Queen of the Cats 6. Phoenix and Ed and Alice and Nocta

6. Phoenix and Ed and Alice and Nocta

Nix might have been five or six years old the day she came home in tears from Sapling Society. In what passed for a group activity school for her age of youngsters had made drawings that day. They had been asked to draw themselves with their mommy and daddy, or daddy and daddy, or mommy and mommy, or mommy, mommy and daddy (no judgement) and what made them each happy.

The other children has used swaths of the 100% recycled newsprint paper and as many crayons as possible to make lavish and painfully bright colored pictures of happy groups of people with houses, toys, sports and games. Nix drew herself, a fence at the edge of the compound and a kitten on the other side of the fence. The kitten made her happy when she petted the soft black fur through the fence and played with string. Nix had asked to bring the kitten home, but Ed and Alice told her it was a lot of responsibility and maybe she could have a kitten when she was older.

As Missy Joy walked around the gazebo, she talked to each happy little flexible sapling about their drawing and helped them label some of the less clear objects, like a brown lump on a table meant to be meatloaf but looked rather a bit like a pile of excrement. Nix was coloring in the grass on the hill beyond the fence in many colors of green, because she always saw it as a patchwork of colors and not just one green.

"Phoenix..." Missy Joy hesitated. "Where are your mommy and daddy in your picture?"

With dark and soulful eyes, Nix gazed up at her "Missy Joy, I don't have a mommy or a daddy."

"But Phoenix, I've met your family. I know your mommy and daddy." Missy continued, still trying to hold a gentle smile on her face through her confusion.

"Missy Joy, I have an Ed and I have an Alice. They said that those are their names and I should always call things by proper names or I would be..." Nix seemed to search for the rest of the phrase. "robbing them of their personal right to self-identity and forcing them to conform to societal norms that are bullshit." Nix finished in a single breath, hoping that she had remembered all of the right words and all in the right order.

"Oh, dear. Yes, I see. Um. Beautiful picture dear. The grass and wildflowers are really pretty." Missy tried to sound unconcerned and pleased with her pupil's work. She wasn't certain she had managed either but Nix returned to coloring and she padded away.

At the end of the day, the Sapling Society took their drawings inside the Mess Hall and hung them up on the walls so that the whole commune could enjoy the elementary but adorably sweet art. Nix proudly hung up her picture which showed her house and herself playing with the kitten at the fence, the tall marijuana plants behind the house and the rolling green hill outside the compound fence.

A few other Saplings noticed and began staring at Nix's drawing, trying to understand. One child piped up and asked Nix where her mommy and daddy were, and Nix repeated her response that she had neither, just an Ed and Alice. The other children looked either confused or started to laugh. The laughing ones were the ones that made Nix's stomach feel all whirly like soda and too many cartwheels. "Phoenix, you are so dumb you don't even know what parents are. Your mommy and daddy are Alice and Ed and my daddy says they smoke too many drugs and that makes them stupid."

Missy Joy noticed the knot of children and tried to walk as quickly as possible to cut off what might be unkind words. She should have walked faster. As she arrived, the children were laughing except Nix who was looking balefully at the ground. When she lifted her tear streaked face she whispered "but they asked me to..". Missy could not get the children to stop laughing fast enough in her class of only positive comments and uplifting messages. The rules of their school forbade her from telling the children they were nasty little brats and mean as their parents even when it was true. Separating the children and making each go stand by their own picture helped regain order.

Nix never moved and had just looked back down at the ground. She turned back to her picture and carefully removed it from the wall, peeling off the tape with great care so the paper was not damaged. She rolled the brown paper up like a tube and walked out of the Mess Hall, even though Missy Joy asked her to please come back for the apologies. Nix kept walking.

As she opened the door at home, Alice's eyes widened at the state of her daughter. Nix wasn't given to weeping or tantrums and Alice wasn't even sure what to do.

"Phoenix bird, what's wrong? Why are you crying?" Alice asked tentatively, not sure if this was how you dealt with tears.

Her only child answered her with the words "Because I have no mommy and daddy". She set down the rolled picture on the coffee table and did not break stride. In her room she changed into not-Sapling clothes and walked back out the door just moments later. Alice sat on the couch looking at the lovely drawing that she could not imagine had caused this strife.

Phoenix Alexandria MaryJane Verity Kobesky curled up on the grass beside the fence and tapped the fence with a rock a few times. Just a few minutes later, her only friend, a tiny black kitten came racing over the hill and tumbled down most of the other side in her excitement. The kitten rubbed herself all over the fingers that stuck through the fence and even licked them. Her girl was not playing the same way she usually did and the kitten wanted more. The poof of black fur turned away and ran along the fence line, out of Nix's sight. She cried even harder as her best friend just left her on the grass.

Nix rolled onto her back and just stared at the overcast sky, unsure how to make her tears stop. Finally, she was able to quit the crying sobs and hiccoughs and get herself to just eye leaking sadness. And that was when it hit her. Literally.

A tiny black kitten landed on her chest using a force that should not be possible for her mass and then screeched her joy directly into Nix's face. Over the years, the kitten screech would mature into a screaming yowl that could stop a heart or wake you from the soundest sleep. The kitten and Phoenix played happily on the grass. There was tumbling, screeching, pouncing and more than a bit of falling over.

As the day dimmed to sunset, Nix made a few decisions in her head and nodded to herself. She picked up the kitten and marched home. When Nix arrived she observed Missy Joy leaving with Ed and Alice standing on the porch. Approaching, her parents rushed toward her but she put her hand up to stop them.

