Eric Vargas's Blog, page 5

The Mere Tide P60

The thaw came in the third week of April and the snowmelt flooded the narthex. They stoppered the waters with a temporary caulk of towels applied to the gates and mopped up the reservoirs that had formed and when the waters receded from the raised crepidoma it was spring.

The pilot shoved green long fagots into the riffled mire and nailed draftboards into their tops. Dachni followed, almost a boxful of nails protruding her lips like some buckfanged hunter of the depths. The flood steamed under the sun. Rains delayed their labors the next mackerel erenoon. They sat under the archivolt watching the rain slash the flood.

All matters an unbroke tree

And all life its ephemeral leaves

But in August decline towards December death do not despair death finality

For even though leaves we be

Leaves are rooted in eternity

At rain’s pass they gathered their tools and by midday had pontooned to the carport, having done so to the cemetery the day before. The pilot wrote in the waters rhymes that hearsed into the mire. Later they worked towards the fields but the waters had begun to lower and there was not much need and overmorrow of then the pilot went to the tool shed and got several long hafted implements and walked out to the fields. When she left the bridge Dachni followed as a lemming and putting her cane forth saw it swallowed to the crook and such was her faith she had not tested the depths and she herself splatted broad flat into the mud. She pedaled upright and trudged on bedraggled as a festering cloth made animate and wroth. Her frail spider legs worked hugely, her arms tugging them out the vacuuming mud when stuck and her jaw was grit and her sweat a crown bright. Her pantlegs were rolled high and the scarry rivage below was so gouged it looked as though it were pecked at by a murder of crows. The traction on her foot was nigh to her endurance and the pilot staked each implement upright in the mud and turned back to rescue her out the viscous rippleless morass and got her cane and their lunch pails and carried her to an island of rocks on the edge of the öris. She brushed the child’s hair back and wiped away the clear mud mucous from her face then set off with a plough. At the head of the field she dropped the chisel into the sogged chernozem at an angle and hooked it and leveled it out and began to drag it. It yielded easily enough. The soil folding over like wake waves. Every so often she would bend to remove a rock from her path and the little crater would fill with mud. Once the chisel yawed up at the stern like a ship run aground and the pilot pulled free a pelvis and brought it to the child to inspect. A book fractured cradle where the cradle once had set. It reeked a sweet musk, almost semenic under the odor of humus. She tossed it aside. The pilot ploughed on. An arm turned up, an enlarged brisket caught between the ribs. Other bones of many things. The splinted shins of goats, the horned skulls of cattle and the pilot ploughed on the roof of her ossilegium.

Dachni looked towards the road. Visible on the off side. Beyond the birches were some yet ragged by snow and a lone wolf docked to them. She tilted her head and it canted alike. No single feature was discernible but its shoulder sagged as though it sprawled and its head was low and when some noise startled it to lope it seemed to broom the ground before it. The sun ground methodically along its rails. The mud on her legs caked and when she slapped at her veneer of calves dust pouted off. The pilot reached the end of a row and started up another. A vulture lighted on a tree stump across the road. A cool wind stirred is plumage and it thrust its beak viciously therein as though to feed on itself.

Ta fucker ye doin?

The pilot heeled the plough and looked at her. She wiped a viscous gleen from her brow and the vestigial tendrils shading her eyes bristled as though electrified. She wore nothing. She regarded the rich loam. Beneath the shallow water it was overgrown and rocks cropped up like small fruit and human skulls, the teeth like seedlings.

I want to plant an orchard, she said. I want to grow apples. Quince. Strawberries. Ill make a flag of the fields. Ill recreate the banner of my empire with fruit. Maybe not that trespass but Id want some art to it.

Ye caint do it.

We have violated the intended geometry of the universe. I have confidence I can seed this ground.

Dachni rose unsteadily. Yer a fuckin lie.

Hows that?

Said ye hated everthin! She ladled up a palmful of mud and threw it. An ye hate god an everbuddy en everthin! An the world is evil! Ye caint say hassen go way of it.

Can and have.

The utter baldness of the declaration tripped her tongue. Ye-ye-ye lant loo at! Oan et to that!

What litigant prone to suicide would present the injunction? My word is the authority that weights the minds of billions, should I then not have at least a rudder to my soul?

Ye caint! Dachni screamed.

She threw away the cane and began towards the road.

The pilot stalked after her. Where are you going?

Get away!

Now? When you pronounced me mother not a week’s nights hence?

Ye aint her!

Who else would I be?

Dachni struggled on. A heavy hand falled upon her shoulder turned her.

Ye aint Anaya! she shrieked. Yer a a yer a pretend! Yer a counterfeit.

