Porcupine Ball

We are unadorned and smoky, like our world. I will tell you a story. On Bihan, there is a native plant called a zeshi, which has a fragrant pink-colored bloom. This flower folds over and over on itself, forming a small labyrinth, a maze of sweetness and color hidden from view. Enter the tiny shensh, a poisonous interloper no larger than a passing thought. The shensh crawls down into the zeshi flower and hides itself between the folds, where it begins consuming the zeshi from within. But the zeshi can flood itself with sticky nectar, enough to trap the invading shensh. The zeshi then turns the tables and feeds upon the shensh.

"So, what are you?" asks the human called Ben J. He knows just enough about our social structure to ask me this. He knows that females like me live in groups of about a dozen, with one male. Each female has her own particular place in the group, and brings her own particular talents and strengths. It wouldn't occur to any of us to be jealous of a sister; it would be like being jealous of a part of our own body. On the other hand, outsiders we kill. Ben J. wants to know what my place is in my group. I give him a children's answer:  "I am a storyteller."

Ben J. leans back in his chair, taking up an enormous amount of space without seeming to try. He spins a ring of keys around on his finger, then grins at me, mockingly. He spreads his hands and says, "So tell me a story!" He draws out the last word. 

I tell him, "Once there was a man who searched after the truth, but the more he looked, the less he saw, because his eyes were soft but the truth is hard."

Ben J. just looked at me for a moment, and then tilted his head back and laughed. He casually kicked the bars of my cage with his military-style boot, making a sharp, loud bang, and said, "You are one fucking crazy Zeeb."

They call us Zeebs, for striped creatures on their world called zebras. They call us this because every Bihana--women like me--have dark red skin and bald heads criss-crossed with deep ebony stripes. Every Bihana's stripe pattern is distinct. The only hair we have is a small patch of black at the base of our skulls. Our stripes continue down our spines, finally diminishing at the hips. We have yellow eyes, and bodies that, due to our high metabolisms and our genetics, stay the same as we age. Though to ourselves our appearance is unremarkable, the human males find us fascinating in a strictly physical way. They have no regard for us, but they desire us. We are what they would call voluptuous, and we secrete a pheromone that makes them stupid with desire when we are in season. The rest of the time, the effect is less. That is the only mercy there is, here.

When they came, our male tried to protect us. His name was Meshka, and he was crafty and fearless. The humans were arrogant and out of their element. He used that to ambush them, and he turned a great many of them to nothing but cinders. One night as I lay with him, I kissed a line along the scar across his face. When I spoke in his ear, and the word I spoke was our word meaning peace within one's self; peace within one's world. You don't understand, yet, the power of my words, but you will. It was the best gift I could give him. The humans murdered him the next day, and rounded us up.

Our world is hot and harsh. The main colors here are red and black. The sky stays smoky. We are creatures of this world.

Even in captivity, we have tried to fight them, but it is almost impossible. There are things we can do, but the price is high. One of the humans was running the blade of a knife along the bars of my cage, taunting me, and he managed to cut off the tip of his own finger when the blade slipped in his hand. He screamed. He was bleeding all over, bright red human blood, not the reddish-orange blood that flows in us. The human turned in quick circles, holding his hand and screaming. The fingertip landed near enough to my cage that I reached out and took it. I put it in my mouth. Bihana have the ability to concentrate heat within ourselves, and I made my mouth searing. The stink of burning flesh filled the room, and when he stopped screaming and turned toward me, I spit out the blackened speck that was his fingertip. They starved me for two weeks for that.

My sister came into season and one of the humans let her out and began doing what he pleased with her. He was kissing her hard--something foreign to us--and had pushed her up against the wall. Bihanas have just three fingers, and no thumbs. Instead, we have a sheathed claw that is smooth and black. We are no stronger than human females, but we have this weapon. She took the human by the shoulders, unsheathed her thumb-claws and sank them into his arms. She wouldn't let him go, and she had got him all the way to the bone. Another human came in and hit her with his porcupine ball and down she went.

