If I’d known, of course I’d have kept the damn cricket. Or… maybe not. Writers can’t pass up a good opportunity.
The pet store owner bobbed his white-haired head to one side and then the other as he released an impassioned torrent of guttural invectives and no small amount of spit. He jabbed a nicotine-stained finger in my general direction.
His young clerk hastily jumped into the fray. Dressed in a Lucky Jade Dragon t-shirt promoting the store, he said, “My uncle insists a cricket is a fine companion. People have kept them as pets for a thousand years.” The thumb-sized bug in question sat in its cherrywood cage, chirping.
My fellow teacher Llewlyn swallowed a laugh and whispered in my ear, “Bollocks! That’s not what the old man said.” I had figured as much. After seven months in China, I could make out key words such as “dàbízi” and “Měiguórén.” (Big nose and American.)
I told the young man behind the counter, “Please tell your uncle I need to return the cricket because it chirps all night. I can’t sleep.”
The nephew complied, setting the old man off on a new blast of frustration.
The owner’s nephew explained, “The cricket offers his stridulation – Sorry. Sometimes, I choose a bigger-than-needed word. – his song. It is a gift.” In fact, he spoke better English than most of my students. Leaning in, he whispered. “Besides, they only live for a month or two. And they are delicious fried in sesame oil.”
“That’s fine,” I insisted, trying not to turn up my big nose at crunchy snacks, “but I’d like something quieter. It’s for a small apartment, a conversation starter for when I have girls over.”
Llewlyn chuckled with Brit smugness. “Good luck,” he said. The old man narrowed his eyes, looking first at Llewlyn and then at me. Llewlyn was right, of course. Teaching all day and writing all night left me little time for dating. I’d met two girls in seven months. That worked out to one day trip to the Summer Palace followed by a snub and a two-woo-hoo-stand followed by an awkward break-up over WeChat. I was as thirsty as the Gobi.
I didn’t even hang out with my students after class, unlike Llewlyn. The government agency that hired us had no rule against fraternizing, but teenagers bored me. Beyond online games, they had no conversation in them. The only reason they were in my class reading A Tale of Two Cities, The Great Gatsby, and The Old Man and the Sea was because their parents demanded they get into the best American colleges, so they could get high-paying jobs.
I’d worked long enough at various office jobs to know I wanted to be anywhere else. At the ripe old age of twenty-six, I’d come to the conclusion that corporations existed solely to enrich the lucky few. I wasn’t lucky. I figured China was a land of exotic adventures and offered a chance for a Liberal Arts Major to soak up some culture and turn it into a novel or three. In truth, no one cared whether I was good at teaching. They wanted me there to listen to me speak so they could one day sound like a Měiguórén.
The owner’s nephew thought about what I’d said and conversed with his uncle. The old man took a drag on his cigarette – smoking was as ubiquitous here as jaywalking and belching – and led me through his little shop. We went past a cage holding two cute kittens and several open-topped pens containing bunnies. I shook my head near each, and the old man pursed his lips in disgust.
Finally, we came to an aquarium teeming with animated silvery flecks. The old man pointed as if to spear one.
“I don’t really want fish,” I said.
He pointed again, lower this time, and stomped his foot.
“I think you’d better take whatever he’s pointing at,” a bemused Llewelyn said. “Just trade him back the cricket and throw in an extra ten yuan.”
The younger man at the counter looked over and nodded.
“Fine,” I said.
*
The next day was Monday. I stood in front of my class, called up a PowerPoint on the smart board, and began my best impassioned, well-practice rant. “All writing must contain truth, beauty, and love. Truth: writing must obey objective logic, or for fiction, an internal logic of its own. Tell me early whether your vampire can fly or not and stick to that rule; no ex machina twists at the end! Beauty: for this class, that means learning proper grammar and vocabulary. Every object, place, or person has a proper name. Learn it! That means reading everything you can get your eyes on, from Mark Twain to JK Rowling.” A few of them stirred at the plug for Harry Potter. “Try reading a good translation of Liu Cixin.” That got a bigger reaction; they were hot for The Three-Body Problem.
I wrapped it up. “Love. This is the biggie. You must make certain your story comes from a place of love. Anger pushes readers away. The world has enough hate, enough cynicism. What it needs is empathy, compassion. Without love, you’re not making art; you’re just giving your inner demons a forum to scream obscenities.”
I waited for questions. One young man whose father ran a medical supply company looked around and then raised his hand. “Will this be on the college entrance exams?”
Was I reaching the impressionable minds before me? Who knew? Teaching was a gamble, as indeed was my nascent writing career.
*
As promised, Satchmo said not a word as I dutifully filled out the query form. My new roommate’s hinge opened a little so he (she? it?) could wave his filtering filaments in the bowl’s water and have a meal. My mind flashed on my little brother showing me his half-chewed Fluffernutter sandwich. No matter. Satchmo was a good, quiet companion. If he didn’t share much, it’s only because he was a little shellfish. (Good writers employ puns.)
Back to the query: Genre? Body Horror/Fantasy. Pitch? A katana haunted by the master swordsmith Sengo Muramasa meets its match in a willful teenage schoolgirl who wields the cursed weapon to exact revenge upon her mean classmates. What about theme? Use of motif? The online forms weren’t interested. Most likely, my passion project would remain unsullied by human eyes. Instead, a computer would search for keywords: Taylor Swift, homoerotica, one million TikTok followers. Finding none of these, it would generate a standard rejection email.
Satchmo commiserated, blowing one of his singular pearlescent bubbles. I’d broken down and bought him several tankmates. Each in turn had, however, shuffled off their mortal scales. Three midget lobsters – crayfish, really – made quick work of the sushi. I didn’t bother to name the lobsters; their feeding habits were kinda gross. Satchmo, on the other hand, possessed character. My imagination stuck Satchmo in my favorite episode of a campy old TV series, which I kept loaded on the laptop for when I got homesick for silly American culture. Robin’s green boot stuck out from his crenulated mouth as Batman rushed to the rescue.
Even as I was finishing up the current query, the internet vomited an email from a Misti Rumplay of the BiblioBug Literary Agency. I’d submitted my query months ago.