The pilot’s eyes darkened. Why? Because I am not the mirror of your mind’s image? Oh a broken doll doth hath conceit. But to fancy all as thyself is to conceive thyself god. Then aught I lay my case before thee? Thou wouldst quail in that trial. But if the reality of myself is incongruent with your conception is it rather not that your knowledge lacks the omniscient attribute? If omniscience is acquired but omnipotence lacked then it means some features of reality are not manipulable and since manipulability is the common trait of all entities then omniscience neither can be possessed. Is my identity negated because it flouts your ideation? Am I beholden to you? Or do you hold yourself over me? Your failure to countenance me as I am is a product of your ignorance and that a property of your impotence. Did you think I could be abstracted in your meager totality? Did you imagine the world a doll house because you are a doll?

Dachni waded a half step back and spat at the pilot. Ets all nothin. An yer not her. She turned to run, her torso before the waist and the pilot seized her wrist and gored her palm and lifted her clear of the muck.

Do you think me a peasant contracted into society? I make society. I change if I choose. I change others if I choose. Or have you mistook me a mawmet dancing inarticulately from oblivion to oblivion? Do you think Ive gone lame? Or tame? Nay Ill hang thee from a meat hook.

Dachni was screaming. Blood all down her arm and she hanging from a talon. Her screams degenerating into pitiful cries and instantly was let down and the talon withdrew. The mud seeped in on her. She held her hand and bawled.

The pilot looked on pitilessly. Is this what it takes for you to believe me? Im still me. Its all still there. Look at me.

Dachni covered her face and neither her tears nor her blood disturbed the abiding mire. The pilot slapped her arms away. Look at me.

She did.

Do you understand now?

Dachni shook her head. Her chest heaved with each indrawn sob and her cries rasped a wordless threnody.

Why?

Cause ur not…cause ur not…

Not like I was. But the latitudes of being are wide and capacious to infinity. Wouldnt you rather have the me of now then the me of yesteryear?

But ye…ye aint…

I am not who you adored. Who you fell in…in…what word?

No.

I am myself.

What about hall that that…

Its all there. Held in reserve.

Et wont work.

Youre right. It wont. But this is a good placeholder. Im holding on to this until I can find something that does work. I dont know what it is or where to find it I just know that I need to. No. Not need. I dont need to. I want to. But whatever it proves to be I know I need you for it. I dont think I can do it without you. Listen. All that has gone by is not rendered meaningless because of a philosophical revision, the meaning is not diminished but altered. Its brought me here. And in the latest analysis its brought us together again.

But ets a lie.

Its not. Listen. A very long time ago there were syjin known as hyagii lak tull. They would venture out to fumigate the jungles of whatever parasite predominated them. It was illegal to bring them harm. Even to threaten them. It was the only profession by which a parricide could redeem himself. None of this can be recreated but it is a model to follow. For all that has gone by I cannot be sorry. I will not ever be sorry. And god? I think not on him. We are as two enemies crippled by age who pass as strangers in a hall.

Yer a lie.

Who else would I be? What astronomical bias could conspire a second Anaya? I will not be again not ever in anything.

Ye dont git to leave all that.

I do. I have. Ive always had the choice. Or think it my cape.

Dachni sat silent. Blood was raining off her fingerpads and her shirt front was stained red.

I am who I whim to be. Or reason to be. Or wish to be or hope to be or delude to be or determine to be or think to be or dream to be. But whatsoever my fancies make me it is more than anything else something to you that I need to be.

Through The Gates

Well the line is short and your pains are screws

Theres the gate I wont pass through

Im five feet from heaven but Im hanging loose

Out this gate I cant pass through

Well hes peering down the line like I dont belong

By the gate I wont pass through

And the whole wide host has quit singing their songs

Past the gates Im not passing through

Theyve got your soul’s pure chasse and your lidocaine proof

Waiting at the gate thats awaiting you

Gonna make you forget all the pain in you

Soon as they let you through

Well Im pleading my case at the pearly gates

The very gate Im not passing through

But St. Peter aint listenin and its getting pretty late

Ready to get through the gates I cant get through

Hey gods not above hes right down the street

Through the gate I aint passing through

At the corner at Mike’s

Where never a drinker got to

Sipping the water and the whiskey that makes souls new

Well Im a waving and a hollering but he wont hear me

Theres the gates Im not passing through

He points his pinkey and speaks and exiles me

Right down that tunnel that I just came through

All I Have Done

all I have done

all I have done

all I have done

are failures under the sun

Be Virtuous

In works do good

In arts be moral

In life likewise exercise each part virtuously

For works and arts are the products of the hands

And life is action of mind and heart and hands

The Mere Tide P59

Vacant dorters are of her hall. On the walls Ganymede in fresco consecrates the tongue of lupus with the decanting of his urn. Here is water in the mountains and water amongst the rocks. Here is the royal library flying burning pages like luminary dove flocks out its lecture halls and reading rooms whilst upon the great steps and the peripatos the stoics tear out their hair.

