Fish Tails Page 3

  From the point of view of the thing itself, a few was barely tolerable.

  Volcanologists had suggested that molten stone had been thrust into some deep, twisting cave and had solidified there to be heaved up during some great cataclysm. It had undoubtedly been smoothed by blown sand, washed by rain, polished by time. To Needly, how it had happened didn’t matter. It was here now, majestic, marvelous . . . and alive. The child was quite sure of that. Stone, maybe. But unlike any other stone.

  Grandma caught the child’s thought as she often did (often hearing the thoughts more clearly than words) and was not surprised to find it mirroring her own. In this scarlet light, birthed bloody from the womb of morning, the reaching curl of it had the shape of vitality: the coil of a sinuous vine, the time-­perfected veer of a wooded river; the arched line of a windblown tree, the flawlessly spiraling twist of a shell. All such transient living precisions were here frozen into an eternal reality. The substance was irrelevant.

  Grandma remembered, decades ago, attracted as much by challenge as curiosity, she had come this far, camped overnight in this same cup of shadow, then when it was barely light—­using rope, and metal spikes that she had pounded into cracks with a hammer, and, yes, no small measure of egotism—­she had come from below, climbed the precipitous wall, and then crawled over the razor edge of rock onto the narrow ledge on which the pedestal rested. Once there, she had touched the Listener, touched it, stroked it, examined it closely enough to assure herself that the formation was in every sense solid and real.

  Before deciding to make the journey, she had decided the thing had to be called “the Listener” for a reason, and she had desperately needed someone to listen. She had leaned against the glorious whatever-­it-­was, put her face against it, and pled for help: “Someone help me. Someone please tell me what the hell is going on?”

  During and after this plaint, she had probably uttered the word “help” at least ten times. Then, all those years ago—­as she turned to climb dangerously and laboriously back the way she had come—­she had seen that her final, vertiginous effort to reach the Listener had been utterly unnecessary. There was a route visible only from this end, a short, simple way that led toward a well-­traveled road and would have brought her to the monument with a fraction of the time and effort she had expended. On that occasion she had collapsed in tears and agonies of frustration that had absorbed a good deal of time and fury even though she used that easier route to return to the place she referred to and occasionally thought of as home.

  She had intended to take Needly along that route as soon as it was light so the child could actually climb onto the pedestal and touch the Listener. That climax to the experience was now . . . not possible. The ledge at the foot of the Listener’s pedestal was already occupied. She hadn’t seen it at first. Half blinded by dawn, she’d been looking past it at that curling, crimson glory, but now her eyes had dropped onto the ledge that should have been empty. This morning it was occupied by an unreality.

  Since neither she nor the child had seen it arrive, it must have been there during the darkness: a fantasy only slightly dwarfed by the Listener above it. It was obviously a mythical thing; anyone who could read knew that! No matter how the old woman blinked and wiped her eyes; incredible or not, there it was! As the sky-­flung stone above it faded from fiery copper and blazing bronze, the creature below it on the ledge received the metallic sheen and, enlivened by it, moved its great wings, the long primaries unfolding upward, the arc of the feathers that followed repeating the arc of the overarching formation, successive quills rising on either side of the massive chest, two perfect vertical fans that framed the prone body, the regal head with its queenly crest, the burnished mane that seemed to shine with its own radiance; the great beak like a shield of bronze, all this living assembly shining while the morning held its breath until the escutcheon was complete.

  There it was. Whole. Alive. And awake! A Griffin! A living Griffin!

  Needly and Grandma were still hidden in the cup of shadow below. Before starting on this birthday journey, Grandma had shared certain memories: her own sensations on first seeing the Listener; her wonder and delight; her perception that Earth itself seemed to rejoice at this particular revelation. Now she felt something approaching fear. Not terror, not yet. But things with great beaks like that, they did eat things, and Grandma and Needly were very probably among the types of things they . . . ate. She and the child were still hidden. The trees were only a few steps away. If they did not delay, they could creep away. They should do that right now, while darkness hid them . . .

