

With Ronaldo shuffling behind her—hand rubbing his whiskers—the host steps up.  

“Is there a problem?”

“Mistress, the high priestess should like to reply to his request personally.”

“We have not paid for this honor, and I’m afraid, cannot afford to.”

“The priestess will forgo the customary fee.”

“This young man is under our care.  This is his first furlough.  It is our responsibility to see that he returns before noon tomorrow.”

“Mistress, please enjoy the gardens for the day and lodge tonight at the inn.  There will be no charge.  You may pick him up in the morning as early as you wish.  A refusal will mean his questions will go unanswered.”

The host is speaking, an angry dimple in her forehead.  Mouse attempts to limp around the girl, to breathe fresh air, but his hand is somehow in the girl’s, and he finds himself starting in the wrong direction, moving toward the rounded doorway. On wet, bandaged feet, girls on both of his arms, he lurches through the passage, into the gloom within.  They pass along a low, sky-lit hallway with curtained doorways.  One curtain opens and the three pass through. 

At first, Mouse can make out only a low candle-surrounded pallet.  Several attendants are posted nearby, hands clasped below their waists.  Deeper in the room, Mouse notices a face surrounded by silk scarves and cushions.  A gold nose ring reaches the full, perfect mouth.  A wrought tiara is nested in black hair.    Mouse pulls back.  The torso is missing its arms. 

“Please do not be afraid,” says a voice, liquid and compelling.  The face gazes at one, scarred stub. 

“I was chosen to represent a path that demands sacrifice of the most terrible sort.  This particular way, I must add, has nothing in particular to do with you.  A long time ago, I ceased mourning that which is gone and cannot ever be returned.  Let us focus upon other things, please.  Do sit down.  If you’ll allow, I should like to see to your feet.”

Mouse is guided to a couch in the darkness.  He sits.  Two attendants are at once untangling the damp strips.  His feet are plunged into a basin of water so hot that he gasps.  A sponge moves over the the top faces of his feet.

“I have dreamed of you before me,” says the goddess.  “Exactly like this.”

“Of me?”

“I see you somewhat differently than you might imagine.  At this moment, I can see red—a cloud—especially across your chest and there at your throat.  That’s pain.  Some of it is new, but most you have been carrying for a long time.  I may be able to relieve some of it.”

“Why would you want to do that?”

“I have my reasons.  You shall have to trust me.  I will not harm you.  That, I promise.”

“It makes me nervous when anyone says ‘trust me’.”

The high priestess smiles.

“But you’ll have to let go a little.”

Mouse’s feet are dried and a salve caressed over the abrasions.  Strips pass and wind about his ankles.  

“My friend—I hope you’ll allow me to call you that—I wish to induce a vision in you.  We shall begin quite simply.  You’ll lie down, and a drop will be placed upon your tongue.  Every few minutes: another drop.  This tincture is powerful, but it is the power of intention, ours and yours, which will guide you where you most need to go.”

“I have had my experiences with that tree of poisons before.  All I got was vomit and nightmares.”

The priestess laughs.

“But it is not the tree of poisons!  The tincture is produced from a species of mushroom.  No one has been able to raise it domestically.  Let’s call it “The tree of possible knowing”.

“All right.”

The curtain opens.  A girl bears a small wooden box upon a velvet cushion.  She sets it before the candle-surrounded pallet.   Two girls take Mouse’s hands and lead him across the floor, and Mouse turns and perches among candles.

“Please.  There is nothing to be afraid of.  Lie down.  Relax.”

Mouse takes a deep breath.  He lies down, and a pillow is tucked under his head.  A soft voice speaks at his ear.

“Close your eyes.  Open your lips.”  

A tasteless, oily drop spreads over the tip of Mouse’s tongue.

“You will sleep for a while,” says the priestess.  “When you awake, you will find yourself in a meadowland.  I shall be with you.”   

The Oracle

Finley J. MacDonald

Across the smoke-gray, spittle-swirling ocean, they push across the bay, the motor popping.  The planks of the boat are chalky with salt, with old pairs of gloves, buoys, shells, and a heap of nets in the bottom. The host sits uncomfortably close to Mouse, her hair sometimes lashing his face.  Mouse takes off his sandals and rubs his toes.  The fat boxer, Ronaldo, stands in the boat guiding the handle of the tiller. 

“I thought you were going to fall in the fire!” he says. 

“Look at those toes!” says the host.  “They look like sea cucumbers.”

“I told you, don’t go up there!  What are you doing, son?  But you had something you had to do up there, I guess.”

Ronaldo and the host laugh.

“I don’t remember anything,” says Mouse.

“Don’t kill yourself on your first furlough, son,” says Ronaldo.

On Mouse’s mind, there is an imprint of a bonfire, dancers, and fireworks.  He recalls a dream landscape, a street with intersections through which he lurched like a cripple, supported on the arms of strangers.  Ronaldo tells him he broke free and plunged among corn stalks, looking for an ear of corn and that he climbed a bluff, screaming nonsense, tearing his ankles in the spiny undergrowth.  The host touches his knee as she laughs at him, and Mouse looks at Ronaldo, whose eyes are slits as he chuckles and guides the boat into the wind.  The host opens a bag of chicken feet.  They chew and spit tiny bones into the water.

When they arrive at the dock, Mouse lurches off the keel, rope in hand, ties off the boat according to Ronaldo’s instructions.  He takes the host by the hand, helping her out of the boat.

They clamber up the stone slide, up onto the dock, and along a straight roadway shining from the morning’s rain.   Dark butterflies twirl, and drops cling to spider webs in dark, wet leaves.  Across a field of shifting corn, cottages bear a ceiling of fog.     

“The Delphic Zoological gardens are some of the best on the islands,” says the host.  “I hope we get our chance to question the oracle!  Think about what you’d ask.”

  At the end of the lane, they pass through a great arch with an inscription across the keystone: Know Thyself.  Through a dark pink and lavender forest with statues and fountains, Mouse hobbles after Ronaldo and his host.  Hands wagging over sketch pads, women in flowered dresses crouch among blossoms, or they walk hand in hand around green pools swirling with giant fish.  Ronaldo stalks from pool to pool, studying the fish. 

“What is this!” he demands, pointing at the surface of a pool.  ”You tell me!  Why have they been taking fish from Delos!  These are the superior Delos Koi?  My eye!  I need to speak to someone.”    

The host laughs and takes Mouse by the arm.   Her yellow hair stirs in the wind, and her eyes seems to blend resignation with gaiety, as she leans toward him confidentially.   

“Ronaldo tells me you are a witness in the Makepeace trial.” 

“Yes.  But I’m not supposed to talk about the case.”

“I understand.  Can I ask you when the first trial date is?”

“Weeks away.”

“Do you like the gardens?”

“Very nice.”

“We are lucky today.  It is usually so crowded.  There are the games this week.  I am not interested in javelins and racing.  I do enjoy the plays and music, but that’s later on.  Ronaldo and I will attend.  It’s too bad you can’t come with us.” 

They approach another arch great arch and pass beneath.

“Do you like working at the hatchery?”

“It beats grapes.”

“You should put in a request for a host.”

“Pardon me for saying so, but I’m not sure I want to get involved here.  I’ll wait for my trial.  If I’m found not guilty, I will leave.”

“I see. I’m sorry.  I heard about the young girl.”

She squeezes his arm.

“And I’m sorry your experience here has been so distressing.  Ronaldo has told me something about it.  Under other circumstances, I think you would have loved our islands.  I’m sorry for that too.  Here we are.  The Oracle is in the temple there.  It is said to be very powerful.  I’ve never seen it without a crowd.  It is usually impossible to get inside.  They say five priestesses without arms channel the python spirit.”

“Without arms!”

“So they say.  They are chosen at birth, and their arms are tied with cords.”

Mouse’s steps drag.

“I don’t think I can take part in this.”

“Oh!  It is only a rumor.  Anyway, you did not take anyone’s arms.  Please come in with us.  Come, Ronaldo, let’s consult the oracle!”

They move down among the crowd of mostly women, a few with male partners.  Mouse shuffles his feet, intensely uncomfortable.  Ushers with shaven heads and white robes sweep down from the entrance of the temple.

“The oracle will close at five!”

One of the ushers lifts the cord across the entrance to the courtyard, and a dozen people trample through before the cord cuts off the flow.  Guides at their flanks, the group goes trotting between giant plants in urns.   Mouse, standing taller than anyone in the crowd, can see them splashing  through a shallow pool below a fountain with stone fish spewing gold streams.  Following Ronaldo, the host tugs Mouse along by the hand and reaches the rope.  The ushers are there again, drawing open the cord; Renaldo, the host, and Mouse slip through with the gush of more aggressive hopefuls.

“The oracle is closed!  Please leave the premises!” shouts an usher. 

A path of paving stones leads them to the edge of a shallow bath. 

“His feet are injured,” the host says to the usher.  “Is it possible for him to go around?”

“All must be purified before entering the presence of the oracle.  He can go back if he wishes.”

The host smiles and shrugs at Mouse.

They slosh through the shallow bath, and Mouse’s bandaging is drenched as they climb marble steps, pass between monolithic columns, and step into an antechamber lit by a thousand candles.  Chanting at the far side of the chamber, a shaved priestess in red and gold robes faces a curtain.  Between two rows of supplicants, ushers swing bronze, smoke-dragging cages.  One usher pushes the latecomers toward stone seats at the rear of the room.  All kneel.  Mouse hesitates.

“What are you doing?” whispers the host.

“I don’t get on my knees.”

“Please!”

Mouse kneels.  Ushers move from person to person, handing out slips of paper.  Mouse takes one, along with a pencil.

“Write your request for the oracle,” says the usher.  “Nothing too long, please.  Fold it, and write your seat number on the back.”