She waddled bandy legged hastily her backtrack to the lavatory and went to the library to wait on the couch. Here nothing was unadorned. Gothic columns fluted and pearl white rose in triplicate to the high triptych ceiling of earthly delights, their capitals relieved of painted seraphs armed of gladius or pilum and their pedestals a pastel blue with gold inserts and gilt at the vertices. Silent ash lilted over the brushstroke veins of cold calacatta underfoot and the sterling longhand of the mantel clock stuttered over the archipelago of gold numerals, its shadow invisible upon an ebon dial no darker than the orbs that perceived them. Something is being moved towards and what is it and what wilt it? Has it mind to barter? Or has it the sistren dread implacable? And what its desire? Or desires naught? Force racing cross the margins of the world feasting upon capsized souls. It is a thing to be got from and a thing that moves and needs move not. A cyst in time waiting for time to stop.

Along other passageways. A door letting out into a bifurcated atrium where amrayllis and anemone peek out of the snow. Two baths in the communal style of Rome save divided by a high lime wall. She made a circuit of the gallery and went back inside.

At the labyrinth she beheard the wont of wind hunger seething in the infraclavicular fatsness to this plateau plane. Its respire innocent of fleshrot and blood and this worried her the more for if it has not eat when shall it and what?

She checked the library again. A game room. In the eastern storage closet she moseyed through the strew of boxes and fallen shelves and hustled to the refectory restroom and its stalled pots and peed the noisome dregs of her bladder and coming out heard the faint echo of a guffaw. She stopped a tip toe to divine its origins. The sound seemed to be coming from the nave where were hearable the guttural snippets of a python lingo. She followed them to a stairwell off the shrine of the shawled intercessioness spiraling up to an ambulatory running along the triforium with its murals of martyrdom and scriven ivory balustrade. At the choir the image of Michael paused her. Majestic in the parquet and thong athwart the dragon’s mazzard.

Beyond the choir a flight of stairs. An apse. Out of breath upon the landing Dachni looked up to see the pilot enframed in the doorway and small in it. The apse was divided longitudinally into scenes of Gethsemane and it was the sleepers did not the snake also was in the garden. The pilot. She sat at the altar as though it were a table and she seemed well invested in a discourse but with who the child couldnt see. Dachni hissed from behind the stone stud.

The pilot turned in her chair. Id thought you gone to bed.

Ye dennent come! Dachni whined.

You didnt stay.

Dachni glared at her.

Heel little one.

The child turned wary as though of an ambuscade then caned quick across the vast compass medallion floor and headbutted Anaya in the hip and wormed blindly into her lap and stood looking anxiously about. The christ had been taken down and leaned against the wall. And maybe it is with ghosts that her dialect is fully expressed.

Whos your talk to?

The pilot patted a clunky radio set on the altar. Its drab coat scratched by years use. The instrument panel crowded with knobs and dials demarked by white stencil type. Some analog, others digital. Rows of diodes. A keypad with rubber keys.

Thats an over say, she ventured slowly.

Tis but you dont have to say over with this.

Kwipst not? Igh aught.

The pilot brushed her hair. A bad one.

Dachni mewled a sad little note. Doan make fun.

The pilot pressed her nose into her hair and inhaled deeply. She traced an arc on the radio top. This is for friends.

Dachni wracked her brains for its proper operating but she couldnt remember that she didnt know. The pilot guided her hand to the base of a microphone hooked into the jack. She tapped the squelch.

Press this to transmit. Release to receive. Try it.

Dachni stood kneaded her forehead into the pilot and caught one of her whisking ears and held it like a frog caught moth in her lips. The pilot licked her neck. Go on.

Dachni mulled her ear another moment and turned and pressed the squelch. Now what?

Say something.

What?

Pater pakers dinner acres didnt go to the bakers makers.

Dachni pouted sullenly. Yer bein mean.

Anaya nipped her playfully on the nape. Try saying hello.

Dachni frowned. Then she pressed her lips to the wire mesh of the mic and waved. Hidy.

Now take your finger off.

She lifted her finger.

A green light in the upper corner of the radio lit and the needles in their glass cases tweaked crazily and the word taika came through in the unmistakable sibilance of the aienee.