"No." Nix said, halting them. "I am sad and angry and I don't want hugs right now. I would like a set of encyclopedias and school books. Real school books. I am not going back to the Saplings and I can learn faster this way. I am keeping this kitten and her name is Nocta. I am big enough for the responsibility and will take care of her. I can do more chores so we can buy things kittens need."

Phoenix then walked right past her parents, tears still in the corners of her eyes. She did not like angry and sad, especially together. She took two bowls, a box, an old newspaper, scissors, a chunk of chicken from the fridge, and calmly proceeded to her room and shut the door.

After cutting up the chicken and filling the other bowl with water, Nix shredded the newspaper and filled the makeshift litter box. After tiny Nocta had eaten and drank her fill, she started looking around the room. Nix picked her up and set her in the box. After a brief game of jumping out and being placed back inside, Nocta scratched at the newspaper, performed her evening toilette and then hopped out of the box. Nix set the kitten on the bed while she put on her pajamas and then climbed in beside her best friend. It had been a long day and Nix fell asleep quickly. Nocta curled beneath the girl's chin and closed her eyes, purring softly.

A few hours later, the door creaked open as Alice and Ed peeked in. As Alice made to enter the room to fiddle with the comforter and do something motherly, the kitten's eyes opened slowly and she let out a low warning hiss. Alice backed up and left the room, looking over at Ed once the door was shut.

"Well, we kind of deserve that." Ed whispered sadly. Alice responded "I didn't realize parenting would be so hard." Quietly, they padded off to their room.

In Nix's bed, Nocta seemed to almost smile as she let her eyes slowly close. No one would hurt her girl so long as she could help it.


7. Piñatas

Queen of the Cats 5. The Shopping

5. The Shopping

Nix mused that if there were no people remaining in the houses or stores, and goods had been left behind, it really couldn't be counted as theft anymore. After the seven years since Reverent Day, most people had gotten smart and gone into the country to hide, attempted to fortify and defend for a time, or just had the shit murdered out of them. The dead people had just gotten up and gone for a wander. There was likely no one left to claim these houses and goods, so Nix used small towns like big box stores. Attics and basements offered up a lot of useful stuff.

Working her way methodically through homes and businesses, Nix packed up trash bags of things that could be helpful and set them on the curb outside. Outside was not a fabulous place to hang out, but trash and trash bags were universally ignored in these places. Trash, debris, rusting metal and the staggering dead. Sometimes Nix would find a small group of people and those were the ones she wanted to avoid the most.

After she cleared each building, Nix left her trash bag outside and quickly moved to the next building. After shopping an entire town, she could come back that evening or even a week later and pick up the bags if things had started to feel 'funny' and she had bolted half way through her shopping.

The only items she would pack out immediately were medicines, medical supplies, aged high end liquors or well packaged plant seeds. Any thing else she could likely come back for.

When Nix shopped, it was with a very different posse of cats. Town team had all been owned cats and you could see it in their expensive breeding and perfect conformation. She took the ones who had lived in cities and suburbs and excelled at getting in and out of tight spaces, over fences, and avoiding humans who wished them harm. Nix seemed to be the only human left for whom cats were companions and not used as spit roasted meat or a dead man's juice box. It made a lot of sense for them all to stick together and work together.

The town team consisted of a Siamese named Theo who mostly rode on her shoulder and his low growl told Nix that something was approaching. Talulah was a calico convinced of her superiority, but also correct in that assumption, as her Hemmingway paws were basically hands and she could open doors and manipulate a shocking number of items in her murder mitts. London, the Lykoi served as distraction so others could hide, because the sight of a tiny werewolf stopped all humans in their tracks. His hair was perfect and he was very, very fast.

There was Zoe, a remarkably chill Abyssinian with glittering emerald eyes who always seemed to know when the group had taken a wrong turn and got them headed back the right way. Oberon was the building scout who oozed into the shadows with his jet black fur and verified that buildings were clear of the living and the dead. Pixie Bob had the heart of a lion but she was a naked Sphinx with no tail. Once Nix figured out how to adjust baby clothes for her, PB also helped with shopping by finding caches of baby food and nabbing cute baby outfits for herself. Last of the shopping brigade was the obsidian black Shadow who would take a high position and watch for anything amiss coming their way.

The town team was fierce, efficient and could run like hell. Each member, including Nix, could fold themselves away into tiny and improbable spaces until danger had passed. When clear, they would hear a single call from Shadow and follow the route out of town that he had chosen.

In this grouping, they would hop into the Prius that Nix had stolen. She managed this grand theft auto by shoving a mostly skeletonized corpse out the car door and pressing the start button on the steering column. She found the key fob in the pants pocket of Senior Bones and the first stop they made was to an auto parts store for seat covers and a great deal of air freshener. The Prius was quick, quiet and conservative with fuel, basically the perfect car for a post-apocalypse reconnoiter.

Nix would always hit the pharmacies first, then the liquor store. The drugs were helpful for herself and the cats and some of them made for good trade items. The liquor was medicinal applied to skin, consumed by oral route or traded for excellent trade items. High value items went straight into her pack as the cats scouted the town. Once done in the pharmacies, Nix would emerge to find out which feline was waiting for her to follow. They led her to cashes of food, hidden drugs of the legal and illegal sort, canned cat food, sometimes cat toys, blankets that did not contain dead people or would lead her to places where they had found items she would want.

Talking a moment to tell each one how good and smart they were, the felines would receive a quick touch and treat while Nix bagged the goods. Sometimes, they even led her to other cats. In those cases, Nix would let the town squad do the convincing while she kept working. Occasionally, they would find a cat that was deeply injured or sick, even dead bitten. In those cases, work stopped, the cat was collected and they hauled ass for home.