Mouse lays the slip of paper on a slanted wood easel in front of him.  Everyone is writing.  The ushers begin to gather the slips of paper.  Mouse puts the pencil to the paper

My father and mother sacrificed to the gods.  Their oldest son drowned.  My father died in the mines.  And my uncles came to take our metal roof.  I started stealing to stop the rain and hail.  Who are you snake goddess?  Have you too stood in the rain?   

by Finley J. MacDonald

“How long you say you been on the island?”

“Three months.”

 “Three months!  You climbed right on up the ladder!  It’s not bad here.  The work isn’t complicated, aside from the hatching.  You feed fish.  Keep everything clean.  Shovel meal; that’s what’s stored outside in them big tanks.  Not afraid of heights, are you?  You have to climb down in and fill bags.  We even got our own cook.  Food’s not that bad.”

In moist darkness lingers the scent of fish.  Immense pipes run the length of the walls.  Panting, occasionally wielding his square net,  the fat man leads Mouse from raceway to raceway.  Keys jingle at his belt.  Now and then, he squats, the metal handle slanting over his shoulder, and the water shivers beneath him.  His face, a scarred pumpkin, reflects light from the surface, and fry come up dark and wriggling in his net.

“A whole lot of spring water runs off them rocks you saw.  All this is fed directly—no need to recycle.  Then the water goes on to the gardens.  Nothing better than fish ammonia for fertilizer.  When these fry reach full maturity, they head out to gardens all over the island.  Don’t suppose you’ve had a look at them?”

“No.”

“The gardens of Babylon had nothing on these here.”

Descending side-by-side, the two men follow slick, mossy steps under an archway and out of the dark chamber.    The man sweeps a heavy arm tattooed with scales and fish tails.  Within an immense, roaring space under a shuttered ceiling, spigots drool over rows of vats bedded in stone terraces.     

“This area is where the fingerlings move after a couple of months in the fry tanks.  Each of these round ones is three-hundred gallons.  The water is completely replaced every two-and-a-half hours.” 

A second archway takes them outdoors.  Along the wall, two workers stand chest-deep in a trench, picks thunking.  Seated in a chair nearby, the overseer eyes them, electric gun across his lap. 

The fat man indicates the workers with a nod.

“You don’t want to end up doing back doing that kind of nonsense.  I’ve done my share.  Transferred here years ago from a prison on the mainland, doing life for a robbery that went bad.” 

He lays a finger on his flat nose.

“Used to be a boxer.  I been declared dead twice.  Won my first fight when I was twelve years old.  Undefeated for years, but the street, you know, it caught up with me.  Be dead by now if I was anywhere else.”

The fat man unlocks a chained gate, and they enter an area with immense runways. 

“This area’s for the maturing fish.  If we get a serious storm, we have to cover the raceways.  These fish in those tanks are about a year and a half old, now.  When they are two, they’ll be transferred out and then we’ll start with a new batch.”

At a brick shed, he lifts the ring of keys again, works the lock, and pulls open the door.  Inside, he drags a bulging cloth sack from a heap.  From its peg on the wall, he lifts a handle with an iron tooth, and he picks the thread on the top seam of the bag.

“Don’t damage the bags.  Just cut the thread like this and pull them open.”

He hangs the tool on its peg and dumps a mound of brown meal into a wheel barrow.  He folds the bag and drops it onto a stack. 

“Push this load out, son.”

Mouse guides the wheelbarrow out of the shed, and the door bangs shut behind him.  They follow paved paths in the shadow of browning leaves.  Columns on wooden stems bear cucumbers, with heavier squash tucked lower down.  Fish stir at their feet, red and yellow, tails swishing like fronds in a breeze.  Mouse lets the wheelbarrow slide to a rest, and the man dips a clay scoop and flings meal across the surface.  The water churns, and fish slide and flop.  After a while, the entire surface is a constant, frenzied popping of fish tails, like hail on a river.

“So, that’s about all there is to feeding fish.  Not hard, but it’s the key to a decent life here.  If you work hard and stay out of trouble, everything will go better here.  At this station, you get twenty micro-points an hour.  That’s more than almost any place on the island, and it will go up.  I get forty-five now.  Some of that pays for the cook and lodging, which also isn’t bad.  You can buy cakes and things at the market, but I suggest you save your points.  Go on furlough.  I been here for going-on twelve years.  I go on furlough a week in every month.”

“What do you do on furlough?”

“We go boating and fishing.  We visit gardens, me and my host.  We go swimming.  Sometimes, we visit my daughters at the boarding school.  My host and me get on.  Been with the same one for years now.  When you get your first host, if you don’t get on, put in a request for another, but take my advice; don’t ruffle feathers.  Don’t drink around your host.  In a lot of ways this can be just as good, maybe better than outside.  At least you don’t have to work like a pig.  Or worry about what you’re going to put in hungry mouths.  There are no worries here.  We feed fish.  Keep the place clean.  Eat well.  Go on furlough.  You don’t say much, do you?”

Mouse and the fat, aging boxer reach the end of the raceways.   The wheelbarrow is empty.  In the wind, the old boxer folds his arms.  Through the fence links, swallows flit in a sky gray and solid as a prison wall.  The fins of windmills turn like wheel spokes behind oxen.  At the edge of fields of rice and corn, red and green and blue rooftops are tucked among trees more silver than green.    

 “Listen, son.  My advice, take the bridle.  You think you are here on earth to do something special?  Maybe be a surgeon and save people’s lives?  Guys like you and me, we don’t get to be doctors.  We drink.  We fight and work and maybe we do it in prison.  Don’t be proud.  Take the bridle.”

Something She said in the Garden

Finley J. MacDonald

“I have some bad news, I’m afraid.  The young woman, Orchid, has gone missing.  We are quite concerned for her safety.  Over the past year, some disappearances have not turned out well.  If you know anything about any of this, Andrev–if you are involved–I promise you, we will see that you are well represented.  Just tell me what you know.”

Mouse stares down beside the white hem of her dress on tile, the sandal edging toward the bath.  Upon the liquid surface, two, black reflections shake.  Tuft at the base, a white feather  floats and trembles in glare.  From a distant hall, female voices dip and peak like swallows over hedges.  Complex, ringing clusters of notes well up.  Mouse tries to make out words.  Cordon off the sky . . . Sky upon the sea that drank you.  Sky upon a sea that drank her.  Sea of dirt, crime, blood, slavery. 

Mouse can feel the eyes of this woman taking measurements.  What was the name?  Perpetua.  Of the hollow cheeks.  The giddy urge has been replaced by a cold pound of clay.  The face gone basalt.  He has been gulled, taken unawares by discursive chatter.  Eyes cold autumn.  He has to look down at the stone tabletop.  A winged insect stumbles along the base of the wine jug.   

Orchid’s eyes, in the right light, were spokes of blue acid.  Sometimes, with naked, childish hunger leaking in.  After they had made love, wet from the sea, she lie with one leg across him.  Her hand, a bit of red upon it from herself, was touching his skin.  As if that skin were sacred.  His face, his arms.  The tattoo, blotted across his chest.  Witchcraft, the way she was cutting through prison-grit and spittle.  Her hand presiding over a horrid sacrament: his soul there, heart of a dog.  Bitter, burnt seeds in its leathery rind.  So small that it could be captured and pressed in the fist.  He had shoved her off him.  She trotted after, voice lost in the surf.

The woman is speaking.

“Andrev, you must tell me.  Did you harm her?”

Harm her? 

Perhaps he had.  In no more than closing his eyes.  Somehow, she mirrored him.  Making love was an agony.  Like incest must be.  Mouse had closed his eyes but still heard: I would die for you.

 “I need a cigarette.”

The woman lifts a leather bag.  Her hand roams around inside.  A metal case is laid upon the stone, lid folding back.  Mouse picks one cigarette from the row.  The end of the cigarette pushes unsteadily into the flame above her thumb.

“Do you know where she is?”

“God, no.”

 “Where is this man you call uncle?”

“Long gone, I guess.  Said he was taking the ship out.”

“What do you know about him?”

“He is my uncle.  I don’t really know him.  Built like a bull, got a big beard.  In a fight, he cannot be whipped.  No saints in my family, but he was the only one I was never allowed around.  I always was afraid of him.  ‘Shut your little mouth, boy; gut you like a fish’.  Everybody said he’s a firebug.  You know, a house burner.  Always in and out of jail.  Like me.  He told me he had killed before.    This time he seemed friendly enough.  He said, come along to this island, this paradise.  So, I went.”

“What did Orchid say about him?”

“She didn’t want to talk about him.  At all.  Suited me.  I can believe that Uncle Thondup would sell me off.  Easy as breathing.  I’d stake my mother on it that Orchid would have nothing to do with it.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Everything.  Once, while she was sleeping, I busted, just to the garden.  When she found me, she was crying.  She held onto me like she had just saved me from from a shark.  It isn’t safe, she kept saying.  This girl is touched, I thought.  Maybe she was hip-deep in something with Thondup—it’s possible.  But she wouldn’t have let me go for money.  She wanted eat, drink and sleep nothing but me.  Strange, I know.”

 “When did you last see her?”

“On the beach.  She was keen to get me up on a horse.  She was hollering at me, stay on, stay on.  I stayed on, by the gods, and that damned steed took me miles, halfway round the island.  Then I thought I’d stay put. It was getting so as I couldn’t breathe.  I thought maybe I could push off this rock on a fishing rig.”

 “How did she seem that last day?  Was she afraid?”

“No more than usual.”

 “Did you kill her, Andrev?”

“No!”

“She was smothering you.”

“Don’t ask me that again.  I didn’t harm a hair on her head.”

 “Did you have relationships with any other women while you were on this island?”

“No.”

“Have you ever been in the company of— a chief justice here?”

 “What?  You’re joking.”

“You’ve heard of Justice Makepeace?”

“Naw.”

 “You’ve heard the name, certainly?”

