The last two years, for the month of June, I wrote about a short story that was available online each day of the month… you can see the list for 2014 and 2015 in the comments for this page. It seemed like a good idea at the time. My blog readership fell precipitously and nobody seemed to give a damn about what I was doing – which was a surprising amount of work.
Because of this result, I’m going to do it again this year.
Today’s story, for day xx – Forty-Four Goats, by Simon Harris
Flash Fiction. Longer than 140 characters – more than a tweet, but something that only takes about two minutes or so to read. Something impossibly short that still tells a story.
The only way to tell a complete story, with a beginning, middle, and end in that short of a time – in those few words – is to tell a story with mystery. The author has to use what’s not there as a storytelling tool, because when there isn’t much – there is a lot that isn’t there.
Today’s little snippet, Forty-Four Goats tells a story, complete with several unsolved mysteries at the end. It’s a good use of a precious two minutes.
Friday, I was driving home from work along the same route I drive twice every day. A quick calculation – I’ve driven past that point in the neighborhood over six thousand times. This is a little stretch of road through what used to be the independent town of Buckingham. When I first moved to Dallas, Buckingham was a rectangle of small farms hanging on in the northern reaches of the giant exploding Metroplex. A developer bought the entire city, making all the property owners rich, with the single requirement that all the residents hold a vote before they left – and that vote would make the town “wet.” All the suburbs in the area were “dry” at that time – which meant that there was no sales of alcoholic beverages. His idea was to create an island of legal booze and open up an upscale entertainment, lodging, and destination district… thereby raking in the cash.
It might have worked, but there was one of the too-periodic economic collapses in the late 80’s – and his plans fell to dust. Some of the former landowners bought back their properties for pennies on the dollar at the bankruptcy sale. In the decades since the liquor laws in North Texas have become much less draconian and the City of Buckingham faded away – eventually adsorbed into the larger suburb of Richardson. It has since been mostly developed into zero-lot homes and large apartment complexes – along with a couple of liquor stores to keep the traditions of the area alive.
This stretch of road wound between complexes and is the sort of place where people drive faster than they should. There is often a police cruiser lurking in a hidden speed trap by a tiny city pocket park. I would guess on a typical day every car (except me) is going faster than the speed limit. Yet, because of the traffic leaving the complexes, the subtle blind curve in the road, and the iffy intersections at each end – it’s pretty dangerous and I wish folks would slow down.
So, on Friday, I felt a twinge of Schadenfreude as saw the red and blue flashing LEDs of a Police SUV angled into the parking lot at a complex. “They’ve caught somebody, good. At least it’s not me,” was the thought that involuntarily flashed through my mind. I’m not proud of that, but it is what it is. I couldn’t help but steal a quick glance sideways as I drove by.
I didn’t see what I expected. I only saw the little tableau for two seconds, at most, but I’ll always think about it. The police SUV had a dark sedan trapped in the corner of the little lot. The uniformed officer had a beautiful young Asian woman over the hood, one hand on her back, and the other reaching around his back to pull his cuffs off his belt. She was dressed in a short blue and white striped cocktail dress – obviously on her way out on a Friday evening. She was looking back over her shoulder at the officer and I had a good quick look at her face.
I’ve seen plenty of people get arrested. I think most people that are taken into custody have been hauled in before and know what is going on – what to expect. Some are angry, some are indignant, but most are resigned. This woman wasn’t like any of these. She was scared to death. She did not look like a criminal.
I’m not being anti-cop here. I don’t know the full story – I don’t know any story at all, really. The officer, as far as I could see, was by himself and if he ran her license and it came back with warrants – he didn’t have much choice but to cuff her. That’s what I assume happened – she was caught in the speed trap, pulled over, and something was wrong. Either her license came back or there was a problem with the car.
The young woman had made a mistake. She might have ignored a ticket until an arrest warrant was issued or maybe she was driving a friend’s iffy car.
But I’ll never forget the look on her face. I can see her driving along, music booming, in a great mood, looking forward to a Friday evening on the town and then, within seconds, it all went south. Her fear, shock, maybe layered with some embarrassment. Across the street is a big field that is owned by a girl’s elite soccer club – there were maybe two hundred girls from eight to eighteen out practicing – though I didn’t have time to swivel my head that way, I’m sure a lot of them were looking up from their drills to see the woman hauled away.