The humans' favorite weapon is a porcupine ball they carry on their belts. It has a long handle, and a half sphere on the end. When they swing it and it hits someone, dozens of barbed spikes erupt from the ball and into the victim. My sister was put back in her cage with the porcupine ball still in her back. It isn't immediately fatal. Pulling the barbs out takes flesh with them. The wounds become infected, the victim can linger for days, even weeks, and the pain is excruciating. Our cages were close enough together that I could hold her hand. I held it for two human weeks until her blood stopped pulsing in her wrist. One of the things we do not want the humans to know, is that we can cry.

Ben J. is back. He's looking at me and I know the look. I glance at the porcupine ball at his hip. It would do me no good to try to steal it from him, because, as we have learned, they are fingerprint-identified and if anyone but the owner tries to use it, the barbs explode into one's hand. One of my sisters lost her arm this way. Then they shot her in the head, because she wasn't appealing to them anymore.

I told him that I am a story teller. Here is another story, and it's a true one. On Bihan, there were once flying vermin called quanzi. In our world, the air is hot and full of ash and soot. The quanzi found their way into the flesh of damaged throats and bred there. When the larvae hatched, the host would choke violently and the new quanzi would fly out, stronger with each generation. When the quanzi left the dying host, it was called "speaking death", because the first thing young quanzi do is to look for another victim. In time, very few of us were left, but the survivors had a natural immunity, a mutation causing an extra membrane to develop in our throats, and the quanzi starved to death and vanished from our world.

Ben J. is opening my cage. He calls me a Zeeb and holds me by the wrist, hard. I told him that I am a story teller, but that was a children's tale. Here is the truth: I am a shamaness. I am a particular kind of shamaness, as my mother and grandmother were before me. My gift is to manifest words. I can animate any word I choose, and our language is twice as extensive as that of the humans. It begins with the feeling of something gathering itself just beneath my second heart. As I concentrate, it grows stronger, and moves up my body, from the inside. My ears ring and my dark red skin and black stripes shimmer. Then, for a moment, I can't breathe, my throat is blocked, as if it were full of quanzi, but it isn't quanzi, it is the word I have chosen to animate. Finally, it fills my mouth, and when I speak it, whatever word I have chosen manifests itself in physical reality. So, you see, when I spoke in Meshka's ear our word that means peace within one's self; peace within one's world, he had that, there in my arms. I saw it in his face, he was alive with it. That is my gift.

Ben J. is moving against me, calling me "Zeeb bitch" and grunting. I put my lips to his ear. After a while, I feel it gathering inside me. Under my second heart, up my throat, into my mouth. I press my lips to Ben J's ear, so close to his vulnerable human brain, and I speak the words that mean "porcupine ball". He falls instantly to the ground, bright red human blood gushing from his ears, his nose, his ugly mouth, even his eyes. He is dead before he can react, his head riddled and destroyed from the inside. 

I take his keys from his belt. Quietly, I let myself out of the cage room and slowly, silently, make my way down the empty corridor to the door out of this place. I am pushing the door open, almost free, when I hear a voice behind me. It is a human voice saying, "Stop right there, Zeeb." 

One of the guards is swinging his porcupine ball, almost lazily, and walking toward me. His smug face is nearly bored. I have never tried to use my shamanic talent twice in a short time before, but I concentrate as hard as I can. He will be on me in just a few steps. I double over, in pain. It has never been like this before. Still, I concentrate. He is swinging the porcupine ball, it will only be a few seconds before I  feel it bite into my body. The word I have chosen rises up in my throat, choking me for a moment. Then it is in my mouth, the word I have summoned, the word that I am forbidden to speak this way, but which I am speaking now as the human takes aim at me, a smile at the edge of his lips.

I speak the word, the word that manifests and animates the small thing that will bring down this human, this place, this entire world except for me and my sisters:

"Quanzi".           