“No.  The only time I ever met any damn judge is when the hammer was coming down.  I never met ‘a chief justice’.”

“You’ve no idea about the trial?  It has been in the newspaper every day for months.”

 “No.  I don’t read well.  I never read a newspaper.”

“Justice Makepeace has been charged with betrayal of the public trust.  Orchid was a part of our case.  Without her, we are greatly compromised.  Can you think of anything she might have said that could help us?”

Along the wall, fat bees with dusted heads buzz and land heavily and push in and out of blossoms like purple, hanging helmets.  An unbroken melody sinks and climbs, a goddess of sorrow wandering in a forest of loss.

“There might be something.  Something she said that morning in the garden.”

In which Mouse begins to unravel the nature of his predicament . . ..

Musselgrove meets Perpetua Sacrament

Finley J. MacDonald

The hood is damp.  Gloves of female screws guide each of Mouse’s elbows.   Midday sun burns his arms.  He hears jingling chains, feet in gravel.  Voices.  Metal gates.  Crates sliding,  loads thudding.  A whining buzz through metal.  A rhythmic shaking of rock.   

“We are climbing steps.”

 Like the action of a giant rifle, a door latches.  Mouse stands listening to the pecking of metal birds.  After several minutes, he is pulled onward, through a labyrinth of harps, falling water.  The water sound is magnified.  The hood slides.  A bright, liquid reflection strikes him about the eyes.  He is standing between two screws.  Another is there, stiff in the open doorway.  Next to a bath, a woman is seated at a stone table.  A flash of red wine shows in the pottery jug at her hand.

“Remove his chains.”

One of the screws eyes him, stick tapping her palm; the other unbuckles his leg irons.  The wrist irons are pulled away.  

“Thank you,” says the woman.  “You may now leave.”

“One of us will remain at the door.”

“You cannot be serious.”

“He could get violent, this one.”

“Are you civilized?  I won’t have you in the room.”

“While you are here, we are accountable for your safety .”

“Bring him back then.  I shall report you for refusing me my privacy.”

The guard at the door shrugs at the others.

“All right, then.  Someone will be just outside.   Any trouble out of him, call us.”

One of the screws shakes her stick at Mouse.

“Be gentle.  We’ll crack your peanut for you.”

With the screws gone from the room, the woman shakes her head.

“I am sorry for that.  Your name is Mouse, I understand?”

Mouse gazes about the room.

“I am not a real mouse.  Not even an animal, but tell them that.”  

Round windows the size of teacups let in spreading light.  Along the rim of the bath, lit candles are staggered.  In repeated squares upon the wall, women in colored tiles bathe, bear jugs.  Below, flowering plants overcome a brick trough.  In the corners of the room are bushes in urns, and here and there, a bronze statue. 

“Andrev is my real name.”

“Why are you called that: Mouse?”

“Musselgrove’s the family name.  Mouse is easier to say.”

“Andrev.  Let’s sit on the platform.   We can—speak more privately.”

Sheer, white robe nearly brushing stones, she bears two glasses of wine to the bath.  Grasping the jug of wine by the neck, Mouse steps behind, her hip just in front of his hand.  She sets the glasses on a block of stone and pulls at her robe as she lowers herself, profile against the splashing curtain of water.    Mouse sets the jug also on the block and sits down, facing her.  Above a hollowed cheek, her fingers touch her temple.  Her neck is long, pale.  Steam is rising off the water.

“Are your new accommodations sufficient?”

Caution is thining the appetite  in Mouse’s lower body.  

“You a lawyer or something?”

“An intern.  My name is Perpetua Sacrament.”

The woman nods at the mural.

“For appearances, you should probably take off your shirt.  You understand general purpose of this room.”

Mouse drinks off his glass of wine and draws off his shirt.  He pours himself another. 

 “Andrev, has anyone talked to you about your trial?”

“The warden said I would get one.  Soon.”

“Soon could mean a number of years.  And then the quality of the trial is likely to be—compromised.”

She turns her head, and under the hair  like spreading angora, the hollow cheek reflects shimmering light.

“Andrev, we have seen each other before.”

“Oh?”

“In the vineyard.  I was the second passenger in the carriage.  Our visit was not by chance.  We are aware of your difficulty.”

“Why should you care?”

“The man who brought you to the island.  You are not his first guest.  The girl you were with is one of his accomplices.  Money changes hands.”

Mouse sets his glass down on the block.

“Are you sure?’

 “Fairly.”

Mouse dumps some wine from the jug into his glass.  He drinks it off and wipes his mouth.

“The inmate in the cell above me—in my last cell.  He dropped me a note.  Said  he was five years without a trial.  For the charge of blasphemy.”

“One can rot in jail in Amazonia for spitting.”

The woman glances toward the doorway.  Beneath eyes the color of beech: a trace of a smile.

“If you could, I should like to show you my sub-commune.  The veranda is admirable, ornate woodwork.  Looks onto an exquisite garden.  The women who live there have plenty of leisure time to vaunt the vibrancy of  civil society here, and they do.  They recommend fine art, noted writers.  Everyone, they say, is becoming wealthy, producing wine, cloth, figs, and paper.  A great portion of that wealth will go into medicine and education.  In Amazonia, we are establishing a second university.  I attended the first.”

“Way ahead of me there.  I went to primary school.”

“This is a strange place, Andrev.  Education is looking through one eye while covering the other.  And that is because any frank, honest person will see that the Amazonia in its entirety–from its philosophy to its goods–is tainted.  For while we profess to be an exclusive community of women, we are constantly in need of men to produce a next generation.  And while needing an increasingly number of men for the growing population, Amazonia is not willing to  credit men or allow them a voice.”

The girl dips her hand into the shining water.  A stream dribbles from her fingers.

“In every room, the temperature is perfect.  But someone must dig the coal.  Someone must tend the boiler.  You hear the harp music?”

“Yes.  I was listening.  Reminds me of a day long ago.”

“There are no better harpists anywhere.  Amazonia is not only richer in base terms, it is rich in fruits of human intelligence and spirit.  If the topic arises of unjust sentences and forced labor—not that it often does—it easy to dismiss.  It must be done for these higher goods of Amazonia.”   

In which Mouse finds improved accommodation . . ..

The Communal Female, by Gertrude Godchosen

Finley J. MacDonald

As he climbs, clinking in darkness, Mouse can hear the screws, one front and one behind, their feet echoing as they step round and round, up a tight, clammy staircase.  A key clunks in a lock.  Hinges squeal, and Mouse is pulled through.  The air smells of wet stone, and Mouse can hear voices and clicking metal.  The hood is pulled off.  Next to a wooden bucket in the dim hall, an old man looks up slowly, a mop handle in purple-veined hands.  Mouse, between two female screws, is shoved along toward a cell.  The door swings open to let him through and clashes behind him.

“Feet.  Feet near the bars!”

Mouse shuffles alongside the bars.  One screw regards him–young, comely, undesirable as an angel of death–while the second screw drags away the ankle chains.   

“Hands through the bars.”

Mouse offers his wrists, and the irons click and slide.

  Clean yourself up, inmate.”

Apart from the fact that he is locked in inside it, the room seems hardly a prison cell.  The bars across the window are posted in sunlight.  Upon the cot frame, a mattress four inches thick  invites him to slumber in a  bright splash of light that climbs from the floor and up the whitewashed wall.   Along the opposite wall, a pitcher of water is set over its shadow on the table.  There is a washbasin.  Shaving knife.  Comb, soap.  A folded towel and wash cloth.  On the shelf above, the top book reads: The Communal Female, by Gertrude Godchosen.

The slap and slide of the mop on stone works closer.  The old man sways into view, grumbling. He halts for a moment, looks at Mouse’s feet, and giggles.

“What, old man?”   

The mop slops across the space and moves on.  Mouse looks himself in the metal mirror affixed to the wall.  Mug covered in black wool, nose and forehead red as iron ore.  Mouse fills the basin with water.  He unbuttons his shirt and drops it to the floor.  He dips his face into water, and the dribbling stream clouds the basin.   He starts with the sideburns, and he scratches away the beard, piling the tufts at the edge of the table.  He touches his face, his cheekbones like worn cliffs, his two eyes over bruised moons.  With the cloth, he sponges his burned shoulders, neck, and back. 

Toweling himself, Mouse steps across the clean floor to the window.  He stands in the light breeze.  Below, weather vanes on a stone building pierce a green field with milk cows—black, red, and spotted.  Bells that tinkle as the cows wander and graze. 

At the bed, Mouse takes up the shirt.  He pulls it on, sits on the bed, toes off his shoes, and stands to push down his trousers.  He tugs the trousers to his waist, and he slips on the canvas slippers he finds at the edge of the bed.  He runs his hand down his chest.  The light, woven fibers smell oddly unworn.  A padlock clacks, key delving.  The bottom, barred door in the larger door squeaks open, and a tray slides through. 

“When you finish, place that shaving knife on the tray and leave it near the door.”

The door slams.  Mouse steps to the table and sets off the basin and empty pitcher.  As he carries the food to the table, he smells pepper and spice.  Mouse has not eaten.  He sits down at the table and begins shoveling lentils and dark, spiced rice into his mouth.  He sips hot, strong tea.   Afterwards, according to the screw’s demands, he sets the shaving knife near the bowls and spoon and leaves it all near the bars.  He picks The Communal Female off the shelf.  The copy has been rebound, and the pages are tattered.  Mouse drops to his side on the bed and reads slowly, sounding out words he has never encountered. 

What we wish for

Most will take a dim view, no doubt, of our project, and indeed, heap scorn at the prospect of a commune excluding male humanity.  It is our purpose, notwithstanding, to set forth a vision, to suggest tenets, and to extol the merits of sororities directed by females for the benefit of females. 