Out in the Med Shed, Nix had installed metal animal crates against a wall, so if she needed to put a feline on bed rest or limited mobility, she could. Over the last few years she kitted the space out as a vet office and read every book on cat veterinary medicine she could. Broken legs could be set and crushed legs could be removed. There we're not many procedures that Nix would not at least try if she was certain that it could be the only save for a tiny life.

The dead bitten were the worst. The wounds festered and the fever washed over them, they ached in every joint and cried in pain. Unlike the first time, Nix now had the knowledge and supplies to dim their pain, reduce their fevers and debride their wounds, but it was still awful.

It was a few years since Nix encountered her first dead bitten animals in the months after the compound collapsed and she found herself alone with all of the cats from the commune following her. She would find an animal bitten, and at first she would observe because she needed to know what would happen and how she would have to deal with these pitiful creatures. Once they died, would they also rise up again? The answer was no. Animals with shallow bites or scratches might live but those with deep wounds went painfully. Nix learned the most humane ways of ending their lives to speed them to the end of their pain.

Then it was Olwyn. A tiny grey puff of fur somehow got herself grabbed and bitten. She limped her way home and Nix sobbed to see her pain. She curled up under a chair and would not come out. The other cats spent the night watching over her in shifts and her tiny body heaved one last breath near dawn. Nix carried her to the hole in the yard behind the trailer they had taken over and gently covered her with soil. Neither the cats nor Nix did anything that day but nap in piles to comfort each other.

At dinner time, Nix put down the plates of turkey baby food and kibble mixed with rice and canned chicken and then mostly got out of the way, shoving the back door open a foot so the yard cats could come in for the night and have dinner. Sitting at the yellowed Formica table and reading a 5 year old newspaper, it took Nix a moment to notice the the cats were clearing a path and there was a lot of sniffing and confusion going on. When Nix looked among the cats, it took her a moment to find. Tiny, grey and dirt covered Olwyn was sitting by a plate and eating in her dainty way but with obvious hunger.

"Holy shit, holy shit" whispered Nix as she stood and slowly backed toward the living room, trying to figure out if she had just let a dead cat inside and how many others would be bitten before she could save them. Her arm was reaching for the baseball bat behind the door when Olwyn looked up at her.

Her eyes were clear and not the milky haze of the dead. Olwyn gazed up at Nix and made a pleased chirrup sound. With a happy raised tail, she took a straight line right to Nix and merrily weaved between her human's boots. She seemed a little more stiff than the other cats, but she still had a large wound and needed medical care. She was not dead. She was not risen dead. Olwyn was just alive again and really needed a bath.

That night Olwyn had her bath, her wound cleaned carefully, some antibiotics and was placed on the bed by Nix so she could keep a close eye on the tiny cat who curled into a neat circle and purred with joy.

Cats, when bitten, did not behave like any other animal and Nix wanted to know why.


6. Phoenix and Ed and Alice and Nocta

The Year of Sweet Corn

Dedication: To Cordelia on the anniversary of her entry into this world. Thank you for being one of my dearest and most morbid friends. Because of you, I have kept writing, always hoping just one I would write any piece as good as your work. This one is just from the heart, well, my black heart. Birthdays are for personalized gothic horror, yes?

The Year of Sweet Corn


Once, there was a Seneca girl who was not much like the other girls on the reservation. She was not an Indian princess. Her tribe, like most, had no such thing and she learned as a child to roll her eyes at such tales. To most, she was not even of the tribe because her mother was a white woman whom her father adored and married.

The odd little girl learned her histories and loved to sit by her father,, an elder and listen to the language of their people pour from him like a waterfall on rough stone- jagged, powerful, and beautiful. He told stories of the tribe and in the low light of dusk, he made the tales come alive. His daughter's heart was so full on those nights were she could nearly touch their gods and goddesses, feel the sweep of twirling woven cloth as he spoke of ancient dancers. She could taste corn that had been blessed and blessed again, a sweetness like no other and she could hear a heartbeat rhythm that could have been her own and could have been the sky or the earth or the fire or all of those at once.

Although her parents loved her very much, she found that she did not easily fit into the shapes of life that most people occupied. Especially, she did not enjoy the molds into which little girls were supposed to jam themselves and emerge with long eyelashes and a coquettish grins. That, simply, was not her style. She found those girls false and empty headed. Yet, she tried and went to gatherings of 'kids'. Milling about the edges of the soda and chips, she would find the first moment when no one was watching her and she would slip away.

Instead, she would walk. She loved the night and dark things. She found beauty where others felt their hearts begin to beat faster. Where most people walked with extreme caution and the highest alert singing in their sinew, she ran heedless into the shadows and the shadows loved her for it. She could just sit in the forest and read, listen to music on her second hand disc-man or just listen to the trees and the wind and sometimes it was almost like she could hear it talk to her. She loved every piece of the land, exactly as it was.

Unfortunately, this is not a universally loved approach to life because those who cleave together against the dark abhor those who travel freely in that world. They become suspicious, then jealous, then angry and then they find a reason. It never needs to be much of a reason. Anything will do. A smirk. An eye roll. It does not matter.

On a half moon night, she walked home through the woods, having escaped another awful gossip fest. She decided to buy some time walking a rambling path home so she could plausibly tell her parents she had tried to spend some time with the other kids and that she was not completely miserable as she knew they would just feel bad.

As she was about to step into a patch of moonlight, she heard a twig break and some leaves crunch on the other side of the clearing. As she had learned, she went entirely still and her ink decorated Chuck Taylor sneaker settled back to the ground without making any sound. She silently cursed herself for wearing a black t-shirt with a massive white band logo on the front. Shit.

A clamor of girls from the party tumbled into the clearing, loudly and perhaps a little drunkenly, shushing each other.