The Secret

Every Sunday, the amazing fashionista  Daryl has a feature called "Tell me A Story", in which she posts one of her photographs and asks her readers to spin a yarn about it. My story-writing skills have been slumbering, but I have tried to wake them in order to participate this week. So, without further ado, here is Daryl's photograph, and my story to go with it!

I was sitting on a hard white bench under a crab apple tree when I saw them. They were just two girls, quite young, and at first I thought they might be sisters, but then I realized that their hair had been dyed the same color. Best friends, then. Copying each other and magazines and other friends and grown women, trying on styles and personalities, they were trying to find their way and themselves, just as I did, and my friends did, once.

I am 84 years old. The woman who was my best friend is inside the building behind me and to my right, surrounded with flowers and her loved ones. I shall miss her. When Alice and I were young women, the world had changed so much. Any young man who was healthy enough to go was off fighting the Germans, or the Japanese, in places whose names we had never heard of until they started appearing in the newspapers, day after day. Many of those young men never came home, of course. Alice and I married two of the ones who did, but that was later. 

The two girls across the road are eating ice cream and talking. They are standing close, in their own little world. I remember how it was to have a special friend like that, one who knew you so well, she could finish your sentences, or tease you about something you were sensitive about, until you started laughing in spite of yourself. Alice was that friend, for me. 

Because of the war, we had opportunities our mothers never had. We didn't have to get jobs waitressing or doing sales in a department store. We got jobs in a factory, doing jobs where we didn't have to be charming to anyone we didn't want to be charming to. We punched a clock and collected a paycheck the way our fathers had, and it gave us a freedom, and a feeling about ourselves, that we had never had before. We tied on our babushkas, like peasant women, and worked each day assembling explosives, or bullets, or whatever we were told to work on. Some of the girls' fingers turned yellow from the chemicals. We didn't care. We had, for the first time in our lives, money in our purses that was ours, and we could go to the movies, or buy that dress, or put it away, but whatever we did with the money, what mattered was that it was ours and we had earned it ourselves. We didn't have to wait on a man to have the life we wanted.

Watching the girls across the street, I feel a sudden urge and ache to be one of them, to be young, and to be just starting out and discovering things. I wonder if they are discussing boys, or the ice cream, or other girls they know. I wonder if one has a secret, and if she will tell her friend today, or ever.

When I saw Alice, earlier, she looked beautiful, despite age, despite being....so uncharacteristically still. I wept. It is not just the loss of Alice, my dearest friend, but the loss of someone who knew me in a way that only happens when one has known someone else very well for a good long time. Oh, Alice. Who will love your honest smile they way that I did, where you have gone?

I remember sitting in the Aztec Theater, watching "Leave Her To Heaven" with Alice. The woman in it was a banshee, but I liked her anyway. I didn't know that, within a few years, both of us would be married and raising families. The men took their jobs back when they came home, making Fords and De Sotos instead of bombs. We fed babies, and also our men when they came in at the end of the day. Life settled down to being more as it had been before. After so much horror overseas, people wanted normalcy almost above anything else. Alice and I never went to the factory again.

I can't help feeling, as I watch the two young girls, that the one with the shorter hair does have a secret she's keeping. Maybe she is wondering if she can trust her friend enough to tell her what is in her heart. At that age, everything is so confusing, friendships are made and dissolved in the blinking of an eye, and it takes a very special friend indeed to share some secrets. How to be sure that this connection can endure? And, by telling, would she be ruining that chance forever? Either way, the telling or the not telling will nudge her life this way or that. Oh, but listen to me. They are probably just sharing an ice cream and nothing more.

I stood for a moment saying goodbye to Alice just now, you know. Inside the funeral home, with tears spilling down my cheeks, I told her what had always been on my heart, but I said it all silently, as I always did. Then I bent and kissed her. It was the first time I ever had.

__________

Five Wolves

I can't say for certain if it's true or not. This is how I heard it. I ain't swearin' on no bible or no other book, neither. You're gonna have to take my word.