I feel so sorry for the woman. I’m sure, no matter how it all turned out, she will remember this day with shame and dread the rest of her life.
I feel helpless – though I don’t know her and only saw her for two seconds – I wished there was something I could have done. I didn’t even want to turn around and see what happened. I could only make things worse.
Most of all I feel guilty for the moment of Schadenfreude I felt when I first saw the red and blue lights.
I was playing half the games. I’d play the first half, and then I’d sit down so that Wilma could get her turn. Wilma was a big girl; sort of shapeless. Nobody else could ever remember her name. I don’t know if she was a little slow in the head, or maybe only really, really, shy. At our age there isn’t much difference between the two. I don’t know why she played soccer. Probably her parents made her – like most of us. During the games she never even kicked the ball. She would stand around looking miserable, usually with her arms crossed. I guess it should have made me mad that I had to sit on the bench while she stood out there, useless, but I didn’t care. That’s probably why the coach always made me sit instead of any of the other girls.
You see, this was a recreational league. The rules said that everybody got to play at least half of the game, no matter what. Our team really sucked. All the girls that were any good had left a year earlier – they had gone off to play in the select leagues. That is where the teams get to choose who they wanted and the girls’ parents paid thousands of dollars so they could practice every day and go to tournaments in Europe and stuff like that. That’s not what we did. We were the girls nobody wanted.
We played on terrible fields in some rundown city park in some scary neighborhood. The girls on the select teams got the good fields, the ones with lights and smooth, level, grass.
The weather was always awful. It would be cold and rainy at first, then in the summer it would be so hot you couldn’t even think straight. The ground would dry out and split open like a tomato in the sun. There would be these big cracks and if you stepped in one, even if you didn’t break your ankle, all these crickets would come swarming out. It was really gross.
One game, the first one of the spring season, was really cold. It had been raining for days, the field was a muddy mess and the temperature wasn’t much above freezing. There was this big brown puddle in one corner of the field and Brenda tried to kick the ball when she slipped and fell in. It was weird – she completely disappeared. Who knows how deep that puddle was but for a few seconds there was no Brenda, only that brown water. Suddenly she came out, shooting up and out like a rocket. Brenda was a tough girl, never took anything from anybody, but she came out of that cold water crying like a baby. Her mother wrapped her in a blanket and took her away sobbing. She went home.
Some of the girls teased her about it the next week, but I didn’t like the look of that cold brown water and I knew how she felt.
Our coach last year, coach Barracha, would make us roll around in the mud before the games. He said, “I don’t want you girls afraid to get your uniforms muddy.” He had named the team River Plate. The other girls couldn’t understand why we were named after a plate. It seemed like an odd name to me too, but Coach Barracha was from Uruguay and I found that was the name of a famous river, and soccer team, from down there, so I guess that was OK. Coach Barracha was way too serious for our team. We lost every game and only scored two goals all season. At first he would get madder and madder every week until he finally gave up. When the season ended he didn’t even come to the Pizza party.
I was happy because I figured with no coach, there would be no team and I wouldn’t have to play this year. But then all the parents got together and convinced Eleanor’s Dad, Mr. Wiggins, to be the coach. That was terrible. Mr. Wiggins, like Eleanor, to tell you the truth, is kind of crazy. He renamed the team The Blue Squealers, which has to be the most embarrassing thing in the world. After giving us that terrible name, he pretty much did nothing. I guess that was all right; we weren’t going to get any better no matter what he did, and I guess he figured he might as well cut his losses.
With all the good players going to the select teams you would think that the other teams in our recreational league would suck as much as we did but no such luck. You see there were all these poor kids, these Mexican girls, who couldn’t afford to join the select league but still they lived for soccer. Their teams had Spanish names with the word futbol in them. They would beat the crap out of us, week after week.