"Shut up. I know she came this way. I SAW her!'
"Shhhhhhhhh"
"Bitch. I so want to kick..."
"Holy shit. She's right there"

Like a pack of wolves, the hair-sprayed and mascaraed platoon finally noticed her and all slowly turned to face her.

The lone girl with the goth t-shirt and the punk rock style set down her purse by a tree, hoping it would still be there when she was done getting her ass kicked. This wasn't the first time she found herself outnumbered or cornered, just the first time it had happened in her woods. Wondering how they had found her, she pulled her hair back and secured it with an elastic. Her hands fell to her sides as she took one last deep breath.

Stepping out of the trees, she moved into the moonlight and paused in the clearing. This was going to suck. A one to five tramp ratio was not good odds, even if they were a bit drunk. The girls began to move forward with their sharpening grins, but behind them, in the shadows, something else was moving.

The shapes were large, too large for people. In the fitful moonlight through the leaves, it looked for all the world as if boulders had stacked themselves into cairns and were shuffling forward. she was looking at walking legends: Stonecoats.

The girl began to open her mouth to tell the awful girls to run, because she realized that she was seeing a story come to life and was pretty sure about what would come next. A hand settled onto her shoulder. A massive hand of shifting pebbles, stones, and rocks of all sizes held together in some kind of beautiful and terrifying dance set with such care upon her shoulder. A bass rumble behind her said "No. You are to watch. You are to understand and remember."

The girl swallowed hard and then tried to be as still as possible, to be a threat to no one. Still, the wolfish girls snarled their curses and staggered closer, not noticing a creature like a mountain in front of them, not hearing the nearly silent mountains closing in behind them.

The rock giants stepped up, one behind each girl. The Stonecoats of myth and legend casually thumped each girl on the head and caught their bodies as they fell. She felt the weight of the rock giant lift from her shoulder as he rumbled "Get your things and come with us." She did as she was told. Very, very precisely. She searched her brain for anything her father had told her about these beings, but decided to keep her thoughts to herself.

It seemed like they had walked a long way, but that was probably just what happened when you walked with a group of living (wait, were they living?) myths. They came out of the forest and into cleared farm land. In the distance, lights of homes could be seen here and there and the girl realized that she knew right where she was- less than a mile from her own home and in one of the largest corn fields on the reservation.

The spring and summer had been terrible for crops- too much sun and no rain and then too much rain and no sun to be had. The corn was stunted, the ears small and everything seemed to be wilted. As the Stonecoats and their prizes approached, a woman emerged from the corn. Her skin was pale, her hair paler still, and her teeth were brilliant white and straight like perfect white corn. Her dress was the green of stalks and husks and as she moved she sounded like the sigh of the wind through the cornfield. With a gesture, she pointed the Stonecoats to rows of the field where they dropped their female burdens.

The goddess of the corn sang quietly, plaiting her corn silk hair into small, neat braids and cutting one off for each girl that lay by the field. She tied their hands together with the silken braids and then made a small cut in the neck of each girl. As the corn goddess finished, a rock giant gently collected each girl by her feet and trundled away down the long rows of corn, the girls and their trails of blood glinting in the moonlit furrow behind them.

The giants were gone. The dying girls were gone. The half Seneca girl stood beside the field with Onatah, the corn goddess, and could not find a single word to say. The rustling gowned goddess noted the girl's discomfort and turned toward her, slicing one last braid from her hair and tucking it into the pair of slightly unsteady human hands. Leaning down, the cornsilk goddess kissed the forehead of the girl and whispered "You are more Seneca than all of them together and are always safe here. Take this braid to your father. Tell him the Corn Maidens have been chosen and sacrificed. It will be a sweet corn year."

With no further words, the pale goddess turned and melted away into the field and the Seneca girl ran for home. When she arrived she attempted to compose herself, but her father saw the look on her face as she tried to creep by to her bedroom. "Child, what is it?" he asked with a gentle voice. Still trembling, the Seneca girl held out the gleaming cornsilk braid to her father. He plucked it from her hand with a smile. "A sweet corn year, I see. Wonderful! Go to bed dear. We'll talk... eventually." Smiling, he walked off toward his library, muttering something in Seneca, as he navigated through some piles of books and stepped over a napping cat.

The Seneca girl went to bed and yes, the corn was especially sweet that year. The fat cobs were swathed in gowns of pale and soft green leaves, flowing long corn-silk tops and when shucked, the corn was white as pearls, straight as arrows, perfect like baby teeth.

It was a memorable harvest.

South. East. South.

It was never a case of the mountain not being there anymore, but rather that the mountain was still a little bit there and you just needed to know how to look for it.

In memory it remained indomitable and black, only ever glimpsed with the right kind of eyes. Small eyes that saw in pixels. Unrefined animal eyes that saw in only shades of grey and motion. It was especially revealed in strange edges of visions when an eye did not look directly at the mountain, but to the side of it. In the periphery, sharp planes and time-worn but geometric shapes played in the margins between vista and simple brain.

The Monarch butterflies remembered the mountain, mostly because it was hard to forget something you could still see. In the foreign light of their insect eyes, the mountain still stood. Indomitable, and a bit blurred about the edges as if swathed in a mist. However, the sun shown upon its frozen, jagged planes and lines, and it sometimes winked a knowing brilliant gleam from an inky black and glinting jet facet.

It was not a kind place, nor had it ever been such. The butterflies that stopped there to rest were sometimes just gone the next morning. The massive clumps that hung in trees like overburdened grape vines depleted in numbers overnight. There was no sign of fallen butterflies upon the ground. They were simply vanished. The remainder of the flight would then take off as a rather truncated flock, no longer a glorious spectacle in a cloud of color with the gentle susurration of millions of wings. Instead, the sound was that of a rustle of some dozen satin ball gowns as small orange clouds curled away like smoke into the mists.