There lived a man name of Ciaphus Wert. Made money from lumberin'. He didn't do no lumberin' himself, he had men he hired to do the sweatin' for him so he don't muss his lace cuffs. I wouldn't have no man wore lace cuffs, but he brought a woman out from Boston, named Abigail, and married her in the year 1878. Had fair skin and green eyes. I never seen her myself, but I heard.

Come the year 1883 she had a girl child, but not without that it cost her plenty. All Christmas Day she lay groanin' and wrappin' her small fingers around the brass bed frame, prayin' to whatever God there is to let the child see the day. It took two days, but that child come, and was a girl like her mama. Ciaphus Wert, he was struttin' like a barnyard rooster and thinkin' his family was just beginnin', but pretty soon Abigail begun to burn up with fever. All the night of December 27th, she talked out of her head and show no interest in her child cos she had gone mad with sickness. Then she died. They buried her in the Methodist chuchyard, said a few bible words, then walked home and gnawed on turkey legs. That little child, she lived but might have been a ghost all the same.

In 1885, Ciaphus Wert married another woman, name of Liddy Sharp. I expect was on account of her sharp tongue which she was in the habit of usin' on anyone she didn't need somethin' from. When she walked by on the mud streets in spring, the dogs run and hid. They knew she kick 'em if they got close enough.

Now the little girl, who was also name of Abigail, was called Abby, and she raised herself up, with just a little help from her daddy. When she were small enough, she stay mostly 'neath a kitchen chair whenever Liddy were close by, and then later she take to roamin' the woods like she were half wild. Liddy, her stepmama, see her only as a pair of hands to be worked right down to the bone, and so she do her best to accomplish that. Abby, she blow as far away as she could, as often as she could, like a storm in the night, gone before you know it.

Abby had a friend, 'bout a mile and a half away, a full blooded Ottawa woman name of Crow Eye. Crow Eye find this girl sleepin' next her well one mornin' and she haul the bucket up and Abby with it. From then on, them two were tight as ticks on a tomcat. Crow Eye fed her cornbread and Ottawa stories her mama had taught her. They were like two sticks in a fire, them two.

Crow Eye weren't old like you might think. Were young and had the black hair like it lookin' for a place to land. There were a man in town called the General, always set one eye on her and the other on makin' a dollar. That's the way the General was. Dollar be different, dependin'. If you was wantin' to buy somethin' he had, why then a dollar didn't go far at all. Take a whole fist full of 'em to buy an ear of corn from that man. But if he were wantin' somethin' you got, it weren't worth even one whole dollar no how, and he would 'splain why 'til you wanted to cut your own throat and you sell it to him just to make him hush.

He weren't no real general neither. A train rider told me he had knowed him in the war, that he weren't nothin' but a cook. One time, his flapjacks twisted up a soldier's guts so bad the man died. I heard this, I wasn't there. Say the cook were usin' eggs that'd gone bad and he knew but were too cheap and miserly to not feed 'em to folks anyway. He kept the good ones for hisself. Still, by time I'm discussin', he had so much money that if he wanted be called the King of England, people probably call him that. It's money. Damned if it don't beat all.

So, as I was relatin', Abby was mostly raised up by this Ottawa woman and become a red haired Indian herself. She had her mama's green eyes and by time she were twelve, she were tall and pretty like her mama had been. The General, his weedy eyes done started to stray to Abby by then, and he take to followin' her. Not so folks would see, but in the woods takin' what he called his constitutional. Just about dark one evenin' in November he block her way, he say things a man ain't ought to say to no young girl like Abby was. He take those big paws of his and do things. Evil things. She scream loud and Crow Eye come through the dusk and she got a big old steely huntin' knife with her and she suggest he stop what he doin'. She tell Abby run and she do, and the General, he weren't used to nobody denyin' him what he set his eye on, especially no Ottawa woman. Well I weren't there, so I don't know what exactly happened, but Crow Eye end up dead, with bruisy rings around her wrists and her knife no place to be seen. But Abby, she got clean away.