  They did not.

  Why? A subtlety. Though Grandma could not possibly have expected this additional marvel, its presence was a perfect and suitable completion of the occasion. One did not flee from perfection!

  So, standing silent, her hand on the child’s shoulder, she swallowed apprehension and assured herself it was good that she was not too old and the child with her was not too young to see and hear and feel. They stood while the quivering wings still cast reflected sequins of gold and glory across the valley, the fiery light faded slowly, and the Listener’s brilliance slid into more muted shades. The darting lights seemed to evoke a tingling over the surface of her body and the child’s, and she—­they—­heard an almost inaudible ringing, as of innumerable tiny crystal chimes.

  Needly’s eyes had not blinked since her first sight of the marvel. Her voice was only a dazed whisper, a sliver of sound emerging from a bubble of enchantment. “Grandma. If you had a barley field made of glass, it’d sound like that.”

  “Might. Yes.”

  “If the winds were gentle, if the stalks were made of music.”

  “Yes. Could be. If.”

  “And if the sound could go on and on and on, even when the wind stopped . . .”

  “If all that, I suppose, yes.” The old woman wondered—­only briefly—­if the sounds had been stroked into being by a particular wind or by the rays of this particular sunrise, or whether they had been uttered or created by the creature herself, and whether her own skin was reacting to sound or smell or something entirely extraordinary. That one . . . that winged one on the mountain had never been an ordinary anything. That one had not evolved, not accumulated, not adapted to become. That one had been created by someone, someone who had been striving for perfection.

  Needly whispered, “It’s turned green: the Listener.”

  “Yes. It does that.”

  Indeed, the stone had lost its fiery glow, drifted through orange and yellow into a transitory emerald green that had almost at once become muted, faded, as though lichen had crept over it. Now anyone looking casually toward it would have been unlikely to make out its outline against one or the other of the guardian peaks. On the ledge below it, however, still shining with bronze light, the wings of the other marvel folded abruptly, like the flick of twin fans. The great, thick bronze rope of her tail, tasseled in gold, lashed against the ledge of stone, and three great cymbal crashes broke the air into shards: Gone, Gone, Gone.

  All other sounds ceased, and the echoes from those immense strokes had barely faded before the unreality opened her beak, the tongue within it quivering as the brazen throat uttered a sound of pain and sorrow and longing and timeless, universal grief: a cry that fled across the sky like a shadow only to return from the distant mountains, broken into a thousand echoes of mourning, again and again and again.

  As the creature cried, rainbows dropped from her eyes, one by one.

  “She’s crying,” mourned Needly, cupping her hands to catch her own tears.

  Grandma squeezed her shoulder. She had once heard, or perhaps read, that Griffins wept crystal tears. The reason for the tears was evident as that marvelous beak dipped down between the front paws to greet another, smaller being creeping from the shelter of its mother’s body. This tiny one was more gold than bronze—­the larger creature’s mirror but in
miniature—­and the watchers both knew that the mother was weeping over the child. Her child.

  Then the smaller creature also lamented, and to her, also, the echoes responded, as though the world itself grieved and could not be comforted. The mother took her child between huge, padded front paws, enormous ivory-­gold claws curving around it to enclose it safely, and launched herself from the ledge into the gulf of air above the watchers, her wings unfolding with a great crack of sound. They, mother and child, soared. They, grandmother and child, went to their knees under the buffet of downthrust air.

  The winged ones spiraled upward until they were only a golden spark in the sunrise.

  Silent time moved on, drawing no attention to itself. When it became certain the marvels would not return, Grandma showed the little girl the easy way to reach the Listener. See, she said, how the these hollows hid, how that little crevasse concealed, how this stone’s shadows disguised the simple way to reach the Listener. They followed this hidden way quite easily and stepped together through a shadow on what appeared to be a solid wall to step out upon the ledge itself. Together they found a feather the baby Griffin had lost and several crystal tears the mother Griffin had shed, each enclosing rainbow lights. Together they leaned against the Listener to feel the far-­off throbbing Grandma had felt before, as though there were a heart beating inside the stone. Their thoughts were varied and in no sensible order. Nonetheless, they amounted to a plea, which was what the Listener heard it as, yet again.