Once those survivors were gone, no eyes were left to notice the butterflies remaining behind the wine-dark glass, each flying frantically in an attempt to reach the sunlight and their fellows. Following the instinct to fly, they battered their own wings and wore down their stored nutrients. They slowed and then stopped like a child's toy as the battery runs low. Nothing outside the glass was left to witness the battered insects give in to the cold inside the mountain. Each by each, they tipped over and fell dead. The mountain fed and was sated.

With enough years and generations, the island had culled out the butterflies that would rest upon that mountain. Over the ages, the tiny minds of butterflies became hard wired against stopping on the island overnight. Their minuscule memories or, perhaps seeing the mountain in the far distance somehow dissuaded them, so they flew on. The Monarchs changed their route of travel and did not stop. The lighter than paper insects began taking their pass over the lake as one long flight. It was grueling but that was somehow better. The new route created some loss, but ameliorated the yearly decimation of their species.

The stream of southward flying amber and black wings would suddenly turn at 90 degrees east and fly for about five miles. After that, their course with abruptly correct to south and the creatures that hardly possessed a brain and had never flown this migration path somehow knew precisely where to go and where to avoid.



Between the coming of people and the departing of the butterflies, other species, mostly small mammals, birds and fish would try to make a go at a colony on this island seemingly without predators.With smaller populations, the mountain needed to wait for there to be enough living creatures, breeding creatures and extra creatures that some could just become lost as they slunk, or crawled, or fluttered, or hopped, or swam around their home island of black glass and basalt. The diet of the mountain dwindled and year by year it became a bit harder to see. Misty, sliding further into the periphery of the eye and also curling in upon itself in some atrophy of starvation.

Humans have always had a difficult time arguing with any disparity between eye and mind. The changed course of millions of butterflies was quite noticeable, but it took humans rather a long time to notice since the navigation of the Monarchs took place far out in a deep lake. Humans had few vantage points from which one might glimpse this spectacle and most of those were boats.

And thus, via boats, early people came to this strange island. The first people were of the oldest tribes who searched for good hunting, fishing or resources. None of those were found save shards of black glass that could be chipped and flaked into wickedly keen edged weapons. Unlike with the small animals, the tribal people noticed when fewer people returned and boarded their boats at the end of the day than had disembarked in the morning.

They searched until the sun was setting, the light burning gold over the black planes and angles of the rock, blinding the searchers. When no trace of the missing was found, they retired to their boats and moved further out into the water. Lashing their crafts together for the night, they passed a solemn and near silent night on the water. In the morning, they searched again and saw only strange reflections of their own faces, reflected back with rippled details that sometimes did not look like their own visage, but rather that of the missing.

There is something that reads as deeply wrong to the human mind when you look into a reflecting surface and note that your reflection does not precisely mirror the actions of your own body. The head in the mirror turns slower, the smile lasts too long, the expression in the face is not your own or someone is standing behind you but that image exists only in the faces of the obsidian and there is no one behind you when you turn to check.

Thus, the first peoples left and told stories of terrible loss and a mountain of death to any who would journey to this black island of nothing but sharp edges, pain and loss. The mountain sat for many ages and again became hungry again. From Black Island, one might notice the occasional rumble like thunder from far beneath the mountain. The very earth there growled, considering releasing a bit of magma from the center volcano but usually only managed a few wispy belches of smoke. From time to time, a group of brave men in small boats would come and try to prove themselves against the island. They were not victorious in anything but feeding a nameless monster that contentedly returned to slumber when the few surviving voyagers ran screaming toward their boats in hasty departure.

Many years passed and the mountain noticed boats. Large boats. Large boats that must hold many people. As the mountain was invisible to most eyes, the larger ships just did not come its way. Somewhere in the black heart of a black volcano, amid the chorus of weeping voices in many languages, an idea emerged. The mountain consolidated to one last tall peak. Pulling back the energy of the many lives that bound the island together, the outlying volcanoes, the young ridges of obsidian began to crack and with just a single year of ice and heat, they crumbled into the water forming an inconspicuous shoal in an otherwise very deep channel of the giant lake.

The last volcano slipped almost entirely behind a veil of mist and shadow and light and illusion and discomfort to any eye that might land upon it. Black Island, above and below the water line, waited and it was quite ready. Those ships did come. Oh, yes. Full of people and treasures, they ran at speed through the deep channel night and day. Most were lucky. Others were not.

With a keel torn asunder, rudders detached and holes sliced through the hull by sharp volcanic glass, there was very little time for the people on board to make decisions. Some ships began their sinking right there where the damage occurred. Sometimes survivors of these accidents would see the Black Island and swim furiously for its shores. Washing up on the sharp, black shore, they called themselves lucky for a little while. Soon, concerned with the lack of fresh water, game, vegetation or cover they grew anxious about how they might survive until rescue. They needn't have worried. Soon they were just reflections in the midnight glass.

Others went down with their ships and were probably the lucky ones, unless that ship sank at the roots of the black shoal. In that case, they just became rippling faces in the midnight glass facets that were underwater.

Wrecks small and large would be shifted away to deeper places in the lake. The shoal would sometimes rearrange itself to be much lower like a channel but in an entirely new spot. The peaks of the shoal would then be found closer to the formerly safe passages, sometimes just 20 feet beneath the waterline. The perfect depth for snagging a moderately drafting boat that had considered itself safe to run at speed. Oh, how the wood would cracks and shatters, and upon hearing those sounds, the hungry black glass would let itself be glimpsed by the ship wrecked humans.