She run to Crow Eye's place and she hole up with Crow Eye's dog, name of Oker. Oker were a big black mongrel, mean as a devil to anyone whose name he weren't knowin'. Oker hate the General worst of all. Inside, they both were ponderin' on what to do, and Abby take out some things Crow Eye's mama had gave her when she were little. A wolf skin with the head still on it. A corn husk doll. Some beads and feathers and what have you. Nothin' old Ciaphus nor the General would think was worth the fleas off a skunk.

Abby, she were scared and she wrap the wolf skin around her and start to dancin' and Oker he dance with her. I weren't there, but what I heard is they look like they were fightin' near to the death but they was dancin'. Growlin' and thrashin' and young Abby, she wrap her fingers into that wolf skin just like her mama done when bringin' her into the world. Cryin' and burnin' same too. Oker were actin' like the devil turned loose and howl like Death come up from the bottom of the deepest pit. All the while the fire were burnin' behind 'em, just like Crow Eye had left it when she went to help her white girl when she screamed.

While this were going on, the General must've seen what he done and regained his senses, that is to say, he start worryin' about preservin' his own neck. He start back to town, makin' up lie upon lie about what happen, shiftin' blame like a load of logs headed downstream. He might as well never have bothered to do it, though, on account of he never made it home.

Men went lookin' for him in the daylight and they found him sure enough. Some left of him, least ways. These men knew trackin' and huntin' and they found prints of five wolves what had torn the General to tiny pieces all black evil and red blood across the snow. But the thing is, they all swore those tracks came from no place and went no place after, like five wolves had just appeared like a storm in the night and gone the same way. They tried blamin' Oker, but Oker was discovered asleep with his body wrapped around Abby's to keep her warm and old Oker wouldn't let no one touch her for some three hours neither, 'til she finally called him off.

After that, Abby never more went home to her daddy and Liddy Sharp, and didn't talk neither for a time of five years or a little longer. All that while, she wore the wolf skin and Ottawa charms on her arms and hands and everybody start to call her name of Five Wolves, rather than her christian name. Oker the dog were always at her side as well.

Like I said before, I won't swear on no bible nor no other book about what I have been describin' here. I weren't there myself, but I heard the story from someone who were.

Abby Five Wolves were my grandmother. I hope you ain't suggestin' she lied.

________

Blackbirds

BLACKBIRDS by Shay

I remember how he came in that night. Like a thick cloud across the moon, and just that way, he made the world dark. It's still dark, without Caroline in it. You'll think I'm a foolish old woman, full of stories. But I know. I was there. I knew she was dead from the look in his eyes.

Caroline was my sister. We were Mackinaws. Our father was French, but our mother had the same black hair we did, until it went white, like the fox pelts our grandfather used to trade. My sister was the east. She rose and burned. I was the west. She fell into my arms. Yes, it was like that, just like that. Why would we need anyone else? That's what no one understood, or understands now. We are like the wolverine. When I die, everything we were will die with me and be gone forever. It should not have been that way.

I was 16 when she married Dane. At the wedding, I dug my fingernails into my palm in a murderous rage. Later, still bleeding, I smiled and touched his cheek, leaving blood on it. I'm glad now that I did it. I was glad then, too.

My sister was never afraid of this land, or the winter. She moved into a house with Dane, out near Blackbird Pond. In summer, we would swim, naked in the sweet water, the mud between our toes and the cat tails high all around. Sometimes he would come down there to look at us. He was noisy as a moose, we always heard him coming. We would sink down to our chins in the water and stare at him with our black eyes. He would stare back, as if he wanted to ask us something. But he would only put his hands in his pockets and go back the way he had come. I would kiss Caroline all the more hungrily for him being so close by. It is sweeter to steal from under someone's nose. And anyway, Caroline was mine. Always. If Dane had understood that, she would be alive right now. I would kiss her with my next breath.

He knew about us. He would sit at the table and watch us with his eyes narrowed. We would only be making biscuits or stew. Two birds can fly as if they were one. I know he could feel our beating wings. We should not have teased him. But we did. We were young, and it was summer. What did we care?