Dachni squealed in delighted angry alarm. Whatd it say?

Taika means hello.

Hidy! she yelled

You have to press the squelch.

Dachni located the squelch and punched it with a thumb. Hidy!

You have to hold it down.

She held it down. Hidy! Gooer you?

Now let it go.

Haintent need no damn rules, she muttered.

A voiced arrived electric and affable. Ungooey. And preferring to retain my consistency. Is this Dachni?

Dachni gasped and considering for a moment bowed shaking up and down in a rush of her blackened hair.

The pilot pressed to transmit. She nods with vigor.

A chuckle came through. Im relieved to make your acquaintance. I was beginning to doubt your existence.

Dachni’s face scrunched. Whats akwaintance?

It means to become known to someone.

Oh-kay. She pressed to transmit. Ets gud ta knowed ya too, she said. Whos ooh?

A laborious sub-sub, said the pilot.

A servant. Most bound to the dagestai.

The pilot cleared her throat. Twas not my intention to demean thee servant, esteemed above all others.

I was and remain unoffended nor would it make difference were I so. I profess myself a reservoir of thy blood, an extension of thy will, and the totality of thy necessary sense. Thou art my parasite, I thy tolerating victim.

The pilot would have made wry retort but Dachni hogged the mic to her bosom and turned to deny it. Yalls assta weird talk. Ye dennent say yer was.

Aliatriss Yavri Mai-kin. Rope walker, dragon talker, diplomat of preternatural politic. Loyal lesion to an ornery liege. And if I have failed to communicate the gestural flair of my introduction you may imagine me accompanied by the most liveried retinue of livers in gaudiest cirrhosic pomp.

Hidy Mister Mikey. Aliatry. Yavi. Avi.

Hell lo lo.

Hows it your meet?

I do not follow.

She wants to know how we met, clarified the pilot.

Aye aye aye. Ayeaye. Ayeyaye.

One short of a spider.

Whuh? Dachni paddled excitedly on the mic. Hows your knowed each other? How. How wow ow.

Poorly, chuckled the pilot.

A ponderous hum came through.

How do we know each other? posed the pilot to herself. When were you transferred under my command?

Im wounded thou dost not recall.

I could look up the records but then that wouldnt be knowing would it?

It would be finding out.

Then tell how we met.

I was a permanent fixture on the Ograstksi for the length of your command and when flagships were changed I was in your infallible wisdom transplanted to a dank office in a metal uterus until such time as I could convince the xriagai to procure me a proper billet. But of my time aboard the Ograstksi we never spoke.

For as long as I helmed it?

Helmed? Well. Perhaps it was you knew more then.

The pilot grew somber in reminiscing. Then she shook her head. Worthless times.

For as long as I helmed it?

You commanded, never helmed. Perhaps it was you knew more then.

Somberness overcame the pilot. Phyiagis vrag kataya.

Ssivka.

The pilot looked at the mic. Were you still askrati?

I was.

The pilot’s ears wrapped around the back of her skull. Her lips pursed. I wish we’d talked earlier.

Thy words flatter the sycophant in me.

The pilot scoffed in menace and dragged her cup of whiskey from the altar and drank.

But to your question, dear Dachni, our first meeting was in orbit around a pulsar. It was brusque and prived in toto of these gam’s warmth. The dagestai was, if the dagestai permits telling-

Tell.

-dancing in the gravitational lack of the solarium. Where you would be surprised to learn she spent most her time. None suspected a contemplative nature or that her dancing represented more than a conceit. Many thought she was without inner monologue.

Remind me to execute those of the opinion.

Do you really want their names?

I absolutely do.

You see Dachni even in this I have inadvertently condemned some to death. Know that the breath you expend costs lives. But by the time we were aboard the Nghorro her humors were known and the xriagai, who was duly executed for cowardice, quailed at the prospect of delivering an unlucky report and so passed it on to me. However upon my presentation she asked only my stance upon the meaning and since the report Id sailed to her had passed unintercepted and bounced off the glassy membrane of the place I deducing she spoke of the pulsar said it meant that the universe was abiding as it ought the strict protocol of the law. I asked her the purpose of the lamps and she said it was to fill them with light. And that was the first we spoke.

She was pretty mean afore.

Principled I would argue.

I shalt refrain from comment lest I undo my credit with my king.

The pilot glared at the mic.

Is she glowering?

Dachni looked at the pilot. Aye shes gowerin.

But tell me how you two met.

The pilot, the child looked at another.

Never done it.

You never met each other?

No.

You never met your mother?

Dachni bowed out at hip and head. Her brows seesawed in confusion. Shes dead.