We note and shall describe again in more detail the current state of affairs whereby post-cataclysmic societies appear to be reforming themselves along lines which have already led to grave depopulation and irreparable damage to many regions of our earth.  Regrettable technologies and institutions are already in place.  We feel we can trace this unthinking envy of and pell-mell rush toward imitative invention to an enduring, patriarchal mindset—as well as to a lack of reflection and imagination.  As mankind does not appear capable of altering or ameliorating courses of action that have led and shall surely lead again to disastrous consequences, we make the following, brazen proposal: tear down the edifice of patriarchy entirely.  We are certainly not proposing violence, which is altogether useless and impossible at any rate, as patriarchy outstrips us entirely in the realm of violence.  Rather, such as we propose may be accomplished through bringing up children entirely uninfected with patriarchy, advancing persons steeped in lore, crafts, customs, music, arts, and indeed, religion founded upon and steeped in the feminine.

That being said, we do not wish to be complainers.  We have no desire to wallow in conflict and petulance.  We do not even impugn patriarchies per se, for we might then diminish our claim to the establishment of utopian communes quite beyond mere matriarchy, for we aspire to communes whose full-fledged members are women exclusively.

Objections will be raised, no doubt, even in the mind of our female reader.  We shall attempt to disperse them.  While perhaps admitting to a certain diminished climate, to a subtly repressive air which has flattened her person; while quite likely associating rape, war, abuse of children, and destruction of earthly environment as belonging essentially to the male sphere; our female reader may protest that she has little wish to swear off associations with males entirely, if nothing else, as a matter of sensual concern.  Let us rush to assure her that swearing off all associations with males is not implicit in the project of creating female communes; however, such associations should transpire outside the institutional container which ascribes feminine rights and customs.   

In an apartment rented for the summer in Havre, Mt., I landed upon the right name for the poetic conception I had hatched: The House of Violence. I wanted to include incantations; mountains, sea, and desert; urban and rural vistas; prose and metered verse.  I think the only poem from the period which made it into the book was “Waiting for a Thaw”. 

In aphotic light,

Damaged stepchildren

With wrenched elbows and cockeyed wrists

Freeze in their arch and splay

Against the tug of a nagging, needy mother,

Old Woman Northwind who—

Waked to fury by their summer dancing—

Slapped them stunned,

Leaving them stricken,

Posing pinched, stunted glory . . ..   

Inspired by the Navajo creation myth I read that summer, I thought I would divide the work into four “worlds” with the last one being a world of emergence.    I did a lot of writing outdoors, inspired by my father, an art teacher who said I had to “learn to see”.   I made three trips to France, and I walked around Paris, Lyon, Dijon, and Marseilles and stood before heaps of garbage, scribbling notes.  The work took on another transformation when I was living in my car, working at a meat department in Santa Fe.  While seeing an opera at the independent theatre, I wondered if it were possible for me to link all of the poems together, almost as in a narrative, without losing the integrity of individual poems.  That is what I began trying to do.  The final version, slim and unassuming as it may appear, is the work of nearly six years, with many, many poems tossed out.  I wished to be able to open the book anywhere and have the poem I read please me.  And I pretty much can.  In the end, I wove the third and fourth parts together, but the last poem is still a sort of emergence poem.

It ends like this:

Quick!

Before it bleeds tropical fire,

Imprison it like a fetus in a canning jar

And set it adrift, again, between Neptune and Pluto.

Oh, too late! Too late!

I am coming with waves,

Echoing in soil;

Prickling with signpickets;

Dragging broken tethers,

I tower already like a genie on a cyclone—

Destiny curled like a waking dragon beneath my ribs—

Cupping, fruit between breasts:

The undiscovered,

The irrefutable planet.

I am stripping off the veil—

Now.

The House of Violence is available on Kindle here.   I am going to release a new paperback edition of the book at Amazon as soon as I get cover art, but I have copies to give away if you would like to review it.  If you wish to review, just leave a message under this post or email me at thoughtbell@yahoo.com, and I’ll send you a copy.

A little background.  Originally, Mouse was in another prison.  A riot took place, and he found himself on another plane, where he met his Uncle Thondup.  Thondup conducted Mouse to an island almost exclusively inhabited by women.  There, he met Orchid, whose capricious and controlling nature finally wore on Mouse’s nerves.  When the black colt he was riding bolted and took him to another part of the island, he took the opportunity to make it on his own in the jungle for a time and to search for a ship.  Soon, however, he was arrested and imprisoned, his most serious crime being the killing of snakes, which are protected upon this island of women.  In the last chapter, Mouse and his fellow inmates are driven to thin grapevines by an odious dwarf and two overseers.  In the following chapter, we meet . . ..

An Ally

by Finley J. MacDonald

“We will be doing this in the dark,” says the little man with bad teeth, coughing.

Before the sun touches the horizon, its heated breath slips between vines stems, scorching piles of leaves dropped beneath the vines and whitening clay where puddles sat.  Mouse’s back is burnt by the sun.  His arms ache from being lifted, again and again, to strip away leaves.  The row of mature vines makes a curve; the line of men moves along clinking, and again they are above the village.  As Mouse yanks away leaves and lets them drop, he can make out a strip of ocean beyond the cottages, glowing like pounded tin. 

A child calls out.  A dog is barking.  Over his shoulder, two girls arrive, skipping and singing between the two rows.  A black mongrel scampers and yaps while the girls shake rattles and sing out to the birds, instructing them to fly away, fly away home.  They halt nearby, their blue eyes grave, hair blowing in the breeze, watching the line of inmates tearing leaves.  The dog barks and wags his tail.  A pebble strikes Mouse in the back. 

“Keep your eyes on your work,” says one of the overseers, standing at the head of his pony.

Laughing, the girls slip away through the vines. 

The man next to Mouse says, “Look at that.”

A carriage, with two figures above a pairs of matched horses, is speeding up the path of mulched earth.  Two figures bounce in the springing seat, both wearing brimmed hats and colored masks.  The horses, glossy and smart with great hooves and pointed ears, are coming at a canter.  Blinders and metal parts on the harness catch light.    The horses, both stallions, fling their heads and blow, and the carriage halts under a scarecrow: a lumpy figure with straws twitching below the hat.  One of the women climbs off.  She draws out a rein and loops on the post beneath the scarecrow.  The second woman unfastens her mask and dismounts.  She approaches the dwarf on his pony and she points her whip at the line of men. 

“You boys just mind your work,” says the dismounted overseer.

His hands at works in the leaves, Mouse can hear the voices behind him.

“These men appear fatigued to me.  How long have they been working?”

 “We are just finishing a normal day’s work.  Who are you, if may I ask?”

“You may.  I am Lady Swinyate.  Other crews have returned from the fields.  Why do you continue?”

“We will to finish this row.”

“You can finish it tomorrow.”

“Lady Swinyate, please, we are nearly finished.”

“And it will be just as easily finished tomorrow.”

“I heard you.  With all due respect, I answer to the matron of prisons.”

“If you don’t desist at once, I shall issue a formal complaint about you.  Have these men line up.”

The dwarf’s voice is indignant and petulant.  Each of his protests are answered in a voice flat with authority.

 “Line up!” says the dwarf, finally.

Mouse lets his hands drop from the leaves.  He turns and shuffles into line with the others, ankle chains dragging.  The woman stands several paces away.  Trim, her black hair tied up casually, she studies the line of inmates from end to where Mouse is standing, hands caught at his waist.  The woman walks down the line.  She reaches Mouse.

 “Lady Swinyate,” says the dwarf.  “I ask you not to be foolish.  These men are not your children.  They are cutthroats and rapists.”

The woman stands within reach of Mouse, looking up at him.  Lines of a woman no longer young join at the corners of her eyes.  

“What is your name?” 

“Mouse.”

“How long have you been in prison?”

“A couple days now.”

“What have you been charged with?”

“Trespassing and killing snakes.”

“How have you been treated so far?  You can be honest with me.”

“It’s more or less like any prison.  Could be worse.”

“I see.  What sort of food have you been eating?”

“Prison fare.  Porridge and soup.”

“Has anyone beaten you?”

“No.”

“And are your living accommodations?”

“Poor enough.”

The woman moves next to the little man with the sunken chest, who is coughing into his fist.

“Are you quite well?”

“Sorry madam.”

“Why do you apologize?  What was your occupation, sir?”

“I was a ship’s carpenter.”

The woman touches him on the shoulder.

“You were a ship’s carpenter, and you are tending grapes?”

 “That’s right, Madam.”

She shakes her head and moves down the line to the next man.  When the woman finishes speaking to each man, she stands at the end of the line and addresses the dwarf. 

“Why are these men in ankle chains all day?  Are you not able to keep them from fleeing?”

“As I said, these men are dangerous.  Rapists and the like.”

“Have you filled out a special request for working these men overtime?”

“I am in direct communication with Madam—“

“That’s what I thought. Our constitution enshrines labor as right and healthful for all people.  Therefore, while inmates are incarcerated, we expect them to be engaged in useful occupations, but not at the detriment of their health and well-being.  This man, a ship’s carpenter no less, has a severe cough and is working overtime, stripping off leaves, eunuch.  This is cause for dismay.  Besides being cruel, it’s a foolish misuse of resources.  Overtime is for extreme circumstance, bringing in a late harvest, for example.  Or making repairs after a storm.  If I find that corruption is at the bottom of this incident, I shall take appropriate measures.  From this point forward, I urge you to work your men lightly.  I am also concerned about their diet.  I understand these men had a single meal today and that it was quite meager.  There will be no skimming of funds allocated for the purpose of their nourishment.”

“You should be aware, madam, of who you are dealing with.”

“Don’t you threaten me, eunuch.  I am not at all accustomed to tolerating impertinence.  You may find yourself summarily relieved of your station.  Now, you return these men to their accommodations right away.”