He threw me out when he caught us. My fingertips were resting on her breast and she was sleeping. We both were. We had gotten too careless, too sure. We thought that we were magic together. We were. But even magic has its limits. He picked me up by one arm and dragged me out the front door. I wasn't wearing any clothes, and Caroline leapt on his back like a wolf, but it made no difference. Her heart was mighty, but Dane was a big man. Later, she followed after me with some clothes and a few of my things. We kissed beneath a great strong tree, the kind you might hang someone from. Then, with one last backward glance, she turned and went back to him. I wasn't finished. None of us were. It was nearly fall.

I would sit in the tall grass and watch him until he left. Then, I would walk right in the front door. I always spat as I did, because it was Dane's house. It kept my love away from me. I would have liked to take her with me and leave it burning behind us as we ran. But we never did. We should have. I could sleep with her under the same blankets tonight, if we had.

There are things that will have their way. You can't stop a river. Or the seasons. I kept coming. And he knew it, I think. In December, when the days are shortest, he caught us again. It had just gone dark and I was still there. I think I wanted it to happen. But not the way it did. The room was small. Dane had probably never hit a woman before. He broke my cheekbone. I lay on the floor against the wall and couldn't get up to fight. I heard both of them snarling like timber wolves over a kill. With one eye, I did see him walk out and come back with his rifle. I got up. I grabbed at him. Then I don't remember anything for a while. The night filled everything. There were no stars.

I don't know how long until he came back again and I knew it. Things were scattered, a lamp broken. There was blood all over the floor. I looked at him through my one good eye and saw no blood on him. But his eyes were full of what he had done. I heard a terrible scream, like an animal dying. It was me. It was my heart. He'd killed my Caroline.

I ran out past him. He made no move to stop me, all the fight was out of him. By moonlight, I followed blood on the snow and two sets of tracks down to Blackbird Pond. It was partly iced over. I couldn't find Caroline. Then I heard Dane right behind me. I turned around and faced him. I was shaking. "I killed her." he said quietly.

The sheriff came. There was no trial because Dane had confessed. He stayed in jail in Jackson for nine years. Then he died. I wasn't sad. But by then, I knew the truth. He killed her. But not the way everyone thought.

I was nothing but skin, bones and grief. I wouldn't eat. That spring, I sat by Blackbird Pond for days and days. I began to see things. I saw Caroline rise out of the water. I saw the bedroom, and the broken lamp. I saw Caroline's delicate foot, cut and bleeding. I saw her run out of the room, and Dane chasing after her with his rifle and his rage. I saw Caroline step out onto the ice. She was wearing a white nightgown and looked like a spirit in the moonlight. She turned to look at him. Her eyes were like a doe's eyes, when she knows the wolves will win. She went quiet inside and just looked at him, so sad. The ice made an awful cracking sound. I saw all this in the light of an April day, sitting on the brown grass, half out of my mind. I saw Dane's face change and saw him stagger once and moan. He turned in a half circle and then back again. He spoke her name as if he had never really known what it meant before. He moved toward Blackbird Pond and he pointed the rifle at her. He was holding it by the barrel.

"Take it," I heard him say to her. But she only stared, in that heartbroken way. Like a broken winged bird. That's when the ice beneath her delicate feet gave way and she fell into the water beneath. That water was cold. She couldn't have lived very long. I felt the chill myself. I shivered there, under the springtime sun.

I knew he hadn't killed her, not the way everyone thought. And after all, the man confessed. No one made him. I could have told someone what I saw. But who? The sheriff? The warden? They would have said, crazy Indian woman, go home. The truth is, I never forgave him for being her husband. He never forgave himself, either. So I never told anyone what I knew. Now I am telling you.

One day, probably soon, I will go to the land of the Mackinaw. I saw Caroline that day, rising above Blackbird Pond. With every beat of my heart, I have wanted nothing but to see her again. I have saved every kiss for her. Let the day come.