  And so, strangely, as they turned to make their way back home—­a place neither of them really thought of in that way—­both of them felt comforted, almost as if they had heard a whisper, a murmur from some immense distance saying, “Coming . . . coming . . . I hear you . . .”

  IT WAS GRANDMA WHO HAD chosen the name “Needly” for the child. Even at birth she had been slim and silvery, white of skin and almost white of hair—­the “almost” indicating no tint of gold but instead an almost metallic silver. She had wide eyes that went here and there, in and out, stitching the world together, making a shape of it at an age when most babies could not even focus their sight. This one was sharp, bright and perspicacious, as Grandma told herself. She was also an anomaly, for Needly was born to Grandma’s daughter, Trudis, and Grandma had firmly intended that this disastrous daughter should never bear ­children!

  Her intention had been thwarted at every turn. Trudis had borne seven, Needly being the last. Now, in hindsight, Grandma could not regret the other six—­the two infant girls who had died, the four boy babes dropped into the world like gravel into a riverbed, losing themselves among unremarked heaps of other such gravel. Perhaps in some way they had opened the path for the seventh child, the wondrous child, Needly. Even Grandma—­who often longed for marvelous and remedial things that had small chance of happening—­even she had never dared hope for such a one as Needly.

  The child was extraordinary, and in Hench Valley being extraordinary was a death sentence. Grandma had removed the baby from Trudis’s erratic and often nonexistent care and went to considerable effort make the little one seem ordinary. Part of the effort consisted of naming the child without seeming to do so. The menfolk of Hench Valley used only ugly words for females, whether human or animal, and all females acquired their names by accretion of epithets. “Worthless” was a common valley name for a girl. “Ugly,” “Slow,” “Dirty” were others. Even if one had a treasured mare, the name would not hint at it. Glory-­on-­hooves would receive no better label than Mud. Grace-­in-­gallop would be nothing more lovely than Lump. Not that glory or grace had any place in Hench Valley. Except for Needly and Grandma and an occasional visiting cat or dog, all the valley’s occupants actually were mud or lump, whether on four legs or two.

  Grandma decided upon “Needly” at first sight of the child. The slender form, the steely pale hair and skin, those wide eyes, that pointed gaze made the name inevitable. Thereafter, Grandma had frequently sneered the word aloud, referring to the child thus, but without any apparent intention of naming her. In Needly’s case, repetition succeeded where obvious intention would have failed. The label was not euphonious. It had no connotations of grace or fortune. It had the sneer of derogation necessary for females, and therefore it could be allowed where a loving or kindly word would have been jeered into nothing. Of course, when Grandma was alone with the little girl, the word was tenderness itself. The child understood this very well, though she was still too young to speak.

  The power of names went unconsidered in Hench Valley. No one living there knew why the place was called Hench Valley. No one living there knew why the four settlements within it had the names they did: Tuckwhip; Gortles; Grief’s Barn; Bag’s Arm. Grandma thought, perhaps, that at that time, some centuries before, when love was still permitted, even expected, a father losing a woman in childbirth could possibly have named a child Grief, and that child might have built a barn. A son named Bagger or Bags could lose an arm in an accident and bury that part of him near the place he lived.

  Male children were given names: Pig-­belly, Suck-­tooth, Fat-­ass. These names were used only until the male in question caused a pregnancy. After that each added “Pa” to his name. Pig-­belly-­Pa. Suck-­tooth-­Pa. Fat-­ass-­Pa. Females lost their labels once they had children, each becoming a Ma, or, a generation later, a Grandma. Men never became Grandpas, however, since they were assumed to have had no part in producing the grandchild. So it was pretended, at least, though incest was not uncommon in Hench Valley. The only exception to these generalities was Grandma Lillis, who had first been identified as “Ma the healer,” and was now called “Grandma healer,” the word “healer” setting her into a separate category, making her valuable enough to leave alone at an age few other women reached, certainly not while still whole in body and mind.