The dagestai, I mean.

The child stared in lopsided squint ahead. Her? Mother?

The pilot took her hand from the mic just as she wheeled around.

Mother? she shrieked.

The pilot’s ears peeled limply from her neck and drooped to her shoulders. She listed slightly as if vacuumed of spirit. The static buzz of the mic echoed and the echos were imbued with something of their baroque surroundings. Dachni seized the pilot by throat and chin and the visage turned up was scalded by shame, the irises as provinces of sorrowing. Dachni’s fingers slipped to her sides. Her head hung. Neither moved. A desolate heaviness disformed the contours of her heart and the chambers gasped and sighed hot streams of tears to her uttermost being. She shut her eyes. She cried. And then she rotated mechanically and lighted her finger upon the mic. She held it. Her mouth opened but no words came. She pressed to transmit. Her uncombed breath passed between her lips. Her finger pulled away. Pressed to transmit.

Adopted, she said.

In Dreams Our Troubles

all fair gold do store

and tarnished silver keep in sleep

thy heavy draught, gods, I shalt drink

my soul having thoughts, I fear to think

The Mere Tide P58

In her sleep she was bridled in the carrion mux out which she’d been incarnated but from atop his moraine the dread heresiarch watching her struggle segued her into wakefulness with a query she could not hear. She felt fallen from a height into sour nausea and sweat drip. Gripping tightly her pillow in her fists and beset with the primitive fear that inspires awe of the welkin. And yet the fractal dawncast could not undo her somberness. The pilot found her in gray dolor staring at the barren snow blown waste without her painted window.

Come on, she said wrapping an arm around her.

Caning through a necropolis of a slaughtered eparchy. An uneven gravescape spread over several hectares. Battered menhirs run of their marl or pocked with shallow tafoni. The gated lots of more affluent parishioners. Rows of crosses or headstones combed back. The sole inhabitants a few ice cowled angels perched downhearted upon headstones with lichen toupees, their reluctant benediction belie some uncertainty as to the destinations of those theyd been elected to vigil. Even Jegudiel in his lithic depiction appeared reluctant to commiserate. Farther on into the purlieus of the mausoleum gazebo or templet. Life boat sepulchers that disdained to be committed to the unders. Stainless steel sepulchers in a columbarium as though the dead would not risk these outer shelves again when the trumpet sounds.

I employed a man in the profession of a caretake but hes months late. I presume hes retired without notice. Anaya touched off an avalanche of snow masking a graveface and read the inscription.

Adam Whitley Mauder

2422-2497

Magis Ignis

What she made of it could not be told but it put her to regarding the ordered perfection snow imparts with a sense of its subtle profanity for given that it is idyllic yet even in carnage the peace is not gone. Oceans of blood having soaked these estates ere any ideal was watered.

They moved on. Fallow acres surrounded the basilica, flatting out to barricades of trees or arcs of the ambit where skysill and rim sewed up with nary sign of tracery. In the east very small deer browsed for knotweed or tulips frozen in the snow. A single cloud hovered over them. The child might have shot one but then she realized they were unarmed. She turned to warn Anaya but as she did a weight of cold duffed the top of her head.

Small oversights do end us. She uttered a cry. Felt the wound. Was it bleeding was it mortal. And saw the pilot erasing the evidence from her ends with an exaggerated feign of innocence flourished with a whistle tune.

Ye fuckin cocksucker, she shrieked.

The pilot’s hint of smile turned contrite. She started to apologize but Dachni bent and balled a scoop of snow and powdered it against the pilot. The pilot’s legs grew unsteady. She began to wobble in a drama of dead moans and spinning before finally collapsing in the snow. Dachni gawped to see her enemy so easily vanquished. She wiped her nose. She threw another snowball to be sure she were dead. Then yelled: Ets ya own falk!

A grinning betentacled head lifted out of the snow. She whipped upright and molded another snowsphere and slung it laconically and the child followed its arc and swatted it angrily out of the air in a white puff and scrambled a janky three legged scramble and tripped and shaped her own projectile and hurled it at the pilot.

In a few minutes they were constructing forts from behind which they exchanged a worried artillery and from where they negotiated a tense armistice and they drew angels in the snow and made a snowman with pebbles for eyes and though a last paleness was flickering over the mackerel clouds torsioning in from the west they made this figure a companion that he might not be lonely.

Even then Dachni had not quite dislodged her grudge. They suppered in a tense quiet as one who has found herself not quite as betrayed as thought. Afterwards when the pilot sank the dishes to wash Dachni webbed her fingers with soap suds and scampered back to her room. She sat on the bed edge watching the door expectantly. Her grimness souring more each moment gone when no shadow trailed up its jamb and after a while she laid down and switched off the nightlight but a few minutes enclad in the bleak brunette twilight fertile to incertitude proved vector to an increep of despair that yawned through the blacker savanna hours coming and she groped for her cane and went out almost in tears.