The island did not know how much or what it had eaten. It was just a monster of rock and intent. A darkling maw waiting for the next bit of prey to arrive. The prey always came. It still does sometimes. The mountain remains hidden and sated. The ships remain sunken and full of fish and death. The black windows of obsidian below and above the water line can still be viewed with so many pairs of eyes of so many species trying to look out.

But, the butterflies can see the mountain. They have not forgotten to cross the immense lake and make no stops. They fly south, then east, then south again and are precise in their directions.



Copy write 2019, Kristen Gilpin
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Sources and Inspiration:

NOTE: The pop articles state something very different than the scientific articles. Lincoln Brower does not ever suggest a giant mountain, rather how flyways develop around obstacles. But a mountain that could 'go away' with little trace. to me, means volcano. Sure enough, Lake Superior's Superior Shoal is a massive conglomeration of basaltic lava flows which are mostly well below the center of the lake- except that pesky part that is only 6 meters below the surface of the lake near a busy shipping channel. So here we have butterflies, a missing mountain, 20 square miles of underwater shoal and debris, a area previously volcanic active and a rift which can sweep away rather a lot of rocky mess. To me, this equals a story

1. Gizmodo Article (2013)

2. MONARCH BUTTERFLY ORIENTATION: MISSING PIECES OF A MAGNIFICENT PUZZLELINCOLN P. BROWERDepartment of Zoology, University of Florida,Gainesville, FL 32611, USAThe Journal of Experimental Biology 199, 93–103 (1996) 93Printed in Great Britain © The Company of Biologists Limited 1996JEB0122

3. Lincoln Brower (1931-2018) Memorial

4. From Wikipedia: The Superior Shoal  is a geologic shoal of approximately 20 square miles (52 km2) located 50 miles (80 km) north of Copper Harbor, Michigan in the middle of Lake Superior, the highest point of which lies only 21 feet (6.4 m) below the lake's surface.[1] The shoal is a hump of Keweenawan basaltic lava flows with ophitic interiors and amygdaloidal tops in an otherwise deep part of the lake, and though fishermen had known of its existence for generations it was only officially charted in 1929 by the United States Lake Survey.[2]:193 It has been theorized that the World War I French minesweepers Inkerman and Cerisoles, which disappeared during their maiden voyage on Lake Superior in mid-November 1918, may have run aground on this shoal[2]:192 and some have theorized that it may have been to blame for both the disappearance of the "Flying Dutchman of the Great Lakes" on November 21, 1902 and the sinking of the "Titanic of the Great Lakes" on November 10, 1975 (the SS Bannockburn and SS Edmund Fitzgerald, respectively).[3][4] It is one of the known off-shore spawning and foraging habitats for the juvenile lean lake trout.

5. Monarch Butterfly Migration: A Mystery Of The Natural World - HD Documentary

The Adebarsteine

Albrecht Durer ~ The Stork, 1515 

“Hope” is the thing with feathers- 

That perches in the soul-- 

And sings the tune without the words -- 

And never stops - at all - 

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard 

-And sore must be the storm - 

That could abash the little Bird 

That kept so many warm - 

I’ve heard it in the chillest land - 

And on the strangest Sea - 

Yet - never - in Extremity, 

It asked a crumb - of me. 

Emily Dickenson

     In Lohme, on the isle of Rugen, they left sweets upon the adebarsteine, the stork stones. They did not remember the stories.

Have you ever really listened to the stories meant for children? They are fantastic, sometimes beautiful but they are also warnings, as most tales of youth turn out to be in later days.

If you cry wolf when there is no wolf, eventually you will find yourself locked and luckless in a gaping maw. Should you find a cottage made all of sugar and delight then you should run far and fast away from the witch and her wide, waiting oven. If you place sweets upon the stork stones, the stork will bring a baby to the mother who makes the offering, but it may not be the babe for which she precisely hoped.

The tales are told with smiles and small words, in hopes that they will creep deep into the memory of each growing child and perhaps someday, stay their hand or quiet their shout. There is always a warning. A price to be paid for not heeding the tales.

Children grow to young people and continue to become slightly less young. They court and they dance and eventually they pair off like birds to nest. And then, chicks. Babies. Soft and pale and gurgling. Even the ones that cry all through the night, even they are prized with their tiny fingers, long lashes and chubby limbs. Everyone loves a baby.

Yet, some wives pass year by year with no children, empty knit blankets and cleverly crafted cradles waiting at the hearth-side. The hope and gleam in their eyes dwindles and their patience washes out to sea like the chalk cliffs, pain etched deeper by each wave. Wishes gone unanswered, prayers unfulfilled... but then in the sad oceans of their minds, a half-forgotten memory of a tale surfaces and washes up in a fading dream. The adebarsteine. The offering. The storks.

Desperation turns the warning veneer of old tales transparent. The wives remember a child's tale filled with sweets and storks and babies brought by birds. So silly, but they dare not dismiss even this least likely chance. Storks with their smooth bodies, white feathers and regal bearing. What could be more gentle? The last traces of fear slough off as easily and softly as preened down feathers.

By the pale blush of starlight and the moon glow on luminous cliffs each decides to try this far-fetched plea, but no woman dares to tell another for fear of shame and desperation revealed. Small feet, quiet feet in soft shoes steal into the night, for these things must always happen in the night. Past the sleeping village and beyond the dark oak trees the women go, each in her own time, down to the sea. A rocky shore where pebbles are stacked in tiny cairns, each a game of gravity. There the whisper of waves and the rasp of the spray beckon, each surge of water a tongue licking at the stone.

Like altars, the adebarsteine wait. 

Each wife filled with a dwindling dream of motherhood shucks off her shoes and hitches up her skirts. It is only ever a short wade to the stork stones. Knee deep into the Baltic, generations of barren wombs and hope-filled hearts make this pilgrimage and then set the bag of sweets upon the rock. Sugar, pure and white and sweet. It seems an easy trade.