Actually, when I was setting on the bench in the second half of these games I like to watch some of these girls play, even when they were thrashing my team. A lot of them were just small and fast and relentless, swarming and pushing, but a few were real artists. They could run and move and make the ball spin this way and that without even looking at it. Their game was a thing of beauty and for a second you could forget that you were sitting on a splintering bench in a run-down park watching kids trying to give a damn about a game that meant nothing.
Believe it or not, that year we had a good player. Really, her name was Missy Higgins. She was tall and fast and she said she had been playing soccer since, “I was in diapers.” Missy had been on a select team but now was faced with the humiliation of playing with us.
The girls talked about her all the time when she wasn’t around. They all said that she had been kicked off her select team because she had been caught drinking with some college boys while they were out of town on a tournament. That seemed to make sense to me, but I listen to the parents talk when I sit on the bench and I heard her mother say she had to quit select soccer because was having knee problems after a growth spurt and needed to get stronger before she could try it again.
At first I thought this was an excuse, because her parents must have been ashamed because of the drinking, but I watched her play and even though she was really good, a ten times better player than anyone else on the team, she was obviously in pain. She would grimace and groan, though nobody other than me seemed to notice. One game, she tried to make a sharp cut right in front of me on the bench, to keep the ball from rolling out of bounds, and her knees gave out and she tumbled onto the ground. I heard her mutter, “I’m a cripple,” as she pulled herself back up.
You would think that our team would be good with a girl like that but it didn’t really make any difference. First of all, soccer isn’t that kind of a sport. One player can’t make up for a whole team of suck. None of us could ever really make the ball go where we wanted it to. When we kicked it the ball would go squirting off somewhere else, usually spinning like crazy. It was kind of fun, trying to guess where the thing was going to end up. So we couldn’t actually pass the ball to Missy, even though we wanted her to have it and we tried all the time.
It didn’t take the other teams long to figure it out too. The other coaches would put two girls on Missy all the time, usually one big girl pushing on her from behind and a little quick one darting around in front. It must have been really frustrating for Missy, especially since that meant somebody else didn’t have anyone defending them, but good luck with that. When Wilma was playing the other teams would ignore her completely.
Missy tried really hard on defense, too, but it didn’t do much good. If the other team had the ball they would always kick it wherever Missy wasn’t at.
Still, Missy would usually score one goal almost every game. I remember her getting the ball and kicking a spinning arching shot that bent around the other team and sneaked in a top corner of the goal. The goal keeper stood there with her mouth hanging open. It was a thing of beauty.
In the end, though, all Missy could do is get us so we would lose, say, seven to one,
The time I sat on the bench I’d watch the girls on the other team, I’d watch Missy, and I’d watch the parents – our parents and the ones on the other team. Every game they would come trooping out of their trucks lugging their folding chairs and line up along the field. The other teams’ parents would bring air horns or wooden clacker things to make noise to cheer on their girls. They would jump up and yell at the referees and cheer for their kids. Our parents looked like they were waiting to get dental work done. They would clap halfheartedly at the beginning of the game but once the inevitable slaughter began they would go calm.
Sometimes, I would spot a little metal flask moving between some of the parents. Coach Wiggins hardly ever said a thing, though he would at least stand and pace through the game. He looked lost. I think I saw Brenda’s dad pass him that little flask once or twice, but I’m not really sure about that.
Wilma’s stepmother brought her to the games. Since Wilma played while I sat, I could watch her. I thought that her stepmother would at least watch or cheer a little, but she never did. She was a lawyer and would talk on her bright red cellphone or text away on her little Blackberry during the whole game. Some times she would do both; wedge her phone against her shoulder under her ear while she texted away with both thumbs.
Finally, it was the last game of the season. It was against the other team from the suburbs. They were called the DeeFeeters and they sucked almost as much as we did, though you would never know it from how cool they thought they were and how loud their parents would yell. They even had a father that would bring this big apparatus that had a tripod and a pole that he would crank up into the sky with a video camera on top. He had to film every minute like it was the Super Bowl or something. I hated those people.
Like I said, though, that team sucked almost as much as we did and even though they had scored two quick goals, they must have got lazy and Missy scored a goal and then Brenda tried to kick a pass and it spun and wobbled and bounced into the goal. The game was almost over and I was sitting on the bench getting excited that if we were lucky we might get out of there with a tie. You can have ties in soccer and it would be cool to not lose for once.