No big surprise: “Thank you so much for your query and the chance to read your book. Unfortunately, the material did not grab me. This is a subjective business. Hopefully, you will find someone who will embrace your work with the conviction necessary in the current market.”
I had racked up scores of nearly identical emails. They didn’t even mention my book by name. For professionals who dealt in creative writing, agents showed a lack of color and variety when composing their rejection letters.
“Didn’t grab you?” I muttered. Then I yelled it. “Didn’t grab you! Who the hell are you, anyway? God, you’re all one big soulless business, looking for a quick knock-off of the latest mega-hit. Sure, I could sell my books, if I were a celebrity or a politician.” No one read those books; they skipped to the tell-all bits to see who screwed who. Great writing. I screamed again, “Grab you? I wish! I’d like to grab you and throw you out the window!”
With that, I picked up my mouse and flung it at the far wall. Since the apartment was tiny, it wasn’t all that far. The mouse cracked, and a piece flew off, plunking into Satchmo’s tank. Satchmo blew a bubble of surprise. I retrieved the plastic shrapnel from the tank, dried my hand in the previous day’s underwear, drank a beer, and went to bed.
*
A dull thud not far from my head woke me from my usual light sleep atop the stiff platform that was my kang. My phone said it was just after two. An earthquake, I wondered, or a large truck passing in the night, or my fat neighbor stumbling in after enjoying too much baijiu? As I set the phone back down, I heard a heavy flapping, like someone shaking out two freshly laundered bedsheets for drying. Most of the tenants used their tiny porches as dryers and storage since few of us apparently had dryers… or closets. It was an odd time to be doing the wash, though. A sudden scrape of steel against stone curdled my thoughts. The shrill noise lasted only one terrifying second.
I sprang up with my phone. I could have fumbled the flashlight on, but I didn’t feel like frying my retinas. My newsfeed was blank, thanks to the Little Chairman’s censors and a crappy VPN, so the page gave me enough white to see by. Nothing appeared out of place in the ghostly glow. Breathe. Whatever had made the noise had been outside. I checked the sliding glass door to my porchlet. It would have been nice to let the cool night in to stir my apartment’s bachelor musk, but I kept the door shut against the city noise and pollution. Now, it was half-open. Reaching over the edge of my kang – almost a dikang, since it left precious little floor space – I slid the door closed.
Too tired to think about it, I stepped into my tiny WC (if you don’t know, be grateful) and peed. Then I went back to sleep.
*
Later that morning, I was dressing when I noticed the singular change in my tiny apartment. The bitty lobsters were scurrying over the bottom of the ten-gallon tank, picking their way through the empty gravel, looking for food. The gravel should not have been empty.
Satchmo!
Like an idiot, I immediately checked under the table and around the floor. Exactly how a clam jumped out of an aquarium I did not know, but this one had. I called out, “Satchmo!” I wasn’t sure about clam ears, either. No matter; there was no trace of him.
Already running late, I got my second, and much larger, surprise of the morning as I was checking the laundry hanging on my tiny enclosed porch. I had one sliding window open on either side of the porch, which was barely large enough to hold me, and forget about putting a table and chairs out there. Mine is a corner apartment, packed in with thousands of others in a neighborhood a mile or so from Tiananmen Square. As I reached up to grab a clean shirt (well, as clean as Beijing’s filthy air left it), my eye went to a stark new detail.
Something had dealt the quoins a glancing blow, deeply etching four V-shaped grooves into the concrete.
*
My students were already seated, pulling out their essays, when the young woman walked into my classroom.
“I am shen,” stated the slender girl in a white dress.
“Shen? Actually, I didn’t get any paperwork for a new student. You’ve already missed a week of class.”
She never broke eye contact. “I have come to grow meaningfully from your wise teachings.” She quickly added, “And from knowledgeable books.”
It was the nicest introduction I’d ever gotten from a student. “Well, I suppose you can take a seat.”
And so, it began. Shen sat quietly, never raising her hand in class or speaking to the other students. Afterwards, she’d come up to me with observations and questions that left me fumbling for a response.
“Gatsby possesses great wealth and property? Daisy must submit to Gatsby. She does not, and the ending displeases the thoughtful reader.” Or “In The Prince and the Pauper, why does Tom not order Edward to undergo murder rather than relinquish the throne of power?”
She was not as young as my other students. She was mid-twenties, closer to my age. She carried herself with a confidence I’d have expected in someone much older. I found it hard to look away. Shen’s hair and eyes shone dark, as if drawn by the sure hand of a skilled calligrapher. Her full lips promised the sweet tang of candied jujube fruit. On a simple leather thong around her slender neck, she wore a single silvery-lilac pearl, far too large to be real. Then there were her formidable nails, lacquered in cinnabar and detailed in delicate gold characters.
While the students took turns reading aloud from A Rose for Emily, I couldn’t help but stare at those nails clacking on the desktop. Those characters approximated the Oracle Bone Inscriptions I’d seen in the museum. Thousands of years old. If modern characters slashed the parchment with masculine aggression, these displayed feminine sensibilities. They were rounder, more organic, embodying a primal architecture equal parts creation and destruction.
*
As I said, the rules against fraternization were less an official thing and more my own personal code – a rule book Llewlyn had not read, by the way. He tried to shake me of this personal prohibition that night over dinner and drinks.
We chose Haidilao Hot Pot, which was noisy enough with the usual slurping and burping, and more so thanks to a loud TV. The news opened with a gushing report on the Little Chairman. He had given “an important speech” on modernizing the People’s Liberation Army and blah blah blah. A photo op found a perfect array of trim officers in starched uniforms, standing missile-straight and applauding in synchronous. Front and center, the Little Chairman slumped in his seat like a day-drinking housewife, his pot belly spilling over his belt, unconcerned with any possible criticism. No one criticized the Little Chairman.
“Try the pig ear,” Llewelyn practically screamed, holding a chewy bit in his chopsticks.