A bag of precious confections, cakes, candies and sugared bits left upon the adebarsteine. In return, each woman takes one small pebble, a bit of grit no larger than a grain of sand and swallows it with a mouthful of the Baltic Sea. With eyes squeezed shut and a final, fervent prayer each wife flees the shore to duck back into their cottage, slip quietly back beneath the down coverlet.

The morning after a sacrifice is always the same. Sleepy wives and husbands wake, stretching and picking the rheum from their eyes. A quiet breakfast cooked and bolted down before the door clicks shut behind a husband off to work. It is then, in the quiet of a kitchen, beside the stoking fire, that each wife suddenly and surely becomes aware. Heaviness. A full feeling beyond that of a meal. The knowledge settles in that the offering has been received and something has taken root inside.

The bloom of expectant mother settles over each wife. Her smile quicker, her skin gone rosy as a spring blossom. Over the months they stretch and begin to distend in their middles, growing ungainly as every pregnant woman does. There is an ease to these pregnancies, a lack of sickness and swollen ankles. As their bellies round they press their fingers to their flesh hoping for the feel of a kick, a fist, a baby turning slowly over in a sleepy curl of comfort. Nothing.

Sometimes, late at night they feel a slow grind, as stone against stone or glacier over earth. Nothing smooth, or wet and wriggling. Just a big, firm belly filled where something is becoming. It is usually in these last months that the purposefully forgotten warning of a children's tale begins to seep up through the memory.

A bag of sugar and sweets and a swallowed pebble. A trade of one thing for another. There is a price. There is a charge.

In the village these wives smile through the day, being careful not to look too directly at the storks. Perhaps it was not that there were more of them. Perhaps there had always been so many, and now an awareness had been born. Hope is a funny thing: feathered and flapping faintly in the heart. The last month is always the longest.

And then one night, the wife rises from sleep with a sudden pain, something cracking deep inside. A half dressed husband is shoved out the door to fetch the midwife, leaving a wife in prayer and pacing. There is a sound that begins, faint at first but then louder: a clack and clatter. When the midwife and the husband rush back in, the midwife squints, assessing the wife and looking for the puddle of a babe about to be born and not finding what is expected. And then a sound: a staccato tap. The wife looks into the eyes of the midwife, a look of fear and pleading.

The midwife then stops still, breathes a quiet sigh and shoos the husband from the room where a new life is about to begin. It is for his own good. Go boil water. Go fetch towels. Go cook something so the new mother might have a filling meal after her ordeal. There are things a father should never see. Things a husband should never know.

In these births, few words were exchanged. A grunt of discomfort. A quick instruction of how to sit, or breathe or push. All the while amid the sounds of a husband flailing through a house in a clatter of pans and unfamiliar women's work, still there is a sound growing louder.

Tap. Tap, tap, clack.

A knocking growing insistently and unfailingly louder.

After the groaning and pushing and agony of fear, in a sudden gush of seawater the contents of the womb are expelled and caught by expert hands. An egg, white as sugar with a sheen liked an iced cake sits gleaming in the midwife's hands. The midwife, with an efficiency of practiced motion, walks to the window, throws wide the shutters and places the egg carefully on the sill, a bit of towel tucked around the bottom to keep it from rolling.

At the window the sounds from within the egg quicken and then cracks begin to show, spidering across the smooth and steaming surface of the shell. The midwife sits, hands on knees watching the window, and carefully avoids the eyes of the woman crouching in her bed and dragging the covers over herself, her hands wringing at the sheets.

A crack. A clatter. A flutter and crunch and then a hole appears. A sharp knife of a beak, a smooth white feathered head, a glittering black eye and a sinuous neck unfurl. In moments, a full grown stork stands upon the sill, slowly stretching ink tipped wings and gently preening at a milky white breast. With a last, unblinking stare, the stork turns toward the night and takes wing.

In the silence that follows, a low keening can be heard from the bed. A wife who had hoped against hope to be a mother with her heart broken as surely as an eggshell. With a single whispered command, "Schweig.", the midwife demands quiet, never looking away from the fluttering curtains and the wine dark sky beyond.

Softly. Softly so that the ear must strain and the heart must hope, a distant flapping cuts through the silence. Closer until the individual wing beats can be heard, a pale shape emerges from the night. A stork bearing a heavy burden, looking like a picture from a child's storybook, alights at the sill. A wriggling bundle is lowered down, set upon the towel and the crunching shards of eggshell. In the frozen moment of held breath and staring eyes, a small cry rises. With a last look from an eye black as a jet bead, the stork turns its golden bill back to the night and takes wing.

There are things that women do not say, even in the privacy of the birthing bed. There are glances that carry whole conversations, admonitions of deeds done in desperation. In the candle-flickering shadows, a midwife can pick up a swaddled babe from a window sill and carry it across the room to the shocked arms of a maid turned mother. A German woman, a world-wise midwife, knows how to do these things from the depth of her bones. She can stand straight and unshaken because that is how these things must be. There are no words for a night of old magic: a night of eggs and feathers and foundling babes. Such a midwife knows to place the pale and perfect infant into the arms of a new mother, collect her things and leave the room, pausing only to sweep the shards of eggshell from the windowsill and let them fall into the night.

There is a joy of relief when a deed is done and the hatched plan has come to fruition. A mother reshapes herself to curl around a perfect baby, her fingers exploring toes and ears and fingers almost too tiny to be real. Fathers steal back in to the room and join their new family in bed amid smiling and cooing. The new family begins to shape their world and lives to orbit this new, pale and perfect child. There is happiness and the feel of fear nearly fades away.