Updates

Updates will continue once I’ve returned from the land of alcoholics. I have come to realize that Ireland’s entire culture revolves around the bar and I am forced to wonder how much this fact has advanced and retarded their civilization. Strangely enough I have not once had a hangover here, rather I have felt the gradual cessation of life between the hours of 03:00 and 12:00, those interims when I’m not seated before a wooden counter. More than this I cannot muster myself to report.

The Mere Tide P57

At home they set about cleaning the fish. A little disassembly line. Dachni docking and decapitating with a cleaver and passing the dripping catches on to the pilot. Who would make an incision at the anterior amputation, working her knife just under the dermis to remove the scales and then to open it up along the belly and clean the insides, removing the silver hair skeleton.

Dachni watched her. She was humming a melancholic melody and yet she was smiling.

Whatre ye so happy over?

The smile turned towards her. Im happy youre here. I like spending time with you.

This confession consternated the child. She looked at the headless ten pounder framed on the cutting board.

Thats ok, said the pilot. Youre smiling too.

They fried the fish. Powdering them with a dry cajun batter and then committing them like limed sailors given burial in an oily sea. That soon was brought to boil and that cracked around them. They fished out the strips as they browned and laid them in a roasting pan and let the grease absorb into the bed of paper towels. Dachni kept sneaking samples of them and never of the same strip and the pilot even while looking somehow managed by dramatic mastery to maintain the pretense that her thievery went unnoticed.

They ate in the library, warming by the fire the pilot had made. They didnt talk but the child could not keep from giggling and she scooted slyly about mulling her fish and trying forcefully to share it with the pilot, coming around her backside and feinting left or right and then darting around the other side in an attempt to insert the fish into her mouth and then when this failed she tried to bait out her wyrm so she could pet it.

Who would have guessed carp a narcotic?

Yebluhblublebleble.

Indeed.

Dachni scampered across the pilot’s lap and off it and back on and circled and floundered heavily and began to fuss the pilot.

Bweh.

Do you want attention? Anaya asked scratching her belly.

Dachni squirmed squealing catlike and then her mirth suddenly faded into a grim contentment with one mouth corner drawn down. Is a lettle better today.

Its how it works doesnt it?

She squeezed her eyes shut as though in pain. It dont always.

But today it did.

She nodded. Its kinder tire though.

Lets stay awake. Youre sleeping most the day, most the night.

Ok. Whats ta do?

What would you like to do?

Has ye a drink?

Lets do something more than drink. We can have a drink but lets do something else besides. If you dont have a goal in life you just become an alcoholic.

Whats an alkaolic?

The pilot sighed heavily and turned her gaze to the painted judgment above. Im not sure Im qualified to answer that.

Is it a bad thing?

The pilot shrugged noncommittally.

Well a weewhey drinky woulnt hurt.

Thats how it starts.

The child turned crafty. Hey ye wanna bomb fish mores?

The pilot laughed. You dont think theyve had enough?

Life comes when it comes. Sides wasnt them fishies died. They aint had nothin.

Death belongs not to the dead. Let them tell their stories first.

Fishy aint no store tells.

Im sure they have something. The Tale Of Fat Murphy.

Ta whatta fuck?

Murphy was the fattest fish of Wine Lake

Also the only fish that ever spake

He homed in a clam and owned a clock

And warmed his tail in a hobo’s sock

His reminiscences were (if ever asked) always of the eighteen seas

Until abroad twas thought even by gulls him the gilliest gist in the gee

And with a wink to the gups

And a wink to the yups

Would tell of a parapelagic octopus

But what wasnt known nor even rumored was that Murphy was on the take

That for a ten percent cut and some tuna gut

Murph made friends in the fishing trade

He assured all grub the finest cuisine

Called chum a free buffet

And his believing friends (and why wouldnt they believe?) were wrapped in magazines

And in Allen’s Pond theres stories told of a trout in fishy habit

Whose parish perished in a vat of cajun batter

After the pastor from his coral pulpit

Preached the hook Pisces’ ladder

But when suspicion arose

Off Uncle Murphy goes

And yonder comes Mister Murph from whence who knows?

Until a day, a normal day, a winter day in Matter Lake

Mysterious Murph devising schemes

Ate a squab of cheap plastique

His entrails sank towards the bottom of the sea

But no one grieved too long

For in his standing will (executed only in the event of murder)

He invited all his friends partake

Of his mawky bulk

At his benthic wake

Dachni shut her eyes in consternation. Whubbafuck?