Well, there were only a couple minutes left and Missy was trying really hard and the other team kicked it past the line so we had a corner kick. Missy always took the corner kicks; she was the only one that could kick the ball all the way to in front of the goal. Missy went out and set everything up, Coach Wiggins always let her; she knew lots more than he did about what to do and what was going on.
From the bench I watched her take Wilma by the arm and move her away from everybody else, far away from where the ball sat by the little flag in the corner. It sort of made me mad; it looked like Missy was moving Wilma away from the action so she couldn’t screw anything up more than it already was. This wasn’t fair, no matter how bad and weird Wilma was she still deserved to be in the middle of things. It was strange though, nobody else was paying attention, they were all moving around and pushing against each other but I saw Missy saying something to Wilma, whispering in her ear. She was shorter and had to stand on her tip toes to get her lips close to Wilma’s ear.
Then Missy took Wilma’s shoulders and moved her – sort of almost pointing her in a certain direction, and then pulled her crossed arms down and making her hold them down at her sides. Then Missy walked across to the corner and took her kick.
I had noticed all year that Missy was getting stronger and her knees were hurting her less as the weeks went by. She ran up and kicked the crap out of that ball.
The kick arced up like a rainbow, going higher and farther that anyone had guessed, flying completely over the bunch of girls shoving at each other in front of the goal. It came curving down and, like a sniper shot, hit Wilma square in the chest. It fell to the ground right in front of her and for a split second Wilma stood there petrified, staring at the ball, but then she seemed to shake for an instant and stepped forward and kicked the thing.
Of course, nobody was anywhere near her and the goalie was completely out of position so the ball bounced a couple time and ran up against the back of the net. Everyone looked stunned except Missy who was jumping up and down and screaming. I couldn’t believe it, she knew exactly what she was going to do and she did it… perfectly.
I turned on the bench to Wilma’s stepmother, who hadn’t seen a thing. She was looking away and was talking into her phone.
“Um, Mrs…. Um… Wilma’s Mom?” I didn’t know her last name. “Wilma just scored a goal.”
She said something sharp into the phone, snapped it closed and then frowned and turned to me, “Oh God! What has she done now?”
“Oh, no, ma’am. It was a good thing. She scored a goal. I’m afraid you missed it.”
She stood there with her mouth hanging open, holding her phone in one hand and her Blackberry in the other, turning and staring at all the girls jumping and hugging Wilma in a big clump. I don’t think she ever really figured out what happened.
It would be a better story, I guess; if we had gone ahead and won the game, that Wilma had kicked the winning goal in our only victory. I’m afraid, though, there was too much time left and the goal really pissed the other team off and they scored three goals in the last five minutes and we lost five to three. I don’t care though, that goal was a thing of beauty.
I will always remember watching that goal from the bench. I think I would rather watch something like that than actually score an ordinary goal myself. It’s good to know that every now and then there is a perfect thing in this world. Also, as long as I live, I’ll think about and wonder what Missy said to Wilma when she whispered to her, standing there holding her shoulders, right before she kicked the corner. I wish I knew; I wish I had heard it.
That was my last soccer game. After the season I thought about what would be the best time to hit them up and one afternoon, when they were in a good mood, I went to my parents and begged them not to make me play another season. They went along with it, but I had to promise to sign up for band next year.
There are too many werewolf stories around these days. And way too many vampire stories. I have not read any of the Twilight series, so I will not denigrate it, I will simply say it doesn’t interest me enough to waste my precious reading time. And I will not even look at a vampire story now – it has been so overdone.
We were talking about this the other evening in our writing group, and my whining brought back to my head a sudden memory of a long time ago. I remembered reading a short story called “The Compleat Werewolf” by Anthony Boucher, a giant in the world of early Science Fiction and mystery type stuff (he was a Science Fiction editor and a Mystery writer). Clearing the cobwebs and thinking hard, I remember I read it as part of a collection – probably around 1970 or so. I remembered bits of the plot: a professor changing from a wolf to a man in front of his class, forgetting he was naked, a bullet splashing off of a wall and the horror of the werewolf when he realized the near miss was silver, and a portly magician demonstrating the Indian rope trip to tragic ends.