Llewelyn was the closest thing I had to a friend, despite the fact that he was already burning his forties. Hailing from somewhere (or something) called Stoke-on-Trent, he had a blue-collar background, living as meagerly as a 19th-century coal miner. It was no wonder he’d decided to chuck that life and teach abroad. “I’ll never go back. I won’t let the beast eat me.”
Over pork ribs, I fumbled out some hints that I was interested in one of my students, and he perked up.
“This Zhen sounds mysterious. It’s high time you went native, Jules my lad. Ask her out,” he needled me. When I tried to demur, he scolded, “Stop being such a melt.”
“A what?” I shouted over the noise of the restaurant. Someone at the next table was blasting TikTok, reviewing snippets of soul-sucking media with sound effects lifted from Hanna Barbera. Critics said the CCP used TikTok to deliver propaganda. I thought it simply made people stupid and docile. Whatever.
“A melt. Oh, what’s the American term for a craven sod?”
“Wimp?” I volunteered.
“Chickenshite.” Llewelyn anglicized it. In any case, he was right. “What is required here is ten seconds of bravery…” waving two fingers at the server, “which comes in liquid form.”
By the end of the night, my thoughts were liquified indeed.
*
What did I know about Shen? Did she have family? Besides Western Lit and Composition, what were her interests?
As it happened, asking her out took exactly ten seconds, even accounting for my hangover.
“You have written a book?” she mentioned as the other students were filing out.
“A novel.”
“Please, I would like it to read. Let us discuss this sincerely as we walk,” Shen said. It wasn’t a question.
The next thing I knew, we were holding hands, strolling under a row of camphor trees. For a time, we talked about my book. She nodded, only commenting that it was about a Japanese sword. “Chinese blacksmiths forge in the heat noble swords of great victory.”
I felt an instant bond, as if we had known each other all our lives… or longer somehow.
Sitting on a bench, she said matter-of-factly, “Your quest for finding an agent has been unrequited.”
This struck deep, and I’m afraid my bruised ego burst like a rotten tomato. “Others get in. Nobody wants to touch my haunted katana story, but Smythe-Beachcroft just signed a deal with Netflix to make a series out of his space nazi books. Space Nazis! Give me a break.”
“Gou pi,” Shen commiserated.
“I read that stupid series. He used every lazy trick: blank sheet between every chapter and ridiculous spacing - 32 lines per page - to push it barely past two hundred pages per book. Fifteen books. The plot wasn’t worth a short story!”
“What do self-absorbed agents require for making acceptance?” It was a question I’d asked myself a million times.
“Different agents have different rules. Some want nothing but vampire stories. Some take self-help books. There are enough self-help books to stack to the Sun; they should tell people they’re not broken and should get on with their lives. There are agents who want stories about the Jewish experience, or the Black experience, or the Hispanic experience, or the left-handed Vanuatuan experience, all for people who have already experienced things but figure it doesn’t count until someone experiences it in a book. Celebrities and politicians get instant approval because folks wanna know who they slept with. Then there are agents who only buy stories about cancer patients, assorted bunches of downtrodden victims, or LGBTQers — I’d turn lesbian if it’d sell my book.
“No matter what the agents want, it seems like they’ve already written it in their minds before I send anything in. Misti Rumplay from BiblioBug said, and I quote, “the material did not grab me.” I trailed off, not wanting my anger to spoil the moment.
Shen squeezed my hand and said, “You will try again in three days.”
Why not? Here I was, sharing a bench with a beautiful girl, so my luck had obviously changed. The cicadas worked themselves up to a fever pitch, pointing out the obvious: Beijing was hell in July.
“It is too hot here. Xi’an was a more tranquil capital city of pleasant breezes.” Before I could respond to Shen’s latest charming non-sequiturs, she tilted her head and pointed up at a series of red placards fixed to the trees.
“Those are everywhere, ruining the scenery, a gift from the Little Chairman,” I said. “Party slogans: ‘Young people must learn the Party’s rules’ and ‘Honor the Party.’”
“Why does a party need so many rules?”
“It’s not that kind of Party; and, no, it’s not fun.” It took me a moment. I had another rant inside me. It was definitely not a good idea to voice such thoughts in class, but here in private, I decided to see how Shen would respond. “They’re no different from anyone else. Communists, capitalists, socialists... at the end of the day ideology means nothing.”
Shen’s mouth pursed down to a single jujube and migrated to one side. “Mmmm,” she intoned in a thoughtful manner, staring at the placard. “This little chair-man, he is no son of heaven. His merit does not earn red signs.”
“It all comes down to a few old men forcing their will on others. They grab power, money, and of course, women.” I instantly regretted bringing up sex so soon in our relationship, even in the abstract. Shen was so damned sweet and –
“The emperors of ancient times understood that all glory is fleeting. The lamp of life burns brightly but not long. You are my emperor. Take me home now, and we will make sex.”
It was a sharp turn in the conversation. I could not form the words, but my eyes certainly let her know I was on board with the idea.
We took the jammed Beijing subway for a twenty-minute commute. Shen led me through the two transfers, we exited the station nearest my apartment. I didn’t even realize until that point that I’d never given her directions. I had questions once we got home.
We kissed deeply as soon as we got in the elevator, and our lips never parted until we were inside the apartment. She pulled away, smiling, and took a look around. There wasn’t much to take in. The kitchenette was smaller even than the one I’d had in Providence. It was a kitchenettette. The aforementioned WC will go undescribed save to say it was tiny. My crap took up the unused half of the kang. I had zero chairs, as the kang left me no floor space; I used it to sit on. And there was an armoire, stuffed with clothes and boxes and my long-neglected guitar, and a writing table, where I kept my laptop.
Stepping round the kang as best she could, she glanced for a moment at the aquarium, running a cinnabar-red lacquered nail along the rim and bending down to affectionately wave a finger at my pet lobsters. Then, she stepped onto the porch. Craning her neck, she regarded the neat row of grooves in the concrete. “Four forward talons.” She held up one hand, tucking in her thumb, leaving four finger-claws. “An emperor’s dragon.”
“Really?” I wasn’t following.
“Only the emperor may have a dragon with five toes. Anyone else must have four, or be beheaded.”