The woman strides for her carriage.  The two women settle into the carriage, and the whip rises and falls at the rumps of the stallions.  The carriage turns and rolls away into the gloom. 

In the twentieth chapter, in which Mouse has found himself in prison on an Island populated by women only, he encounters . . ..

Maximus, God of Rancor

Chains jingle like coins continually tossed.  A throng of boots in gray mire takes Mouse along a trail over the village: a music box collection in a crypt, lit by hidden candles.  Dogs snarl and men shout, step it up; turn down that way, you curs, you scum.  The column winds among hillocks like combed helmets.   The line of men shuffles to a halt.  Gangs split off, and men and mounted taskmasters go trailing here and there in the sweep of land.  A shrill voice orders Mouse’s gang through an opening in the stone wall, among rows of dark leaves and scarecrows on poles. 

“Today, dung beetles, line yourselves up!”

They stand in a line, heads hanging.  Three figures face them on horseback,  cloud edges behind them beginning to glow like molten nickel over blood.  The small one in the center dismounts, ties off the reins to a hitching post, steps forward and spits.  With a torso curving like a melon, he stumps on stiff legs, hands in his vest pockets.  A goiter bulges over his bow tie.

“You believe in the gods?  They can’t do spit for you now.  Let me introduce you to a new god!  That god is me!  Maximus!  God of rancor!  Today, I am your one and only god!   You refuse my moral authority, and I will show you the road to hell.  You boys thinking about running for it?  Get this idea out of your big, stupid heads.  Nowhere to run to.  My pony likes to knock a big boy down and step up his fat backside. Make it past me and my helpers, and one of them hounds will be chewing on your rump steak.”   

The dwarf extends an arm.

“Today, you going to thin grape vines for me.  I been asked for two rows.  You going to finish three.  You going to be tired.  Might think of taking it slow.  Don’t.  You work hard for me, and I will extend my hand, and I will shower you with blessings.  Them being in the form of points.  Points and levels.  Levels and points.  That is the one way to survive and make your life better here.  And that is why I, who give and take away points, am your god.  But it is all up to you.

“You boys got to learn right now, you at the bottom rung of a long, long ladder.  That ladder is covered in sea moss, and it is slippery.  I can tell you, you don’t want to fall off.  You want to keep your eye on the next step up.  Without my helping hand, you never going make it.  You be nice and work like pigs, and some day you going to find yourself on a higher plane.  Meat with your meals.  Better room, better clothes.  Get yourself off that slippery bottom rung and up to level two.  That’s the only way to heaven.  Heaven is far away now, but someday, you going to have nice leaf to smoke and you going to get to do—other things.  Someday.  But not today.

“Today, you going to finish three rows.  Or die trying.  You two new boys take up the rear; pick up anything that’s missed.  These grapes got to have that morning sun.  They got to have of air.  You going pull away the leaves in the way of that morning sun.  And you going to do it quick.  You going to move your hands just as fast as you can move them.” 

The dwarf bends at the waist, and his immense hands yanking imaginary leaves.

“When you made it down two rows, you eat, not before.  Finish three rows, you going to go back to your cells and rest your weary heads, because you going to to finish three rows tomorrow.  Today, you going to restrict your conversation to how to thin grape vines.  Don’t you risk getting in bad with me, because I am god.  Get to work.”

The men trample to either side of the row, and vines begin to jerk as leaves are torn away.  Droplets fall when Mouse touches the leaves.  Mouse tears leaves from around the new grapes, green and small.  The men ahead of Mouse spring back, their chains jingling.  A snake winds and switches beneath the vines and then slips down a hole.  A small man with bad teeth is plucking beside Mouse.  He coughs sometimes, wet and spasmodic.

“The dwarf has no balls,” he says to Mouse.  “None of them do.”

“Where do these screws come from?”

“Just rascals hired off the mainland.  Mean as weasels.”

“Everywhere it is the same.  Screws all strut like chickens and tell you they are gods.”

Mouse feels the sun climbing up the back of his neck.  The leaves dry out.  Mouse removes his shirt and knots the arms like a belt around his waist.  His back aches, and his hands sting.  The dwarf sits on his horse behind them, cursing them for big, slow devils.

 “Deep down in your skull cups, you think you are superior, hey, big men?  You disgust me, living life like it was a peep show.  How do you think it feels to be a bearded lady or a two-headed man?  Ever stop to think about that?  Or a lobster boy?  You think the organ monkey likes to wind that lever?  You dare call us little people names?  Pewee, is it?  Midget, is it?  Runts, are we?  Just little clowns in your burlesque show.  You going to learn how that feels, big men.  Big dishes of humiliation for all.  How’s it taste?  Plenty left in the pot.  And I am happy to serve it up to you.   Seconds and thirds and fourths.

“You don’t know where you are, do you?  You all on a ladder.  That ladder is swinging.  Don’t make me knock you off that bottom rung.  Some sharks circling below, hungry for pig meat.  Above you, I mean way above, there’s the light of heaven.  Below you is darkness.  You don’t want to find out what’s down there.  Down there’s monsters way worse than Maximus the dwarf.”  

In which Mouse learns more about the island of women . . ..

The Warden

Finley J. MacDonald

A high as a man, a clock clunks gently.  The chair creaks.  Just inches away from gleaming spectacles, a page turns in the woman’s hands.  Beside the chair droops a red flag with a  snake folded, and books and winged, breasted bronzes are set out upon the desk like boats on a glossy pond.  Behind the squashed face and pen jutting from white knuckles, the window glares, making it difficult for Mouse to see the head with its badge glowing above the forehead.  He gazes instead to his side into a room polished and padded, with shelves, urns, statuettes, woven rugs, woolen curtains, and yellow, oil lamps.    Upon the wall, a number of framed, monumental matrons fold arms and frown.  The double doors thump, and a guard enters between those already stationed at both sides of the doorway.  In a drab uniform, hair yanked back over her skull and divided into auburn braids, she sweeps past Mouse, a tray between her hands.  She sets out dishes before the warden and removes lids from steaming vegetable dishes and custards. The warden folds her spectacles.

“Thank you.”

“It is my pleasure, Madam Warden.”

Between forkfuls of steamed greens and custards, the warden lifts a tea cup, berries and floating petals within the delicate rim.  The guard stands two paces away, hands folded below her waist.  The warden eats half the food, finds a toothpick, and nods to the guard, who bears away the tray.  The warden’s eyes, half-closed, catch sight of Mouse hunched in his hard chair

“I interview all of our inmates personally.”

The toothpick lowers.

“If I am able, I will smooth their way here.  Is there anything in particular, young man, that you need?”

“This pair of shoes is killing me.”

The warden nods at a guard beside the door.

“Find a pair of larger shoes.”

The warden slides on her spectacles, lifts the report close to her eye, and turns it to the second page. 

  “After mounting a horse and fleeing his host, the subject trespassed for approximately ten days, cutting up forest, digging for artifacts, and killing animals.  Of course, you hadn’t the least idea of our laws.  You’ve heard of the ancient principle, ignoranti juris non exusat?  The appeal to ignorance is no valid defense.  It reflects the notion that it is incumbent upon us as humans, in voluntary accord, to live lives of informed order, interacting responsibly among ourselves and with nature.  Nonetheless—”

She sighs, drops the file on the table, removes her spectacles, and folds them.

“I find it unfortunate that you were not fully acquainted with our regulations.  This is why we insist on a proper orientation.”

The warden leans forward, and her chin goes pushing out on her neck to reinforce each point.  

“On this island we believe that life is sacred and that killing an animal and eating flesh is immoral.  That is our philosophy.  We are aware that it is not everyone’s.  Thus, our choice is to hold the world at an arm’s length.  You have penetrated our living space through a back channel and are ignorant of the laws and customs of this community.  On our island, the plants and animals are reserved.  The remote areas of the island are off-limits, and the snake in particular is protected.”

“The snake is protected?”

“That, young man, is correct.  Our law forbids the killing of serpents.  We hold them in great reverence.  You have killed two.  The skins were discovered in your camp.  Also, you face one count of escape and two of criminal trespass.  You will be tried for these crimes at the earliest possible occasion.  In the interim, you will be assigned to a work unit. Saturdays are half-days and on Sunday, you may rest.  You may then visit the library.  If you are ill, you may request a visit to the infirmary . . .. 

“I believe I should point out as well that we do not abuse our wards.  We aspire to the humane and forward-thinking principles upon which our community was founded.  Our mothers considered brutality wasteful.  Their writings instruct us to employ reeducation instead.  We seek to reward progress, but practically speaking, we find that order cannot be maintained without penalizing violations.  Our lack of better facilities is regrettable if unavoidable.  These buildings belonged to a monastery used in the religion of the settlers that populated the island before us.  Many of the cells are run down.  Unfortunately, aggressive inmates must be held in these spaces until such time as they prove they can function in a more open situation.  I should like to encourage you to follow our rules assiduously.  If you do so, you may find that your status improves.  We have—programs for our inmates that offer them a greater degree of liberty and comfort.  We have no desire to harm any living being, only to carry out our ideals in peace.  On the other hand, we must be watchful and disciplined.  Our community is a female community, lives according to female principles, and maintains an almost exclusively female population.  A very small number of men live here on a provisional basis.”

Mouse scratches his head, chains tinkling.

“Young man,” says the warden.  “I should like to give you a little background concerning our small society.  if you wish, you may smoke.”

“Yes, please.”

The warden nods, and one of the guards bring a pottery ash tray, a cigarette, and a lighter.  She sets the ash tray on the edge of the desk and hands the cigarette to Mouse, whose chains jingle as he takes it to his mouth.  The guard lights the cigarette and sets the lighter on the desk.  The chains jingle again as Mouse raises his hands to his face.  Smoke rises toward white, ornate diamonds on the ceiling.  The warden’s eyes are upon Mouse, and he can feel the guards also watching.    