Well, a quick Internet search and some library wrangling and I had in my hot little hands a copy of The Compleat Werewolf. I was surprised to find it was written in 1942 – the tale was older than I thought (there is a reference to the forty-eight states in the story). It held up well, though.
The whole basis of the tale is that a werewolf isn’t inevitably evil (though most are) and that, when used with discretion and intelligence, a power like that can be darn useful.
I enjoyed reading the thing. It is more a detective story than anything, though the whole mystery is pretty simple and unravels without much tugging of the sweater string. It is sparsely written and hardboiled enough to go down easy and quickly, but still has a few literary flourishes thrown in. I have to love any tale that includes the phrase, “this fantastic farrago of questions.”
To sum up, The Compleat Werewolf is a yarn. Not entirely serious, not without a wink or two, but a complete story, where a bad guy shoots himself, the hero (wolf) gets the girl (not as he had hoped… but better), and there are practical considerations in spite of supernatural occurrences.
So don’t be afraid to mosey down to your local biblioteca and check out this or some other collection of classic story telling. You might learn a thing or two and have a good time in the meantime.
This week for Snippet Sunday I’m putting up an entire short story. This is the rough first draft I wrote some months ago and then abandoned. The biggest problem is that it is simply too damn grim. I like a few things about it and want to completely re-write the thing in a lighter vein, if possible. In the meantime, here is what I’ve got. Any ideas?
The Fortress of the Copper Thieves
Mobungu tossed all afternoon – he had a two day shift of guard duty coming up starting that sundown and he wanted to get some sleep. In his dreams he ran through a thick forest – its image was blurred and indistinct because he had never actually seen more than a handful of trees at once – chased by something hissing and shaking the foliage behind him, out of his sight. He wanted to turn and look, but knew that if he paused, it would overtake him, whatever it was. In the dream he could feel hot breath on the back of his neck. All he could do was continue to rush forward in a fog of overpowering fear – thorn-studded vines tearing at his skin, brambles cutting his feet, and branches grabbing at him, pulling him back. It felt like he wasn’t moving at all and the thing behind was just about to catch up.
For the twentieth time he woke shivering, his blankets cold and wet – soaked through with his own sweat. Orange light was pouring in under the lip of the lean-to and Mobungu realized that it was finally evening and time for him to move to his guard post. His joints creaked as he rose and pulled on his tunic, then his woven serape marked with the double triangle symbol of his tribe, and placed the rusted iron pot over his head. He gathered up his spears and atlatl. They clanked as he bound the the throwing stick and the barbed shafts with the cloth strip that served as holster and sheath – again embroidered with the sign of his tribe. Mobungu shuffled out of the shelter and struggled through the cold mud down to the water.
His canoe was tied up on a stake driven into the slippery clay of the bank. Mobungu slid down and hooked a knee around the stake, reaching out with a metal bucket to bail the water out of the canoe. It was made of thin iron plates hammered flat and riveted together. It leaked like a sieve. As he worked, the clang of the bucket against the wet metal was familiar to Mobungu – but that didn’t make it any more pleasant.
The sound reminded him of his old pirogue, which never leaked and was always quiet. His father had built the canoe before he was born. It had been hollowed out from a single log – a log that must have been far larger than any piece of wood that Mobungu had ever seen. His father said they had built a fire inside the log and used scrapers to hollow it out, to fashion it into the long smooth shape that slid so silently through the water. His father had been a great warrior and the pirogue his prized possession. When his father had fallen in battle – an arrow pierced his throat – there was some talk in the village of the honor of burning his body in the fire of his battle-canoe, but his wife said that was too wasteful and the pirogue was passed down to his son.
Mobungu protected the pirogue as long as he could, but as the white powdery plant-death spread and spread the shortage of wood became so acute that one icy winter evening, the village elders commanded him to drag the canoe up to their metal hut where it was chopped apart and used for their heating-fire. It felt like a chunk of Mobungu’s heart had been ripped out and consumed by the Elder’s need for heat, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it.