“Good to know.”
I had questions… but… her movements in that tight summer dress…
She hurried over to the laptop and began typing. Had I left it unlocked? I didn’t usually do that.
“Here. Rumplay. New York City. That’s a long flight,” Shen said, looking up from my email.
“Fourteen/fifteen hours, plus layovers.”
“Twelve. No stops,” she said confidently.
I had questions… questions her warm jujube lips pressed straight back into my own throat. Before I knew it, that silvery-lilac pearl was swaying above me, forward and back, forward and back. Lovely. I was wrong. The pearl was real. She was real. Shen was my life’s pearl.
*
My post-coital stretch ended in a sharp twinge from the region just under my left scapula—directly behind my heart. In the half-light, two cunning eyes reflected gold from some source I could not identify. Shen regarded me with amusement as her tongue explored the fingers of her right hand. The facile muscle that had thrilled me so just hours before now darted beneath her long cinnabar nails, savoring tasty evidence of our tryst. I had no doubt that when I checked the bedsheets, I’d find bloody spotlets. Mine. I knew with equal surety that I’d need both a hand mirror and a wall mirror to view my new permanent brand.
*
“Not Zhen. Shen.” To prove it, I reached into my work pouch, where I kept my students’ papers. Rifling through them, I couldn’t locate Shen’s latest essay. “Anyway, it’s Shen.”
“Oh. I thought you were mispronouncing it like you do everything else.” Through a mouthful of dumplings, Llewelyn added, “That’s not a given name – at least, I don’t think so.”
Llewelyn looked it up. He had a better VPN than mine, and it managed to get past The Great Firewall of China! I could get email on a good day, but I couldn’t Google or check the weather because the CCP and the Little Chairman was afraid that might lead to *gasp* free thought. Another alternative was to pay for roaming data. I could take a cab somewhere nice and have a big bowl of cold noodles with three sides of vegetables and a Coke for less than the price of one day’s roaming data.
Llewelyn tried several times, shaking his head but getting the same results. “Fine. Straight from Professor Wiki: ‘Shen may be spirits, goddesses or gods, ghosts, or other. A shen is a shapeshifting clam-monster or dragon that creates mirages.’ It says they have a special affinity for the affairs of humans. Sounds fairly accommodating as myths go.”
“Accommodating to what?”
Llewelyn took a long gulp of his Guinness Extra Stout. How he could drink that stuff… “To the person hearing the myth. Most ghost stories, or any stories for that matter, rely on the reader’s imagination. It gives them that extra zing of veracity.”
“Why would a spirit care what happens to me?” I said it even as my brain screamed: Satchmo!
He stared blankly at me. “Why don’t you just ask her? Or – here’s a wild thought: you could actually introduce her to me. I mean, the two of you are shagging and all.” I nearly spit out my dumpling. “I could ask her some of the things you’re too puss-snoggered to ask.” I’m pretty sure he made that word up on the spot.
He was right, as usual. It was long past time I introduced Shen to my friends – my one friend. “I will. She’ll be back in a few days. She says she needs to get some things done.”
The scratches on my back twinged. I wouldn’t call it painful, just… insistent.
*
I pulled out my laptop and set it on the table. There was an email alert waiting for me from the BiblioBug Literary Agency. To my amazement, the note said they were reviewing my book a second time. Could I send the full draft? Yes. Yes, I could. My hands flew over the keys, attaching the updated draft – the sword was now Chinese – back to BiblioBug. I noticed that the name on the return address had changed. It was a nightmarish time for literary agents, thanks to impossible competition from Amazon. Revenues dried up, agencies dwindled, and desperate agents flew out the nearest window, seeking someplace better.
I hit send and looked up. Shen was standing on my porchlet, tucked in amid my shirts and pants.
“Have you been there the whole time?” I asked, taking her hand and walking her in. “You’ll never guess what –”
A smile. A kiss. It was a simple spell to make me forget what I was saying.
My luck was definitely improving.
Even my VPN started working.
*
The next morning, Shen looked at me with a serious expression. “Jules, why do you write for the world?”
“I think you just answered your own question.” It was true. I wrote for anyone out there who’d read it and, miracle of miracles, let my words sink in.
She considered this.
“I wish to write for the world as well. Is this permitted?”
“It’s why you’re in my class.” We talked about it briefly, and then I logged her into the laptop and let her be.
While she wrote, I death-scrolled through Facebook and my newsfeed.
Lots of pictures of dragon sculptures. I checked the ones at various palaces and counted toes. After an hour, I came across an item in the news-of-the-weird section. Manhattan Demon Attacks Woman. It was nonsense, of course, the kind of police blotter news that paid the light bills for trashy media outlets. The article quoted an unnamed woman as saying she felt “invisible claws grab” her at her desk and force her out her third-story window. She fell to the pavement below, suffering numerous broken bones and other serious injuries. The writer conceded that the woman was also undergoing a psychiatric review. The blurb concluded with a melodramatic and unnecessary line to the effect that the demon was still at large.
“This is wild, Shen. It says –”
She cut me off, thrusting the laptop into my hands. There on the screen was her composition.
I read page after page. It was a lovely, lyrical dissertation on youth and freedom, the kind of thing that belonged in a literary review. I started to reread one section aloud, and she joined in so that we spoke in unison.
“Two swans with chests to contain one steadfast heart for the pumping of blood pipes did locate destiny on the harmonious lake of the lamenting willows.”
Her writing brimmed over with spurious syntax steeped in quaint non-sequiturs.
After a moment, I slipped on my teacher’s hat. “We say ‘weeping willows.’” We carefully went through her pages. I fixed some of the syntax, though, in truth, I liked her version better. Beijing paid me, however, to exorcise such cultural tags from my students’ prose so as not to rock the boat of Western conventions. In other words, I taught them how not to stand out.
Finding something of a balance, we agreed on a final draft. It was her work, heart and soul, and she beamed with pride. Next, we hit the internet, looking for local publishers. This was China, of course, so all of them were state-run. “The Little Chairman has his fat thumbs in everything,” I joked. We chose one that seemed as though it might be a good fit, and I helped her navigate a lengthy submission form. It required her to enter her address. She became agitated to the point that we agreed to list my apartment.