  Needly had been of no immediate value to her Ma or her putative Pa: Trudis had, in fact, put the child to the breast without even looking at her, and did not seem to notice when Grandma removed her from the household. If girls were valued at all by Pas, it was as a future source of profit. This child here, marveling at the Griffins in the dawn light, was still a year or so too young to prove profitable. Girls when just about beddable—­those who lived that long—­were very briefly profitable at eleven or twelve because they were in very short supply. Females had a high vanishment rate among Hench Valley folk. The reasons varied: girls were “Sold to somebody at Grief’s Barn.” Or “at Bag’s Arm.” Or “at Gortles.” Girls “disappeared.” Girls “up and died.”

  All this was part of the reason Grandma had intended Trudis to remain childless.

  THE PROBLEM OF TRUDIS HAD begun with her birth in Tuckwhip, one of the small Hench Valley towns. Grandma was then known merely as Lillis. Lillis had moved into Tuckwhip with a stranger man and had built, from the ground up, a well-­constructed house. No one moved into Hench Valley. No one had ever built a decent house there because no one there knew how. Somehow this man did. He was one whom the resident men had thought it unwise to either insult or attack, a man who made no attempt whatsoever to become acquainted, much less friendly with any of them. He was not a Pa, he would not use the title, his name was Joshua. Lillis had subsequently borne him twin girls—­Sally and Serena (becoming a Ma in the process). When the little girls were around two, Joshua had gone away a month or so before Jeremy had arrived to father Jules the golden-­haired. After Jeremy had come Jubal to father lilt-­voiced Sarah, and then after Jubal, James, whose children were twins again—­sturdy Jan and Jacky the dancer, who never toddled but went directly from a crawl to the extravagant grace of some creature born with winged feet.

  Lillis thought she should feel it was promiscuity, this sequence, but she didn’t. Each of them was different from the others, distinguishable, that is, but they were so much alike! It was a kind of faithfulness with the added spice of novelty! Each of them had returned every now and then to visit Lillis and his child or children. When eac
h child, including the first ones, reached the age of four or five, his or her or their father arrived to take the child or children away. All Lillis’s men had shared the way they behaved as well as their appearance. All of them were taciturn to other villagers, strong, capable, and—­with Lillis—­companionable, affectionate, and exceedingly intelligent. The one who had actually arranged such matters: a person? an agency? To herself, Lillis called them or it the Planners. It was clear that the Planners preferred that the person or agency found useful should live in a very unpleasant place among quite unpleasant ­people but nonetheless do it as happily as was possible under those conditions. Each time child or man went, Lillis had grieved: she had accepted grief as part of the bargain but she had not foreseen its weight.

  When Lillis was twenty-­five, Trudis was born: her last child; the child who confounded all assumptions. Her father had resembled those whom Lillis called “the J’s,” but he had been in some ways quite different. A little somber, perhaps. Not so musical. Unlike all the other of Lillis’s children, Trudis had proven to be perfectly suited to Hench Valley and therefore—­obviously—­she was also an inappropriate candidate for leaving it. Inexplicably, despite her extremely select parentage, by the time she was two, Trudis was seen to fit the Hench Valley mold all too perfectly. It was as though the valley itself had engendered her. Trudis’s father went away, returned saying he had sought advice and subsequently followed that advice. He told Lillis with regret and sorrow that Trudis had simply had not turned out to be . . . suitable, and when he left—­reluctantly, as each of the others before him had been, though for a different reason—­he left Trudis behind.

  Lillis would not accept this. Her pride rebelled against it. Lillis was a stubborn woman. She believed, with all her mind, that the man had been as carefully selected as Lillis herself, and no child of theirs could be . . . what Trudis was!