Once the canoe was bailed, Mobungu slid into it, nestled himself against the cold bottom and ungiving sharp bulkhead and began to paddle. The oar was a metal tube with a flat piece bolted to the bottom and it was cold in his hands. The vessel was not efficient but Mobungu was strong and he moved quickly down the estuary and out into the choppy salt water of the large bay. It was short distance across to a small island where the first line of defense for his village was set up.
They had traveled a long way to reach this point, the farthest east they could go. Almost a third of his village – most of the children and all of the old people – had died in the terrible journey, but they had no choice; driven forward by tales of a gigantic ancient city full of treasures. The elders had called the tribe together and set them on the long trail to the east, knowing they could no longer survive on the dying lakes and barren mountains of their home. The pain and tribulations of the journey were almost unbearable, but the tales were truthful. Paddling with his head held high – as he neared the guard post Mobungu could see the rotting towers of the ancient city still glittering in the failing light of the setting sun. It was still a long way away, isolated on a huge island in the estuary, covering an island that split a mighty river that poured down from the north right before it joined with the sea.
The expanse of water between the shore and the city was rough and wide, but not an impenetrable barrier. After their terrible migration Mobungu’s tribe was stopped, though – trapped, starving, on the bank, thwarted in their desperate quest by the powerful tribe that lived in the city. They were doomed by the tribe of the copper thieves. The vast bay and the estuaries that lined it was guarded by the fortress of the copper thieves, which was on a small island. Mobungu’s guard post faced that island fortress, across a short stretch of water. If the copper thieves were to launch an attack on his village, a quick warning would be the only thing that might save them.
Darkness fell quickly as Mobungu slid into the guard station and climbed out of the canoe. He was replacing Teemanga, who had been on duty for the last two days. As he approached the shack Teemanga was stretched out beneath a blanket and snoring loudly. Sleeping while on guard duty was a crime punishable by death, but Mobungu simply kicked Teemanga on the back of his legs until he woke with a snort. There were many crimes that were going unpunished in these dark days.
“It’s all yours. Your food has been delivered,” said Teemanga as he gathered his few belongings together for his return to the village. He moved with a weary sloth and gestured at a small pile of stale disks of biscuit arranged on a cloth.
“That’s not enough for two days,” said Mobungu.
Teemanga shrugged, “That’s what you’ve got.”
“You bastard, You’ve taken some of mine, let me see.” Mobungu started grabbing at Teemanga, pulling on his clothes.
“Go ahead, look all you want. I’ve got nothing.”
“Then you must have already eaten it.”
Teemanga simply gave another shrug and silently walked down to his canoe, which was smaller and leaked even worse than Mobungu’s. He would have a difficult crossing in the cold darkness.
The sun was now completely gone and a cold fog blowing in from the sea. Mobungu sat down in a chair they had fashioned that looked out towards the island fort. It was invisible in the darkness and fog, but Mobungu knew his duty was to keep looking, no matter how futile. Weakened by hunger and exhaustion he didn’t think he slept, but still, the dream in the forest kept coming back, so he must have dozed off. He was amazed by the beauty of the forest but terrified by the unknown horror that chased him.
He thought he felt a scaly hand lined with icy razor claws begin to close on his shoulder when he started awake with a scream and realized the sun was rising to the east, the horizon glowing orange and peach, the water calm. The sun warmed him and gave him a little strength and after an hour or so burned the fog off of the water and Mobungu could see the fort of the copper thieves clear as crystal in the still morning air.
The island fortress was silhouetted against the distant slanted falling towers of the ancient city and stood like an impenetrable obstacle to the riches that must still be there. Mobungu lifted an apparatus they had built out of a metal tube and glass lenses found in an abandoned town along their journey and raised it to his eye.
The clear morning and magnification of the telescope enabled him to see the fortress clearer than he ever had. It looked so close, he could almost reach out and touch it.
The major part of the fortress was a huge star-shaped stone building, taking up most of the area of the little island. Mobungu knew that an assault against these vertical walls of stone was a hopeless gesture – the warriors within were safe from an outside threat. Rising from the center of the star was a series of gigantic steps leading up to a stone building in the shape of a giant pillar, towering up into the sky. This pillar was decorated with columns and windows and was built stout and strong.