For the next several days, Shen virtually glowed. She encouraged me to begin work on a new book, which I did. I wanted to write about a love affair. The words came out cloyingly in a school-boy gush, but no matter. I had a good idea where it was going, and I could tone down the hearts-and-flowers in a later draft.
At Shen’s insistence, I checked my email twice a day for updates on her story.
“It can take a while,” I told her one evening, after a week. “Let’s get some sleep.”
In the early morning, I awoke with my arm sprawled across an empty kang. The laptop was open; it was this light in my eyes that had awakened me as much as Shen’s absence. I checked the computer.
It was opened to our shared email account. There on the screen were heart-breaking words, I’d seen dozens of times, with a decided Chinese twist. “The Committee feels your work is not appropriate for the revolutionary spirit of the People.”
Not only had they rejected Shen’s lovely story, but they’d used Party nonsense as an excuse. This was clearly the work of the Little Chairman and his minions. Like his namesake decades ago, the tubby politician was a ruthless climber, currently in the process of winnowing out any writing – indeed, any thinking – that didn’t line up with his stated ideology. I knew what she must be going through. It was the same thing all over: narcissistic groupthink. Either reflect the wonderfulness of me/us, or your soul’s work gets chucked out with the trash.
It was then that I heard an upswell of noise from the street below. The glass door was open again, and my ears registered sirens and a commotion of upset people. I rose, naked, and walked out on my porchlet. In the lightening sky, a column of smoke rose into the air, from the direction of the Great Hall of the People.
The words blew through my lips like air from a deflating balloon. “What did you do?”
*
As things played out over the next few days, Shen said very little. I wanted to talk to Llewelyn, but not knowing how to explain things, I kept making excuses about getting together.
The school was closed – as was everything across China – so, we sat on the kang and watched on the streaming news feeds as the huge somber procession made its way through the streets of the capital.
I also read and reread one email from BiblioBug; they had found a publisher who was willing to read my book! Shen assured me – and I believed her – saying, “You will bring knowledge and wisdom to the world.”
I urged her to resubmit her work, or perhaps to try another composition. She adamantly refused. In my mind, I resolved to convince her. There was an ineffable beauty inside this unique being, something primal, wed to the heart of the world. If I was meant to write my truth, she certainly was. Together, nothing could stop us.
My life had suddenly become more complex than I’d ever imagined, of course, but things were looking bright. Shen shared in my excitement, and this made it all magnificent. She was my dearest one, my muse, my toughest critic, my biggest fan. There is nothing in this world or any other that is better than sharing success with someone you love.
Still, I had questions. On my back was a four-talon scar. Not three. Four. I couldn’t stop wondering… what promise could the future hold for someone marked by an emperor’s dragon?
###
- Details
Goody Celeste gets magical reviews…
"Those we love define who we are. They teach us to accept that we’re neither terrible gods nor nameless grains of ocean sand, but rather something in between, unique and irreplaceable. The slipstream of our years brings souls alongside us for a time. We cannot keep them; that’s not what souls are for. If we’re wise, we let the ones we love change us. We remember them, and we hope, as deeply as hope flows, that they remember us."
Goody Celeste combines a sense of magical realism with a feminist bent in a novel that pairs the coming-of-age experiences of three teens with the oversight of young witch Cece who, in 1969, helps these young people even while struggling with her own challenges with an absent husband missing in Vietnam.
As these characters find their lives entwined, so they acknowledge that "the summer of my witch" changes them, drawing connections between Cece and her boys that lead them all into unexpected arenas of growth and new realizations.
The magic in this story lies not in a typical growth pattern, but in a process of revelations and counterpoints that bring together and contrast disparate individuals whose wild rides through 1960s culture and attractions are tempered by their relationships.
Chris Riker's lyrical prose also produces exceptional results that defy any definition of a staid coming-of-age progression to inject poetic and magical elements into even seemingly mundane shared experiences, such as a day at the seaside:
"Determined not to be bested in the ocean, not even by a goddess, I made my way out to the sandbar and waited. Waves do funny things. Physics suggests they amplify each other when they join up. That’s all well and good, but it’s not something you comprehend when your eyes are inches above the surface and the first swell blocks your view."
Goody Celeste also embraces the atmosphere of the times so seamlessly that the contrasts of these disparate forces is compellingly attractive, as in descriptions that offer unexpected contrasts between atmospheres from Carl Orff’s 1936 masterpiece from Carmina Burana (the O Fortuna movement) with the contemporary pop group The Cowsills.
These references keep the story pulsing with possibility, perception, and the flavor of an era in which opportunities for cultural and social enlightenment came from a wide range of forces that intersected lives in a manner unique to the 1960s.
Thus, the series of events and connections that drive these three young people and the witch who oversees them makes Goody Celeste a highly recommended marvel of contrasts and unprecedented opportunities.
Readers who enjoy novels of magical realism, growth, and a unique sense of place and time will find Goody Celeste defies pat categorization. It rewards those who imbibe with a rich, lyrical "you are here" journey that will attract libraries, book clubs, and discussion groups alike with remarkable, notable celebrations of life:
"We grasped little and were infinitely better off for our ignorance. Youth was the best holiday of all, unrecognized and uncelebrated, tenuous yet remembered forever. This time neither knows nor needs purpose. It is. It is. Life may be on a joyless march to steal innocence. It did not matter. Not here, not yet. Under the sun, three stupid, carefree boys rode bikes to the beach."
--Midwest Book Review & Donovan's Literary Services
Check out Goody Celeste for yourself... https://www.amazon.com/Goody-Celeste-Chris-Riker-ebook/dp/B0CJ3GVWTY/
- Details
Author Chris Riker appears on Scripps News to talk about the need for human magic.
Read Goody Celeste:
https://www.amazon.com/Goody-Celeste-Chris-Riker-ebook/dp/B0CJ3GVWTY/
- Details
This is one of those "beach songs" that was there on the transistor radio (new invention!) when we were kids. I didn't know until years later that the Cowsills were from Rhode Island and that they were the inspiration for The Partridge Family TV show. Hope this brings back memories... or just brings you a few minutes of joy.