Some weeks later, word will travel in from afar. Perhaps from Griefsburg or from Hiddensea. A story of a baby stolen in the night will spread in all directions, a tale of caution whispered among mothers. Close the windows. Latch the shutters. Without vigilance it could be you who wakes to check upon the babe and finds instead a swaddle cloth filled with sea-smoothed pebbles and sometimes a bit of cake, a curl of confection on top.

The story swirls closer and eventually flutters into the house with a new baby. Fear blossoms and guilt flowers in the heart of a young mother and she tries never to meet the eyes of the midwife as they pass in the village. She begins to search for storks, noting each nest and watching for any that seem interested in the chimney tops of houses where pregnant women wait for their babes to be born. She starts to lock the doors at night, propping chairs beneath the knobs and checking each shutter twice.

And then, one night they will awaken to a soft tap at the window. They start awake and leap from their beds running first to check upon their baby, still pale and perfect in the cradle. Another tap, and then more and the mother is filled with fear yet finds herself going to the window and unlatching the shutter to see what is calling.

A stork stands on the sill and drops a bit of cloth from a keenly sharp bill. The napkin flutters open and spills a few crumbs of cake, a few grains of sugar upon the sill. Black eyes look first at the mother, then at the cradle and last turn to the scraps of sugar. With one last, long look into the fear-filled eyes of the trembling woman, the stork turns and drifts into the night with a flash of white and black against a blacker sky.

Understanding blooms. A deal has been made and must continue to be paid. There is no one-time transaction that covers the price of the thing the heart holds most dear. There is a debt. With tear stained cheeks and quaking hands, the mother fills a small sack with sugar, pale and perfect as her babe. Slipping out the door she streaks toward the ocean, feet blurring as she clutches a small sack to her chest.

At the sea, the rocks rise out of the water, no longer deserted. The Adebarsteine are the thrones of tall-legged birds who can fetch a heart's desire from a far cradle. There is a ransom still to pay. Wading out into the salty brine, she places the offering upon an empty altar and then backs slowly away, eyes wary.

In a flash of wings, the storks descend upon the confections, greedy for whatever can be grabbed. Pale beaks flash like knives as the birds squabble for a share. A lone stork leaves the quarrel and takes wing, alighting upon the stone closest to the shaken mother. It lowers a beak and delicately sets down a tiny glinting pebble, a grain not much finer that a bit of sand. Stepping backward, the bird quirks a head to the side, waiting to see if a new pact will be made this night.

The woman shakes her head, still backing away. She runs for the safety of her home, her heart heavy with the weight of a deal that was struck, a deal she did not fully understand. Once home she throws the bolt on the door and drags a chair to brace against the wood. There will be no more sleep this night.

She sits at the table, beside the fading kitchen embers and at once this mother understands two new truths. First, she must begin collecting sugar and hoarding confections against the next time the storks come calling. Second, she tells her heart that one baby is enough.

Kristen Gilpin 4/10/2015

August was...

There was a time before copper tubing and compressed air created a cool breath of relief, back when August was a cruel time. Each day we started walking and then we slowed, trudging turned to crawling and slid down the wall to a dragging and wheezing stop. There we would melt, soft as new tar with the occasional flap of a fan, dying moths involuntarily shuddering tattered wings. A slow puddle of bone and flesh and sweat that oozed  toward shade and waited.

Some days, those puddles slid too close and mingled. Some days those pools of man seeped a bit through a floorboard, or trickled into an insect burrow, never to be seen again. When the long shadows pulled over us like blankets, when the cruel eye of the sun turned away from us, we would each re-compose ourselves anew, hoping only to have collected all of our parts.

Against the pillows and under sheets we would wonder with fingers, testing at the known terrains of our human landscape. Something different? A question of a fingernail that seemed too short, a toe a touch too long, our how our hands might look just a bit older. When you were told you had your mother's eyes by a Yankee aunt at Thanksgiving, you would try to hide the shiver, the unsteady shake of your hand. Your mother would studiously avoid looking at anyone.

The old days of August. These are the days of which we dare not speak.

Kristen Gilpin, April 9, 2015

Pap

Boil'd P-Nuts, the rickety road signs proclaim on every backwoods highway.

Peanuts stewing in an ancient brine, a pot that has been in continuous use for years of boiling. The hominy cooks slow and is creamed to grits with a measure of butter to further soften the corn. Our barbecue shreds at a touch and the okra slides down the gullet, a smooth swallow of green.

There is no need to chew here. The collards can be torn by tongue and the meat can be sucked from each bone. And oh, how the smoked mullet falls apart in your mouth, salty and succulent. Sweet tea will wash down any last morsels that trouble you. Just sip the whiskey and swallow the biscuit softened in sausage gravy, where the bits of meat are far too small to notice.

You'll not be needing those teeth no longer. Just sip the whiskey.

~Kristen Gilpin 4.7.15

Fruit Rats

The orange grove is ancient, twisted. Trees bend and bow beneath the weight of vines and slow rotting fruit in the fetid heat, dropping their unwanted bounty into the weeds where the rats stir.

They remember when the food was plentiful, when the fruit reflected back an orange kaleidoscope in their darkling eyes. Now, there is lean hunger and scabbed flesh, but from the edge of their decaying field they can see the lights of porches, houses, all beckoning with plenty.

The fruit of these groves will be different and might squeal as they slip in through the open windows with sharp teeth and hunger, but at least it will be a time of full bellies and soft, sleek grey fur again. New flavors are waiting, just across the road and tiny claws scratch at the dry earth, waiting for the right second, for the signal to move forward.

~Kristen Gilpin 4.7.15

Find more regional gothic horror by other authors here.