The elders of the tribe had said that this giant pillar had once supported an enormous statue, reaching a hundred arms high. They said it was a statue of a woman and it was made of the most precious metal of all, it was made of copper.
Mobungu smiled at this – surely it wasn’t true. He had never seen more than a handful of copper in his life, what tribe could possibly have the unimaginable riches they could use to build a giant woman of this metal, and put her up on that stone pedestal. He closed his eyes and imagines the smooth, red-orange expanse of polished copper. He thought of the smooth curves of the giant woman, the swelling thighs, the overhanging breasts, the flowing hair molded in precious metal. Mubungu imagined she would be smiling at him, maybe with giant arms outstretched in welcoming.
It was impossible, but it warmed his heart to imagine it so.
The elders said the copper thieves pulled the statue down and melted it to make armor and weapons. Mobungu returned to his telescope and gazed at the top of the pedestal, at the statue the copper thieves had built to replace the woman they had destroyed.
This statue was obviously male, and, while not made of a rare and beautiful metal, it was constructed of something extremely precious to Mobungu and his tribe. It was made of wood.
It looked like it towered fifty arms high, half as big as the elders said the woman was, it wasn’t as high as the pedestal it perched above, but it was still the most massive thing Mobungu had ever seen made in his time. It was a stylized warrior, feet together, knees bent facing out to sea. His head was topped by a fringed helmet, his face obscured behind a lathwork of a protective screen. His hips were thrust forward and one arm held a huge round shield. The other arm was raised high, holding a spear toward the heavens. The tip of the spear was barbed with a wicked looking series of wooden hooks.
The statue was not very old. When his tribe had arrived the thing was still yellow and fresh and they could smell the fresh-cut aroma when the wind was right. They could still hear hammering and cutting sounds booming from the interior as the copper thieves completed some unseen bracing.
As the summer ended and the cold winter fell upon them, the tribe gazed upon the graying and weathering statue, imagining the warmth that the wood could produce. They never could figure out where the copper thieves had obtained the raw materials. All their searches west of the river were in vain, everything was dead, killed by the spreading white plant-death. Any attempt to cross the river or to approach the ancient city was met by swarms of soldiers from the army of the copper thieves. They were watching and would dispatch death upon any one that tried to enter their territory.
Mobungu looked at the statue, at the fortress below and at the small area of the island that bordered the fort. The island had grass. It was dormant and brown now, but during the summer the ground was green, a color Mobungu rarely saw. Most amazing of all – there were still living trees. Some stood alone, and a couple of small groves hugged the stone walls or the surging shore. Some had lost their leaves for the winter, but a few were pyramid-shaped and still held their foliage. Seeing the color green, and knowing the trees were still alive, filled Mobungu with longing and a tiny spark of hope.
Through the day and into the night Mobungu stared at the statue. He would look through the telescope until his eyes grew tired and then he would stare with his bare eyes. By the afternoon he had eaten all the biscuit that had been left for him and he knew he had a day and a half of hunger ahead of him.
He knew he was supposed to stay awake, but how was that possible for two days? That night was clear and the moon was full. As he sat in the chair and looked through the telescope he could see the statue and the fort below… dim but clear. Beyond, the ancient city seemed to glow with flickering ghosts in the moonlight.
Without realizing he was doing it, Mobungu drifted off into sleep and instantly began to dream. This time he was running through the forest but he didn’t feel the rough branches clutching at him, he didn’t feel the thorns of the vines tearing at his skin. Instead of a panicked run he felt like he was floating along a wooded path. He was able to look around and realized that the trees now looked like the ones he had seen that day on the fortress island. He was still being chased but he felt no fear.
Once he realized he wasn’t afraid any more, he drifted down to a stop along the path in the forest. He calmly turned toward what is was that was chasing him, and he saw the branches shaking and moving and he felt a great joy as he waited for whatever it was to emerge from hiding. The first thing he saw was a wooden man – a copy of the statue on the island, but small, human sized. His wooden skin was polished, supple, and showed a glossy grain. One arm was still extended back into the hidden shadows beneath the trees and as Mobungu watched, the wooden man held the hand of a companion that emerged into the light. It was a copper woman, a normal sized woman, a copy of the ancient statue that Mobungu imagined in his daydreams. She gleamed in the sun, polished and flawless. She stood beside the wooden man and they smiled at him, together. Mobungu noticed the swelling in the copper woman’s belly and he realized she was pregnant.