- Details
I chose the triquetra pattern for Mara, my forever one. I run my fingers over its interlacing trinity knots and declare that she and I are united in eternity. There are three of these. Mine is coming. The original still lies, I suppose, painted on a granite wall deep inside our improper cave. Triads. The power of three. What you carry, what you seek, and how the weight and the journey change you.
Things used to be simpler.
Our teacher, Mrs. Flynt, took us on a field trip once to the Alton Jones campus. I was amazed there were so many acres of cedar, oak, and poplar inside West Warwick. On that spring day we hiked through the hilly woods, passing speckled red mushrooms, Jack-in-the-Pulpit, and fiddlehead ferns until we came to a spot near the lake. In her singsong teachery voice, Mrs. Flynt pointed out “a cohort of igneous titans dredged and dropped in a glacial campaign fought eons ago.”
Someone said, “It’s a cave!”
Mrs. Flynt said, “No, a proper cave is formed by water chewing its way through limestone or by a lava tube or some such.” I took a closer look at the cluster of boulders forming a big hole in the ground. This must be an improper cave, I thought.
We spent an half an hour exploring that gaping hole, dropping in, climbing out, scrapping our knees raw on coarse granite, and getting generally sweaty and filthy. In those days, our ankles absorbed all abuse without complaint; we were unbreakable, I thought.
Later, we got a talk about snake bites and venereal disease–it was two talks actually; I think Mrs. Flynt used the snakes to build up her courage. My classmates and I hiked back to the school bus laughing and joking about “ssnakesss with ssyphilisss.” It was a fun day. I didn’t get many of those.
Mara wasn’t on that trip. I met her at a party months later. I don’t usually go for Goth chicks, but there was something, a presence, about the pale girl sitting all alone, intensely scoping the room. She was underdeveloped, filling out her black dress slightly more than the hangar it came on. Her bangs were comically uneven, but cute.
She caught me staring. “What?”
“Sorry,” I stammered. Indicating her dress, I asked, “Who died?” It was a stupid thing to say, an aggressive-defensive, insecure mess of an opening gambit. She was enjoying my obvious discomfort.
“Don’t make fun of the dead,” she said, her lips widening into a crooked grin. Weird, but cute.
I took a chance and sat down next to her. We talked nerd stuff. She was super smart, got straight A’s in chemistry, a subject I barely survived. I sketched a few things on napkins and bragged that one day I was going to be an artist.
She said no. “Not the hang-it-in-the-Louvre kind, anyway. These are good, but it’s more like you’re trying to tell a story. You need to write, use these to help tell stories.”
“Like kiddie books? Like Where the Wild Things Are?” I asked.
“Or, who’s the guy who wrote The Giving Tree?”
I can never remember his name; the guy who looked like a bald biker dude and wrote those gross, funny poems. “You must read a lot,” I said, trying to keep the conversation moving.
“I like books more than people.” She looked at her knees.
I wanted to change the subject. “What else do you like to do?”
“Nothing.” I thought she’d frozen me out. Then, she said, “I like to learn about the secret arts.” Cool!
We drifted outside and she told she practiced Wicca. She told me how it was all about living in harmony with nature, and how she wasn’t supposed to use her special knowledge to hurt people. “I seek to honor the Triple Moon Goddess and the Horned God.”
My mouth hung open. A horny god. I had no clue. “So, what kind of spells do you do?”
“I am learning ways to build inner strength and acquire wisdom, to provide protection.”
“I’ll protect you,” I offered and leaned in to kiss her.
“No!” She pulled away abruptly, then walked off into the night. I hadn’t meant to make fun of her beliefs. I just wanted a kiss. I headed back to the house, carrying an empty beer and a ton of questions with no answers.
The next time I saw Mara was at the homecoming game. I played bass drum in the marching band, not because I was good, but because I was tall. For our half-time show we did Copacabana and Star Wars and We Are the Champions and we sucked. Afterwards, we took a break. I spotted Mara in the concessions line. It was warm for September, but she wore a dowdy brown coat with a high collar and a wide-brimmed (witch’s?) hat pulled down over her eyes.
“Hi!” I called.
She flashed a smile. “Todd. Hi!” She sounded genuinely happy to see me, and that was electric joy to my senses. For an instant her face peeked out from under the brim. I saw that one snaggle-tooth that shows when she smiles, her big, expressive brown eyes, and the fading purplish marks along her jaw, poorly hidden by makeup.
She saw the concern in my eyes and that’s all it took. It was like watching a time-stop movie of a flower blooming, except in reverse. She closed up tight and turned her face toward the person in front of her in line. For the second time, I had blown it. I was determined to do better. I realized we had something in common.
We met a few times in the cafeteria and I made a point of saying, doing, and thinking nothing offensive. (You try it!) She warmed up to me, even suggested we enroll in an art class after school. She passed me a library book on Celtic art. The triquetra drew our attention, the perfection of a triple racetrack turning back on itself into infinity. We spent the next Saturday morning painting that design on the big rock that acts like a watchman at the entryway to EGHS. (That’s East Greenwich High School. Go, Avengers! Huzzah!) It wasn’t vandalism; everyone painted the rock. New layers obliterated the ones below, though they wound up looking the same.
This was my time, the one part of my life when everything was possible. The future lay in a perfect pattern before my eyes. I owed that wonderful feeling to Mara. We were sharing a chocolate cabinet. OK, you’re probably not from Rhode Island. A cabinet is an ice cream shake. Anyway, I blurted out that I loved her. She spoke softly. “I love you.” I heard her say those words. I can still hear her saying those words, just as I can still feel the warmth of her skin and the thrill of her kisses. Yes, it happened.
Don’t ask me why, but I felt there was something only I could give to Mara, something she needed. I knew her secret; the clues were on her like cheat notes to a test. The trick was to get her to say it. Over the course of weeks, I got it out of her in bits and pieces. Her mom’s boyfriend, Brad, liked Mara as much as he liked her mom. Maybe more. And he was a mean old drunk. I asked Mara why she didn’t tell the police, or her mom. She said she thought her mom knew. That sucked. I told her (honestly) that I knew how she felt. I told her about Barry.