The warden pushes back her chair.  She lays the pen on the desk and stands.  Shoes squeaking on the polished floor, she moves to the largest portrait in the room, a somber, oily, bespectacled matron.

 “The judge you see in this portrait.  We call her Grandmother.  Her name was Praisegod Shammon.  It was she and a handful of original members who purchased a large portion of this island.  They belonged to a society which followed certain literatures concerning women.  They envisioned a community of women living together exclusively and in harmony.  We are now doing our best to carry out that vision. 

“At first, it was just these.  Very few imagined that their little experiment would be successful.  And it very nearly was not.  The small fortune possessed by that coterie of women was exhausted purchasing metal works, gears, shafts.  This was the dawn of the re-industrialization, and so much needed to be done to keep abreast of the changes while harnessing our island’s water and producing mills in order that would afford us some degree of autonomy.  We were saved only by the fact that word was getting around, and women continued to trickle in with fresh resources.  We wished to live in peace but soon deduced that we had to create some sort of military force, for there were those who ardently wished to see our demise.  During those initial years, we lived alongside the original inhabitants, at first amiably and then with growing friction.  The very idea of an exclusive, female community raised and still raises primeval and deeply imbedded prejudices.  But by the time they attempted to drive us out, it was no longer possible to stop us.  In the end, these other inhabitants were encouraged to return to mainland locales.”

The warden sits back down. 

“The work continues.  It is neither easy nor simple.  We are still so dependent upon resources from the mainland, especially for metal.  However, we stand ready to make any sacrifice, expend any effort, or battle any foe in the pursuance of our cause.  We feel we are creating a model, an alternative for women of the future, and one path for peaceful living generally.  Frankly speaking, we feel we are establishing a better society than has ever been developed, in part because we adhere to higher principles and in part—because natural, nurturing, female relationships form a much improved societal building block.  We do not kill animals, though we may eat fish.  Even your leather shoes are produced from beasts that have died from natural causes.  We develop arts and crafts which celebrate female sensibilities and values.  On some parts of the island, we have established gardens of great beauty.  Perhaps you may have an opportunity to visit them some day.  Before that, however, you will have your day in court.  An attorney will be assigned to you, and you will receive instructions how to prepare.  Do you have any questions?”

 “Just one.”

“Go ahead.”

“Warden, how do you limit your numbers to women?  Your male children, what about them?”

“Only female pregnancies are allowed to come to term.”

“And how do you—do that with no men?”

“But I understand that you have already—contributed in this manner.”

The double doors thump.

“Madame Warden, here are the shoes.”

“Will you remove his restraints, please?”

“Are you sure it is safe, Madame Warden?  He has a history.”

“I believe he will not create any commotion.  Will you, young man?”

Mouse shakes his head.  He leans forward to crush the cigarette in the ash tray.

A guard with blonde hair in spikes sets the shoes beside Mouse’s feet.  She fingers a ring of keys, inserts a key first in the ankle restraints and then the cuffs, and takes them away.  Mouse pulls off the tight shoes and slips his feet into the new pair. 

They fit perfectly.

Swallowed by the Beast

Mouse awakens to mosquitoes whirling over his face.  The darkness outside is stamp-stamping, as if with the steps of a measured giant.   Factory of some kind.  He runs a hand over his shaven head.  Across the cell, a rectangle of night is divided into a hundred smaller rectangles.    He sits up, unbuttons and pulls off his clinging shirt, folds his blanket, and falls back with the rough fabric under his neck.  He drapes the shirt over his face and dozes, dreaming of pythons sliding, working against each other in the shallows.  The pythons transform into women with swords who pursue him through the forest.  He dodges the darts flying among the trees until a door clangs, and great buckles clunk and echo.  A closer door whines and crashes, and keys jingle.  Down the corridor, a baton wallops metal.  Hard shoes are moving down the hallway.  Mouse can hear female voices.  A sliding plate about as high as his chest scrapes open in his door.  A light fishes.

“Stand up!” says a female voice. “Move to the center of the cell.”

Mouse throws his legs over, pushes himself up, and looks through his fingers into the light.

 “Can I have some water, please?  I’m very thirsty.”

The plate slaps closed.  Steps echo down to the hall. 

Under the shadow of the bunk above, he awakens again, pushes himself up in bed, and lets his feet drop.  He manages to force his feet into the worn shoes.  The mesh window in its deep recess is now scattering blots of gray light about the stone floor.  About nine feet wide by fifteen long, the cell is stained as if the floor above had endured floods of urine and tobacco juice.  In one corner, a table squats over a stool and a wooden chamber pot.  

Mouse limps to the window.  Across bed of crushed rock, minute windows like bird-pecked holes line a battle-scarred wall.  Again, Mouse gets a breath of chickens.  Of horse manure.  The distant mill stamps.  At his hand is a tray with a spoon, a wooden drinking cup, a larger clay jar, and a tin plate.

The cell-block door booms.  Mouse places the tray at the base of the door.  A giant pot, with a ladle clacking away on the inside, is working its way down the corridor.  A good bean and barley soup, that would be nice.  Probably porridge.  The lower trap clacks open, and the tray is snatched out.  The spoon clanks outside the door.  The tray is shoved back through with the bowls and jars filled.  Mouse carries the tray to the table and has a seat.  Taking the largest jar in both hands, he drinks down most of the water.  He peels the boiled egg, crumbles that and the lump of salt into the thin porridge of boiled oats.  He has a sip from the tea jar, which is lukewarm and not tea at all but some sort of boiled root.  Mouse sets aside the two cigarettes and two matches that lie also upon the tray.  He dumps the remaining finger of water into the porridge bowl, scrubs with his fingers, and dumps the water. 

Mouse paces from door to the window.  The walls are constructed of milled stones with the mortar is crumbling here and there, especially where the wall meets the floor.  At the window, he lays his hand on the mesh and tests it with his hand.  Someone has managed to break a couple of the rivets, but the straps are solid.  Anyway, how would he get out of that courtyard?  The two cigarettes and two matches lie in a row.  In the last prison, he was held apart for a time and then taken to a room full of screws, handed cigarettes, patted like a horse, and asked to report back, just the odd detail, you know, not so often.  This, of course, could only help everyone.  They beat him badly, in the end.  But coming back bloody had saved his life.  The two cigarettes on the tray could be a bad sign.  And the lump of salt, too, for the porridge.

He should prepare.  Exercise.  Watch mind traps. 

Pride.  Fury.  As on the beach.  Should have bided his time, struck up a conversation, measured the strengths of his foe.  He might have gone the other direction, into the ocean, swam for it. 

Despair.  He needed some occupation, some means of self improvement, some manner of structuring time.  He could use songs again.  During his internment, Mouse had spent time in the “Mother of Nightmares”, an isolation cell where demons stalked you in your darkness, sharpening their claws of madness.  Mouse had sung ditties and ballads.  He had reached into the warrens of his mind for lost verses, and if he could not locate them, he made the up.  He could begin that process again.  Goodbye, my sister, goodbye.  That one was about a mercenary going off to a battle that would be lost.  Which had little enough to do with Mouse, with his courage and confidence eaten away like old sacks of rice in a granary.     

When he ran out of ballads, Mouse could move on to oral history.  His grandfather had passed down an entire legacy to his father.  His father’s story-telling smile, when he sat by the stove, recounting the tales and blowing smoke, indicated a merry stranger, an unused soul.  Mouse had been a disappointment to him.  He could not remember anything.  He yawned.  He enjoyed a game of whack ball and hanging up neighborhood cats, not stories. 

Outside the window grate, a metal shaps is swinging and jerking like a worm on a hook.  Mouse goes to the window, pushes his fingers out, and works the capsule in through one of the squares.  He pulls out the cork and then a short pencil, a rolled-up twig of paper, and a note.  He spreads the note open upon the table. 

I am on the floor above you. A present, we will communicate only after the first check.  Hide the pencil and paper.  Tug the string twice when you have the paper and pencil. Destroy this note. 

Mouse rips the note into tiny pieces and feeds them out the window.

IN IRONS

by Finley J. MacDonald

Among hooves knocking, clapping stone, Mouse is jerked and goaded under vague, leafy archways.  Behind clouds of leaves, dark trunks wander and cross, and the sky opens ahead: the pink flank of a dying trout.  A flash of lightning shows moths whirling, steam, and metallic leaves and droplets.  Portions of the trail are eroded and streaming, and alongside, bullfrogs mutter among pools.   Wet branches scrape Mouse’s shoulders, and Black Plume’s helmet dips for branches; when her horse balks, snorting at some phantom in the path, tail lashing in front of Mouse, she smacks her tongue and claps the stirrups.  The trail climbs and curves, tracing stone-fitted bulges of hillside, winding toward a moon in beaten felt.  In the vault of space below the trail, and bats dart and whirl.  Sweat is pouring into Mouse’s eyes, and his throat is dry.  The horse behind him sighs, and the goad touches his hip.   

 “Slow up . . . she-wolves.  You are killing me.”

The goad gives him a tap.

“Save your breath.”

He can hear a canteen sloshing behind him.

“At least give me some of that water!”

“Not from my bottle, Captain.”

 The air cools.  Above the conversation of the riders, a growing, liquid applause emerges.  The trail widens and the horses drop their heads, shake bridles, and blow at the water.  Across rocks and plants, Mouse drags himself on his elbows.  Water splashes his shackled wrists as he thrusts his lips into a teacup of icy, spinning and pure water.  He raises his head and gasps.  He drinks and coughs.  Rivulets, descending step by step, gleam between stones.

“Get up, you,” says Black Plume.

“Female devil.”

The goad bites him on the back. 

Mouse and horses trample on through the pools and mud.  They pass red windows and structures behind trees.  The inn is above them now, outbuildings like ghosts, windows throwing lit spokes into gardens. 