Mobungu woke, not in fear like he had every morning since before he could remember, but calm, relaxed. He realized he had a purpose. It was almost dawn, the moon had set, but there was the tiniest smear of gray across the eastern horizon. He took the cloth covering that wrapped his spears and wound it around the tip of his longest, straightest weapon. He gathered up a flint stone and striker that the guards had kept next to their lookout post. At one time, the idea was to light a signal fire in case of attack, but the fuel had long ago been used up. Still, Mobungu knew he could use it to kindle the tip of the spear. The cloth was of ancient origin and he knew it would melt and burn with a quick and strong flame.
He took the flint, striker, spear, and Atlatl and slid into the canoe. He paddled hard across the smooth morning sea towards the fortress of the copper thieves. The sun began to rise as he coursed across the water and the edge of the orange disk peeked above the broken towers of the ancient city as he slid against the shoreline and leaped up onto the island.
He had not been noticed yet. A single small canoe with one half-starved man must not be enough of a threat. He began to run and marveled at the feel of the dormant grass against his bare feel. He looked at the ruined city, closer than he had ever been to it before and realized that between the toppling towers small groves of trees were growing. He ran to the closest tree and touched it, feeling the rough bark against his fingertips. This one was leafless but he quickly moved to one that still was covered with green. The leaves were thin, sharp needles, and Mogundu ran his fingers into the branch, feeling the sharp tips pierce his skin. The ground was covered with needles that had fallen, but these felt soft against the soles of his feet. The tree gave off a sharp, sweet odor that he had never known, and a yellow sticky sap came away from his hands which smelled the same.
He heard shouting in the distance and realized that he had been seen. Knowing he didn’t have very much time he dropped to his knees in the sweet needles under the green tree and pulled out the flint and striker. A couple quick blows and the cloth wrapping on the end of his spear was glowing with flame. A spark fell and the bed of needles began to smolder. Mogundu stared and smiled at that, breathing in the sweet smoke and marveling at the crackling sound. He almost missed the soldier running at him, covered in shining copper armor and swinging an orange-gold sword.
The clanking armor slowed the soldier and Mogundu was able to dart up and run towards the fort. A horde of guards was pouring out of a line of copper-clad wooden doors and rushing toward him. They clanked along, faces hidden by copper screens, the rising sun glinting off their waving weapons. He was fast though, and he ran almost unchecked through their ranks. A swinging blade swished against his shoulder, slicing skin and leaving a red streak that began to spout. It was his left side, and Mogundu knew he didn’t really need that arm. He laughed at the pain and kept running until he began to approach the very wall of the fortress.
By now the cloth wrapping was burning brightly and flames were whipping back, fanned by the wind of his rushing forward. Without slowing down he used his right hand to fit the end of the spear into the atlatl and holding it firmly used all his momentum and the strength in his legs to swing the spear-thrower forward, launching the flaming spear in a high, fast arc towards the statue of the wooden man.
The spear rose with frightening speed, propelled by the leverage of the atlatl, until it struck the statue in the hip. The wood was dry and weathered and the burning cloth stuck to it like a bee to a flower.
Mogundu fell to his knees and stared, laughing like a madman, watching the flame immediately begin to spread. He was so delighted he never saw the guard running up behind him and swing down, his bright copper sheathed sword striking the kneeling man in the back of the neck, completely severing his head from the rest of Mogundu’s body. It was still laughing when it hit the ground.
That morning, as the villagers gathered they could see the column of smoke in the east. They rushed to the waterside to see the distant giant wooden man consumed by flame. They couldn’t know what had caused the conflagration, and it filled them with deep despair. After a short counsel with what leaders that still remained, they gathered their belongings together and began to move off, slowly, into another doomed journey, this one to the west.
Pretty damn depressing, huh. Well, to make you feel better, here’s a video to cheer you up. C’est Si Bon. It’s all good.
Bill Chance 