Uncle Barry used to visit my room when I was little. I don’t remember much, but I know what I know. He’s gone now. Moved to Oregon and died. When I heard, I wanted to laugh, but that’s not what I did. That’s the really fucked up thing about me.
Brad sounded like another Barry. I told Mara, “The difference between men and women is that a man wants to beat the shit out of his attacker.” That wasn’t completely true, but she accepted it. I sensed she appreciated my candor. A spark went off in my mind, my heart. I was her brave knight. I promised her I would avenge her; it would be my life’s quest.
She held my hand tightly. “Together,” she said.
Being the future writer, I laid out our plan. Mara was the brainy Wiccan, so she brewed up a chemical arsenal.
Obviously, we picked Halloween, or Samhain as she called it. After her mom left for work, we put on a little performance for Brad, complete with music, magic, and Mara’s special spooky punch. He fell like a lightning-struck oak. We got him into his brand-new Cordoba with its Aztec eagle hood ornament and drove to the wilds of West Warwick. My learner’s permit meant I had to have an adult with me to drive after dark. Nobody said the adult had to be conscious.
We dragged the groggy old bastard for an hour under the gibbous moon until we found our secret place; my memory did not falter. The boulder pile offered up its intimate domain. (Halloween makes me talk like this.)
I dropped Brad down the hole, into that stony interior with its rudimentary floor of mud and leaves and muskrat turds. Mara was dressed in full regalia, with a black and red hooded cloak. By lantern light, she performed an arcane ceremony, at one point holding up a wicked cool dagger with a pentagram on the hilt. “Death to lies,” she said.
I went to work painting a nice triquetra on the wall above our semi-conscious subject. The Day-Glo green came alive in the lamp’s aura. It wasn’t paint, but a special, permanent dye, Mara’s creation. I was careful to save enough. We worked together to turn Brad’s manhood into a baby gherkin.
Pointing at the symbol that stood over our work, I said, “We should get tattoos.”
“We should cut the design into our flesh.”
I looked at the blade again. “We should get tattoos,” I repeated.
We decided to do it in henna, there being no end of surprises in Mara’s little bag of tricks. To this day I can feel the spot where the tattoo was.
Brad was still in la-la land. My heart was pounding like my bass drum; I was jazzed from what we’d done. It felt … righteous. As we sat there in our improper cave, I turned to Mara. “Let’s make love,” I said.
Familiar storm clouds filled her beautiful eyes. “I … can’t.” Everything I needed to know was in those two tortured words, if I had listened, but I was young and horny and stupid. She was trying to explain her situation. Mara said she needed me to be her friend. What I heard was rejection aimed straight at me. Poisonous pride flooded my brain. I had offered her my cock like it was some great gift. She didn’t want it.
We spoke only a little as we hoisted Brad’s fat ass out of the hole and dragged him back to his car. Pain and awareness were slowly seeping back into his mind. I told her we should have used her dagger on him, but Mara stopped me. “This is enough. It’s wrong to add more evil to the world.” So, I wrote a letter and put it in his pocket, saying next time he wouldn’t find a pickle dick; he’d find a stump.
Brad moved out of her mom’s house. I hope he died, but I really don’t know. The cops never came knocking, so to hell with him.
Mara and I saw each other often. We walked through graveyards; gawped at the lizards in the pet store; went antiquing (what teenager goes antiquing?); and ate the world’s best pizza at Two Guys from Italy on Main Street. I cherish those moments, replay them often in my mind. I called it dating, but she corrected me. She said we were best friends. So, I went to a boutique in Newport called The Operculum and bought her a friendship ring: a moonstone set in tri-color gold. Witchy chic.
Anyway, try as I might, I graduated a virgin. Mara skipped commencement. We saw each other a few times that summer, but something had changed. When we kissed, she—it was— I’ve tried a million times to figure out what I could have done differently but succeeded only in making myself ache. I have to accept my past as it is. (That’s a fucking lie in case you couldn’t tell.)
She went off to college at UC Berkeley. I guess they have more Wiccan circles out there. I got into RISD (just Google it) and focused on my art and my writing. I got pretty good. I’ve written more than a dozen children’s books over the years. Danny the Lonely Blue Dragon is mine. I like talking to kids at book signings and public readings, with their folks around, of course.
I don’t have any kids of my own. Dawn, my ex, said it was best not to. “You know how you are.” I do know. At times, I’d be all over her, but mostly I wouldn’t touch her, just sit around wishing and being moody. My compass really spins! Dawn used to say her love was worth more than that… more than me. She was right.
After the split, I’d hook up with other women, single moms. It’s no use. What I carry has become what I seek. I haven’t … but I can feel the beast getting stronger. Bourbon and a pricy shrink help, but the main thing is Mara. I feel her presence warning me against passing along this dark gift. You can believe that or not; it’s what I feel.
I wrote to her about all of it. She wrote or emailed often, telling me about her life, her Wicca buddies, her three fat cats, her career in pharmaceuticals and the difficulties she had at work, plus the gory details on why her relationships crashed and burned. Some of it hurt to read, but I was glad she trusted me with her private thoughts. She signed her letters “your enchantress.” She never wrote the word “love.” That hurt, too.
One day, I found a letter in my mailbox, written in her fine hand on parchment stationery. Mara said she might be coming back to Rhode Island soon. It was like my heart stepped out of the freezer. Maybe, I could say or do or be something different this time. I wanted to be better, to be someone who could offer her a decent future. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter now. It didn’t happen.
The infinite track was always leading me here; it will go on even when I have ceased to be. All I have left is this task, then I’m done. I couldn’t be her protector, so I’ll be her avenger. Huzzah!
Witnesses say Jack, her junkie boyfriend, threw Mara against a wall so hard it caused bleeding in her brain. The prosecutor tried to pin it on him, but he was miles away when the aneurism killed her, so the jury gave him a pass.