A pearl glow fills the spaces between trees.  The iron shoes tap louder as the trail joins a cobblestone street, and they pass over a bridge with water rushing beneath.  The main street climbs along rows of lamps on hooks, arches, shutters, shop windows.  Figures crouch over steps, brushes scratching.  Sweepers work their way back and forth over the paving stones.  The road splits off from the village, back into darkness and trees.  The horses halt, and Black Plume’s leg swings over the saddle.  The feet of the other two riders strike earth, and Black Plume starts ahead, leading her horse to the brink of a rushing darkness.  Black Plume’s colt resists for a few moments, and then boots and hooves knock wood as they cross a long, narrow bridge and then back onto stones. 

At the center of a gate of speared iron, a figure is planted.   In front of Black Plume’s stamping horse, the two women stand and speak for several minutes.  The figures part; the gate swings, and Mouse passes through with the three women and horses.  The gate crashes.  Chalky, thatched outbuildings edge up, and Mouse smells manure, chickens.  A gong is ringing and trailing.  Under a moon diffuse and white in broken cloud, rears a massive building with a domed roof and vaults.  A dozen figures advance, sticks extending along knees, dogs between.  Black Plume unfastens Mouse’s tether from the saddle and hands the end to a female guard.  He passes her reins to a young girl, draws up her helmet and shakes her hair.  The dogs pant and bark. 

A woman with shoulder wider than a man’s, a knit cap, and braids comes striding between the other figures.  A scar begins at her hairline and ends at her eyebrow.  Her teeth are broken, her voice, harsh.

“Got the scum!”

“Yes, Madame.”

Mouse stands, head hung, breathing heavily. 

“Be careful.”

“Don’t you worry about us!  Get a hot meal and a bath at the guard house.  We will take over from here.”

The three horsewomen leave, helmets in their hands, along a stone walkway.

*****

Latches click; hinges squeak.  Down a corridor between plates.  Masses of wire, grids over unknown corridors.  Key turning metal tumblers, saluting hands of female guards, a dark doorway, a crash, complete darkness.  He passes through barred squares of light.  A final door clashes. 

“Stand up straight!  Put your hands through!”

Light bursts into his eyes.  He pushes his hands through the bars.  The wrist irons come off.

“Strip!”

Mouse struggles with his footwear and shoves down his trousers.

“Raise your arms!  Turn around!  Spread your legs!  Turn to face us!”

A beam of cold water splashes his feet, moves up his legs, hits him in the crotch, midriff, arms.  He shouts.

“Turn.”

The cold water moves up the rear side of his body.

“Turn and put hands through the bars.”

A change of clothing is laid in one of Mouse’s hands, a towel in the other.

“Proceed to that bench, dry yourself and change.”

Mouse pulls on a pair of felt trousers and a loose shirt with large buttons.

“Hurry!  Come to the front and put your hands through.”

His wrists are again shackled.

“Now stand in the center of the cell.”

From behind the light, a woman’s voice issues commands.

“Inmate 211, you have been charged with violating laws of this island.  You will be processed and tried according to those laws.  Until you are found guilty or are found not guilty, you will address each of us as officer, and you will promptly obey every order.  Penalties for violations will accord with the severity of the infraction. You will conduct all labor required of you without complaint.  You will not speak unless spoken to.  You will not threaten any officer in any manner . . ..”

The voice goes on and on. 

Subjugation

by Finley J. MacDonald

Beneath thunderheads, dark sea monsters advance like torpid cavalry.  Rocking tents dash and send up spires of foam high as the rock ledge.  Against sliding banks of cloud, birds dive and lift.  Mouse slings his empty gourd over his shoulder and starts down, handhold by handhold.  Clinging to the rock, gale in his eyes, he hears a noise: clinkety.  Horse shaking a bridle. 

“You, is it, black brute?”

The horse arrives harrumphing in his chest.  Next to the pyre, Mouse’s feet strike sand. 

He turns. 

Behind the bobbing heads of horses, three riders with shields, plumes, and cheek guards are hurrying forward.  They form a semi-circle.  A long, claw-tipped pole with dangling thongs and feathers tilts from a bay’s neck.  Mouse slides the gourd from his shoulder, lets it drop, and edges along the rock to lay his hand over the hilt of the sword. 

“Good morning to you, fellows!  Come to join me for a spot of tea?  I’d entertain you; afraid I’m out of water.”

He points the blade at the empty gourd and shrugs.

The one in the center, in a black-plumed helmet, aims the clawed pole at his nose.  Behind the winged spaces in the helmet, the eyes are blue.  A honey-colored horse tail furls at the rear.  A woman’s voice hollers out.

“You are under arrest!  Put down that weapon!”

“Under arrest?  Ridiculous.  On what charges?”

“Two counts of killing a sacred being!  Lay down the sword!  Down on your knees!  Hands on your head!”

Mouse laughs.

“I will venture no such silliness.  I will never get on my knees before you, Dearest, pretty as I’m sure you are!  I’ll wager the three of you together stack up to twenty stone, though you look a bit more immense with that—amazing head gear.  I have no intention of being a prisoner again—ever.  As such, I am bound to stroll peaceably up that beach.  I bid you, for the sake of your own safeties, get out of my way.  I’m a gentle fellow.  I shouldn’t like to bash a woman.  By the by, I haven’t recently encountered—nor done in—any sacred beings that I know of.  Good day.”

Mouse salutes and starts forward.  A horse sidesteps into his path. 

Mouse sighs.

“Can’t say I did not warn you.”

Before the flat of his sword can connect with the horse’s cheek, withers bump into his back, and sand rushes up beneath his elbows.  The sword skitters across a stone face, and hooves stomp close.  He lays a palm over a rock half the size of his head and makes his feet. 

“Want to play rough, screw girls?  Give you a lesson in northern whack ball.”

A black wand flashes in the hand of Red Plume, and a feathered dart thumps into Mouse’s chest.  He roars, snatches it out, lugs back the rock and hurls.  It bounds it off a horse, which rears and paws.  A second dart stabs Mouse under his jaw.  His knees give way.  His cheek strikes rock.  Every muscle in his body is clenched, and he cannot gather breath.  Gravel grinds up veins.   On the tongue: quicklime.  An earthquake battering arms, chest, skull.  A sandal thumps down before his eyes.  He is rolled over like a sack, the dart pulled out, and shackles snapped over his wrists.  A leather collar is strapped around his neck.  He gurgles, drools, and opens and closes his mouth.  At the legs of horses, he rolls and vomits, forehead to shackled fists.

“Idiot,” says a girl.  “Couldn’t be happy with just one shot?  On your feet.”

He spits.

“Sacred being?  What a chestnut.  Brutal, dumb bitches.”

“Get up.”

Something sharp twists his buttock, and he bellows.

“All right!”   

 He plants a knee on the sand.  He pants.  The collar, attached to a long cord, jerks under his chin.

“Wait just one second, she-screw-devil.  I’m not an ox.”

On its long pole, the claw twists his breast, and Mouse roars.

“You will refrain from verbal abuse.  Up!”

Before a gold plate shaped to fit breasts, Mouse gets to his feet, chains clinking.  From his collar, the cord curves to the horn of Black Plume’s saddle.  Red Plume’s small, gloved hands pat their way up his ankles and calves.

“Watch him,” says Black Plume.  “He could still drive a foot or a knee at you.”

“He had better not.”

Red Plume scoops the lighter and rock knife from his pocket.  Behind, Blue Plume picks up the rusty sword and turns it.  She takes the lighter and rock too from Red Plume.  She unbuckles the sorrel’s saddle bag.  Already fastened near the rump, Mouse observes, is the charred helmet from his camp.  Blue Plume runs her glove down the colt, which shakes his mane and blubbers his lips.

“How is he?’

Blue plume shakes her head.

“Have to watch for lameness.  It was a big rock.  Mean thing.”

She reaches across the cantle, and her leg swings across the saddle.

Red Plume is standing before the pyre, a vessel in her hands. 

“What is the meaning of that big pile?” says Black Plume from her horse.

“It’s to signal a ship, I would think.”

They all laugh.  Red Plume is shaking out oil from the pottery flask. She packs the flask behind the saddle and mounts.  Flames jump in the cracks between timbers, twirling here and there, drinking oil, popping, and throwing heat.   

“Keep up with the horse,” says Black Plume, Mouse’s handler.

Immediately, the collar jerks his neck.  Mouse pulls against it and makes strangling sounds in his throat.

“You’ll kill me, you merciless bitch!”

“The collar will not hurt you. Keep up.”

 Mouse trots and stumbles along over sand.  He curses the girls and is jabbed for it.  He becomes drenched in sweat.  The sun goes down.  They follow a line of surf lit sometimes by flashes of lightning.  As they follow a path through the jungle, his arms are brushed by ferns and leaves wet from a rain storm that is moving on ahead.   

The Cage, started a couple of months or so ago, has reached its fifteenth chapter.  I admit to some inconsistencies in the story line, a gap or two, some changes in Mouse’s character.  I guess I am not Dickens.  Anyway, the underlying purpose of posting every chapter, besides sharing a story, is to help me write in a straight line rather than to wander around in subplots till the death of a story, a bad habit of mine.  Posting as a strategy has certainly achieved that end!  I also think the writing is getting better.   “Click” is one of my favorite chapters so far.  By the way, I would be delighted by any help with re-posts, likes, comments, tweets, etc.

Click

 by Finley J. MacDonald

Bare back against a heap of palm fronds cut early with the rusty sword uncovered from the wreck, Mouse rolls coals into a heap, leaving them to burn down.  A brown, armored centipede slips over a boulder, and Mouse grabs the sword, gives it a chop, and flicks the two sections into the fire.  The gloom beneath the high, weaving branches is cool, as if a witch had huffed a breath of misty air among damp trunks.  On yellow and green leaves, a rabbit is chewing twigs.  He blinks and tips his ears.