Lets call it the Vengeful Tale of Sinful Murph.

Fesh caint tawk.

Whats wrong with a rhyming fish?

Ifn rhymey fish then ets all goaned ta hell.

The pilot conceded with a not unserious smile. You may be right.

The Mere Tide P56

Heading back to her room the child was gived pause by a suggestion of salmon for supper. She bethought this a good long moment and with brow not unfurrowed and weighing her answer declared sagely at last: Salmon is a fish.

The pilot’s ears swooped straight up and she gave a vexed little look hard to interpret. Lets hope so.

Well ifn ye has a salmon.

Not yet.

Well when ye hassa salmon.

We can go get the salmon.

Aint goin no fuckin place again.

What needs have we to barter with a fishmonger?

What?

Wherefore aught we travel to market?

What?

We dont have to buy the damn fish.

What then?

The lake.

Dachni flapped her arms in strange outrage and her beer slipped away out her fingers and caromed off the wall and down through her grabbing mitts to thunk her in the head and shatter on the floor. Dachni flattened in a loud meep and then the pilot was hovering over her.

Are you ok?

Yer a terrible person!

Lets go fishing.

Ets freezing outside.

I dont disagree, said the pilot toeing the dripping shards of glass into a pile. But we can make a fire outside.

Hopstepping into new underwear she was surprised to find Anaya in her doorway.

I have something for you before we go.

Dachni pulled her legs through the undies. 

What?

She unfurled a wolf pelt parka. Arrived yesterday.

The parka was four sizes too big but the body could be tightened by straps and the sleeves pinned back. And then trousers. Moreover in excess but with leggings that could be eversed and buttoned to the knees. Anaya helped her into it.

Youre a proper little Eskimo.

Hats an Essimo?

The pilot pulled up her hood and scrunched up the child with playful scritchings of her side followed by a barrage of kisses and licks.

You are a precious wonder.

The sun squatting on the horizon shimmered like smelted nickel. No clouds anywhere. Dachni snuffled and looked about. Everything wearing a coat of snow. It was her first outing since Kilcock and she flapped her arms worriedly like an obese penguin.

Less go back.

Did you forget something?

Aye.

What?

Forgot…forgot.

Come on. No one’s going to hurt you.

The pilot carried a pair of poles and reels and a plastic tacklebox and for a moment as they crossed the road into the woods she seemed like one under consignment as though replaying an act from long ago. They came through the slender birches. Dachni keeping under the lee of the pilot and giving fearful study to the road, to the paths to Matraple.

The lake was sealed over with a plate of ice that looked to have been platinized.

Caint fish now.

Ice fishing, said the pilot.

Dachni cocked her head. Thats stupid.

Why?

She pinched up the hook dangling off the fishing line as though it were the underpinning of her logic. Fish dont live in ice.

The pilot seemed unperturbed by this news. She went on. The beach was blown over with dead branches. She swept the pier steps clean of snow that Dachni could cane after. Ice had locked the wooden pillars in place. Farther out on the lake was a green pontoon buffed up on the ice. At the end of the pier Dachni lay on her belly and felt the ice. As armor. Opaque.

Fish dont freeze up in the fish, she said. Dont keep in ince. Dont freeze in ice.

The pilot laid out the poles and the tackle box and ice chest and went back to the woods. Dachni watched her pick up a stone maybe a hundred pounds and bring it back to the end of the pier and heft it over her head and sent it shooting down. The ice gave in a bone crunch and cracks webbed instantly through the plate and a fat uvula of water coughed out of the hole. The pilot sat down beside her.

Now what?

Now to enter into the tutelage of the profession of the fishery. Lo the minnow hunter does in time harpoon the whale. The pilot showed her how to mount the reel to the rod and thread the guides. She didnt have bobbers just j-hooks and she impaled nightcrawlers upon their points. She showed the proper method of casting and they tried this a few times, letting the hooks land on the ice and then reeling them in.

But for us we just want to let the hooks into the hole and thats it.

Are they fish down there?

Sure. Theyve seeded everything bigger than a pond in this region.

Seeds? Ye mean theyres off trees?

Fish?

Aye. Ye means they just plop offa trees? In the fall.

No. Yes. Yes they do. Not all of course. They grow on oaks, birches. Salmon do anyways. Of course each tree gives it own kind of fish.

What does them gives?

Birches give koi. Those pines? Theyll drop mackerels. We might even get some catfish from the cottonwoods upstream.

Whoaaa.