“Oh, gods,” says Mouse.  ”Should I go back?”

The rabbit lifts his head.  His nose twitches.

“I was so miserable.  A kept man.  Overstuffed with demands and affection.  Still, at first it was sweet.  And then less so.  She was most often bitter, Orchid.  I tell you, she asked me explain every tiny thing I did.  When I run out of fuel for the lighter, I may have to go crawling back.”

Mouse crawls to the heap of wide, limp leaves.  The rabbit bounds off.  Mouse piles on leaves and then soil and debris, patting the mound until smoke no longer slips through. 

Vine-strung water gourd slung over his shoulder, Mouse reaches the wreck and then the rock extrusion: Orchid on her back with her head in waves, chin turned up.  Leaving the sword against the heap of driftwood and boards from the wreck, he scales the rock face, clefts and hollows like tea cups and cooking pots offering ledges for his fingers and toes.  The top is as wide as a man’s spread arms, with sea oats springing from crevices.   Tearing itself on the polished face below, the surf roars and flings up water.  Well above the sea’s white hour glass, the sun lifts, heart from a stoked forge.  Nothing, and certainly not a sail, disturbs the line of the horizon. 

Birds of prey circle.  Mouse has seen them before: perched on driftwood, yellow-eyed with gray heads and crowns.  One flaps up with a sea snake struggling in its talons.  Slow, cautious flies as big as the digit of a finger—and smaller, dive-bomber flies—whirl around Mouse’s head.  Mouse pulls the carved cork from the gourd and swallows.  He pats water his back and chest.  In the face of so much sky and sea, a sense of emptiness bordering on horror makes it difficult to breath. 

If he finds a boat, he will feel at home.  Seamen will josh him about having been a prisoner of love.  Once on a boat, obviously, Mouse will have work on his hands.  Good, hard labor.  Dragging up nets.  Swabbing decks.  In off hours, he supposes: games of cards below deck.  Orchid claimed ships pass.  Hopefully on this side of the island, too.  And hopefully, they will not ignore a bonfire and a man jumping up and down and waving a  pole with a flapping shirt . . ..

The occasional hint of breeze offers scant relief from the sun.  Mouse wishes he had carried fruit.  He drinks.  He dribbles water on his hands and pats his shoulders.  The strange emotion is at the center of his chest like something he ate and could not wash down.  He tries to envision Orchid’s body.  One hand pinning her hair, perfect buttock on a flat stone.  The way her belly, lightly fuzzed, was divided by a hollow.  He watches a single bird racing and spearing.  He cannot avoid the stillness.  He cannot avoid the man perched like a nesting bird with nothing but sky and sea to distract him from the sun and the god behind the sun and the god behind the god.  He doesn’t believe in the gods.  Never has.  But someone is watching.  Watching this emotion unravel, producing its inevitable click.

Click.  There it was again.  Not that he was ever entirely free of it.  The click and the sound of the radio.  The sun is too bright for Mouse to make out the bird.  He should climb down.  But the sun is holding him.  Saying, whatever do you mean, click?  Mouse knows he must give in. 

At the beginning. 

He was always going to be a puller.  Wiry, they said—a compliment—though he wanted to go to school.  Write and do equations.  Didn’t he have as much right to that as children with tin in their pockets?  The village was granted acreage to burn and clear.  Meant work, boy.  Lucky to get work; lot of others have no coins cross the palm at the week’s end. 

Old men are buckling, hooking chains, whacking oxen rumps as the stumps turn up dribbling clumps of earth.  He and others come behind, trying to keep up, hacking out roots.  We got to finish this section tonight, boys.  We going to plant this year.  Through his gloves, the iron bar wears watery blisters in his hands, and the blisters grow and join and burst.

Well after sundown, they start gathering tools and leading off the oxen.   

He enters the kitchen caked in soot, and a laugh goes up.  Five roomies playing cards.  Bottles of potato liquor on the table.  They giggle and show teeth as he scrubs dishes with sore hands and makes his dinner and next day’s lunch.  Afterwards, he turns to his dark room.  Turn down that radio.  The door is cracked to let in heat.  The man and a girl are laughing . . ..  Who?  The man and the girl!  The radio is louder if anything, tuned to northern ditties and drinking songs.  Mouse stands in the doorway.  Turn down that radio.  Has to sleep.  Some of us work in the morning.  Again, he is lifting his feet in the too-short bed, staring at wall stains.  The rabbit-getter leans in the corner, stock blue and gray, way his brother painted it.   He rises again and pushes the door.  The man and the girl are grinning at each other over spread cards.  Some secret. 

“I will not tell you two again,” says Mouse, cold-lipped in the doorway.  “Turn down the mother-loving radio.”

Mouse strips back the covers and flops onto the straw mattress.  The radio blares.  The laughter goes hysterical.  Mouse whips off his blankets.  He is moving for the door.

Click.   

Drops are dashed off purple leaves as Mouse presses deeper into the jungle.  He treads under vines heavy as hung serpents.  Outlandish parrots shriek and stare.  Insect-eating flowers gape.  Miniature melons wag and berry clusters glisten.  In steaming pools, festooned fish whirl and flounce.  He slaps giant mosquitoes on his arms and neck.  He halts.  A scaled, glistening coil is slipping over a tree root: dark bands quick as train cars.  After several moments, breathing, hand to his chest, Mouse pushes on. 

Where the forest ends at the foot of cliffs, he finds a chunk of sharp flint and drops it in the one intact pocket of his thin trousers.  A crevice opens.  He hikes up the narrow corridor, over boulders and rabbits droppings and onto a ledge.  Above him, the jungle climbs toward another set of cliffs.  Some gold object winks at his feet.  Mouse reaches beneath the bush and takes it in his fingers.  A cartridge?    

Mouse sinks down on a boulder.  His brother used this type of cartridge.  The rabbit getter.  Mouse can see the gun laying across the bed.  Green and brown on the stock, where his brother had painted it.  Was this a trick of his Uncle Thondup?  Could he have known?  Thondup, the exaggerator.  Dead little more than a decade.  Mouse shakes his head.  He turns the cartridge in a thumb and forefinger.  Thondup: the god? 

More likely, Thondup, along with the Girl Orchid, are agents of some greater power.  Screws!  Sure.  This world joined to his previous life. 

His one-room shack of an existence that ended in prison.  In a riot fueled by politics he did not understand.  Mouse never found love.  Or friendship, for that matter.  Well, one friend—who soon left.  Why did his brother have to leave him alone?  A question he had asked a million times.  After that, a kind of a curtain had gone down.  What justice was there in that?  So, if this be some brand of justice, Mouse will not lie down.  He will break beaks and fangs.  He will evade huntress flowers.  He will plan, hide, and escape.      

The ocean below, like a plain of black, molten lava, recedes to a murky line beneath a cloud of lit steam.  The black stripe advances, twinkles, breaks; surf stretches, dissipates.  Another stripe wells. 

Purgatory. 

It is some kind of a purgatory.  Obviously.  For he is dead.  He felt the bullets.  Thondup is the screw with the key.  Orchid is a minor screw.  How furious she had been the morning he slipped out to walk alone in the garden.  Orchid is one of those insect-hunting flowers of the garden.  Eyes green and calculating.  She will come hunting him.  If he is to escape the cat, Mouse had better be equally as calculating.   

Mouse stands up.  He shelters his eyes.  Just visible along misty, tumbling forest, some structure is lodged in the black band. 

He hikes out of the jungle the way he had come.  He peeks over low, rock ridges that jut into the ocean before he starts out on open sand.  The shipwreck sits half-buried and tilting.  The exterior hull has weathered, leaving thin, sections clinging to jagged beams.  Mouse wriggles into the hold.  With the sun shining through jagged planks above, laying bars on the black sand, Mouse finds a section of board and begins to stab and paw.  The edge of the board strikes something.  Mouse uncovers a rusty plate.  A fork.  A glass bottle filled with sand.  He sets them next to the pile of earth.   He unearths a rusty helmet.  He crawls out of the wreck and carries the helmet to a tide pool.  Pushing it into clear water, he rubs sand and pitted metal with his fingers.  He swirls the helmet, and dumps it, and turns it in the light.  The exterior is ornamented with flowers and serpents. 

Turning stones, Mouse perches on the edge of a tide pool.  The green and vermilion-striped star fish might be inedible.  Same for the  anemones.  He plucks a few mussels and catches sand fleas.  He drops in kelp.

With his helmet half full, Mouse arrives at the cliffs.  Wide enough to keep out rain, a rock face curves like the side of an hour glass.  At eye level on the curving wall, between small hand-prints: an ocher tableau.  A figure, chest cut open, stares at his own heart.  In both hands, a priestess raises it toward the sun.  The victim’s arms and legs are restrained by other figures.  Mouse steps closer.

Over the rim of the helmet, a twitch catches Mouse’s eye.  He throws himself backward, flinging the helmet at the cliff.  Beside the overturned helmet, writhing and switching, is a snake as thick as Mouse’s wrist.  The black tongue flashes.  Below pits, the eyes are thin, black crescents.  Mouse reaches for a branch.  He presses it over the base of the snake’s head.  The coils twist, wrapping the stick and looping around Mouse’s wrist.  Mouse raises up a stone.

Fire cracks.  Flames slide up the black, leaning cinders.  Steam billows around the helmet and along the rock face—to the priestess lifting the dripping heart—out into the hissing rain. 

Resting  his back against heaped palm fronds,   He scoops and tastes broth in a mussel shell and turns the propped, dripping, snake-threaded stick.   

On the beach, the black horse puts his haunches to the wind-driven rain.  He shakes the bridle.  On the opposite side of the island, a sailor is lured to an upper room.  Around the inn, cottages smoke.  Dinners of rabbit, fish, or parrot are served with tropical fruit.  In the light of fish-oil lanterns, only females sit down.