Learn something new every day.

Aye.

Dachni looked down into the hole. There they is.

Fat carp with silver bodies and flares of crimson or orange patterning their torsos. Smooth and torsioning right by the hooks.

Is they fruit or veggies?

Fruit.

Well ye wouldnt think em to get no riper. Does they turn back ta trees?

Not until after a long time.

Owes ye get up?

The worm acts a lure and when they bite it they bite the hook.

They aint bitin. No! No hes nibblin.

A barrel of black splotched carp picked at the worm. She gave a tentative tug on the reel and it darted away and with caution returned. It got its full fish lips on the dangling end of the worm and with a rolling pull twisted it off the hook with a final taunting flag of the caudal.

Dachni reeled in the line and frowned at the hook. Son of a bitch.

The pilot muttered to herself.

What?

He would give them a better brain.

Who?

Never mind.

They rebaited their lines but the fish kept plucking them off and the pilot in mild agitation leaned off the pier and dipping her foot slowly into the water snatched out the wiliest thief in a spasm of motion. Her talons cupped its belly and tossed it up and she snatched it from the air.

For thy sins I condemn to the hell thou callest pan and thy cousins to the boiling lake of peanut oil.

Dachni eyed her. Now what?

Lets get the rest.

Doesin ye still wanta use these lines?

Lets try.

They rewormed their hooks and let them down but the fish slithered oily by like stubby fangless snakes and they werent even picking anymore.

This is pretter boring.

I thought it might be more interesting myself.

Dachni studied the hole. She thought she saw something but she didnt know what.

What does ye see?

In what?

In the hole?

What do you see?

Buncha fuckin fish. What does ya?

The pilot wedged between the boards and leaned forward. I see, she began, two worlds unintermediated bordered by the supremacy of their own element. And what then of heaven? But theres air in water and water in air. Tis strange. We came also of water. Examine the simplest species of the ocean. They dont see, they dont hear, they dont breathe. They cannot choose. But sometimes I wonder if maybe they have some incipient will. If choice is embedded in something deeper for which the nervous system is merely the vehicle of its expression. Choice so far is we can tell is an aberration. But we were once as these. So they too have the potential. If we disappear tomorrow it may be that a sire of one of these will thousands of millennia from now take the first peremptory crawl from these waters. How strange would it be and then to be more fond of the strangeness. To transition from a floating world to the realm of gravity and rain and wind and stars. Maybe thats why birds arose, to regain some semblance of their primordial womb. I want to know what it was. Or what was the first. I even maybe want to say who was first. Was it only an aberration? A hardening of a cuticle. If thats really all it was. If all this was led to by the hard deterministic interplay of particles or random chaos or a simple miswrit of chemicals. Or some creature washed up on a beach with the right mutation. Either way the most of it was made. But Id like to think that it was a twang of desire in the first amoeba, some hope to escape or make things better. Its strange. The fish had to run away. He couldnt stay in the water. He had to take the water with him onto the land. He drank everyday. Everyday he drank his home and carried it with him. You cant ever leave your home Dachni. Tis why I despise these machines. Theyre pure thought. They dont carry the struggle. They dont carry our home. They dont drink water.

Well, said the child. Hows ye figure to kill these things?

The pilot turned and flipped open the tackle box lid and took out a bundle of short red firecrackers and slices of bread.

What are them sticks?

Firecrackers.

What do they do?

Explode.

Ahhhhh.

They rubber banded the firecrackers to the bread and lit the long ming fuses with a zippo and dropped them in. They sank mutely from the little plucks they raised, small phosphorous stars burning down the fuse. The fish gathered to pick at the bread and as they did the sudden detonations would engulf their faces and they would float sideup stunned. Dachni dropped in a salute that weighed almost an ounce. It sank towards a school and as it did the largest carp yet swam out from under the ice gap and gulped it whole.

Ya dummy ya aint sposed ta eat it.

It swam by in placid heedlessness. Anaya chuckled. Of a sudden its middle bulged and its eyes sprung out their sockets and then its torso burst in a puff of smoky blood that when diffused saw the carp in twain like a torpedoed submarine, the tangled guts spilling and the emptied tube of its body smoking out the great breach.

The pilot looked into the icebox. I think we have enough, she said.

Other fish were closing in to feed on the destruction.

Wuh huh.

Lets go.

Ok.

Dachni lingered until the fish had disappeared from sight. They packed up their things. As they were leaving the pilot stopped. She was staring ahead and then she looked up at coming overcast in the west. Dachni took her by the hand to lead her on but she set down the ice chest and lifted out the black mottled carp and walked back to the end of the pier and let it back into the water.