The funeral was nice, I think. I was pretty drunk. I’m glad her mom brought Mara home and hope she doesn’t mind that I came back today and replaced the little bronze plaque with this big Celtic marker.
So, I stand here crying like I haven’t done since Barry died. I’ve got one hand on Mara’s stone, the other holds a fifth of Cuervo Gold and a plane ticket. Without her, I’m a bad thing waiting to happen; it’s only a question of who gets hurt. I choose Jack. I’ll do what I have to do and make the cops do the rest. I’ve made sure the matching triquetra headstone I ordered for myself will be ready when they bring me back here.
Mara, I can’t claim to understand your choices; I hope you can accept mine. I like to think you’re wearing the moonstone ring. Under this vacant October sky, I pronounce the two of us bound to eternity. I am a used and broken wreck of a man, but you, Mara, are beautiful. You are love-worthy.
- Details
Takao felt old and bitter. His hair was thinning, his fingers refused to straighten, and cold sober he walked like a man in a storm. Worse, he couldn’t respond to the cherry blossom scented girl at the market who smiled at him despite his rheumy eyes and blood-stained clothes. He couldn’t respond because he had to go home to a wife who squandered all her affection on three lazy sons. They wanted nothing to do with the hunt. They had big dumb dreams. Such things might well embitter a man nearing forty. Takao put all the blame instead on the dolphins.
He rose alone in the dark and chill, his family sleeping, snoring, twitching. His boatmates, whose names drifted away from him, shared no jokes or stories, just the shouted orders of the job. When Takao spoke, which was seldom, he was his own audience. As he walked down to the boats under a graying sky, he muttered a vow. “I loathe these fish. Despise them. They eat my catch and leave me nothing. I have waited through three long days of rain, but before this day ends, I will kill as many as I can.”
Takao had his reasons. The dolphins had trapped him. Taiji’s cove was the last place in Japan where he could make a decent living at what he knew how to do: whaling. It was what his father had done, and his father before him. The money was good at this time of year, better than he made fishing the rest of the time, but it was never enough.
The meat was good. His wife cut it into sashimi or boiled it and served it with shoyu to the family. He used to sell the meat to government buyers, who distributed it to schools for the children. The damned Americans put a stop to that with their “make cry” movie and their lying newspapers. There were new limits everywhere. That meant even less money for his family.
The man with the glasses was not at the docks. He was one of the few to come to the hunt this year, but he slept late like all the Europeans. He’d arrive later, after the crews returned from the day’s hunt, to see whether there were any of the valuable dolphins in the mix. The crews offered the man the best dolphin steaks, cut with the right portion of blubbery rind, but he smiled and politely refused.
A boy ran up to the docks, where Takao and the rest of the crewmen were busy securing their harpoons and other gear in the aqua interiors of their white boats. He said they’d spotted a large pod, not too far out. The dolphins were not moving. It would be easy to get around them and begin a drive back toward the holding pens. The men began cheering their luck and hastily divided themselves among the white fleet.
**
Aiko looked on but could do nothing to help the mother dolphin who was nearby, still holding her silent calf. Grandmother Shimizu conducted the pod as always, winding them in a great circle. Some of the mated groups protested, “We should go and eat fish. We’re hungry. It does no good for us to stay here for –”
Grandmother silenced their chittering with a burst of clicks and shrill notes, saying, “Sink your fat bellies! This is your day. This is what you will do. Stay with Yubi. She grieves. We grieve with her.”
The pod members forgot their protest and went back to the slow procession, moving around and around the mother and calf. All were intensely aware that Yubi might make the choice. It was not something anyone spoke of aloud. Ever. Every dolphin knew it was an option: to stop. Stop breathing. Stop moving. Stop life’s vital pulsations. To use their magnificent brains to end all suffering. To stop.
Grandmother had trained Aiko to be a healer. She concentrated for a moment then sent out high manipulator sounds to scan the baby and his mother. There was no doubt. The infant had died sometime during the night. The mother, unwilling to give her calf to the eaters who lived in the water – though that must happen eventually – stayed with the calf. She held the still form behind one pectoral fin, where the calf had suckled just hours before.
From what Aiko could tell, this death tasted of mans. Mans had poisoned the water with bits of plastic, chemicals, and awful metals. Fish swallowed everything and the dolphins gobbled the fish. The mans poison remained. In all likelihood, Yubi had delivered the mans evil with her own milk to her beloved Kentaro, dooming the calf with an act of motherly love.
Aiko thought, as she did often, of the mans. They took fish by the millions. They killed the sharks, who were such fun for the dolphins to torment, also by the millions. Their boats and their nets and their blooding sticks were everywhere.
Aiko wanted to love on the mans. After all, the pod raced out to meet the fishing boats. When they emptied their nets, they threw unwanted fish (imagine such a thing!) back into the water. Their language was a mystery, simplistic and blunt. The dolphins had taken to using the mans names that filtered into their world. They used them along with the intricate musical rhapsodies that were their natural monikers. It made them laugh. Dolphins liked to laugh. Mans were silly, but mans had the most interesting music. She liked it when the mans brought singing box machines on their machine boats. The melodies varied in form, swelling high and low. She especially loved the rare times when the boxes played orchestra or opera. Many sweet twisty sounds at once, more like a dolphin’s speech. Mans music found its true expression when sung by a dolphin. This, as she soon learned, became quite the habit.
So, dolphins and mans should be playmates. They should share the fish. Instead, she felt something else for the mans because of the things they did.
“And what do you feel, little one?” asked Grandmother, who always seemed to know Aiko’s mood, as she knew the mood of every member of the pod. Aiko tried to answer but could not find the right way to share her thoughts. Grandmother said, “You must ask yourself, ‘Would I do what they do to me?’”
“Would I kill and eat them? I don’t know. I might. Everybody eats. What do mans taste like, anyway?”
Grandmother sideswam the last part of her question, saying, “You would not do it the way they do, tearing pod mates one from another, taking dolphins into their boats, killing more than they need as I have seen them do.”
“Do you hate them, Grandmother?”
“Like you, I would like to reach into their hearts, squeeze out the part that makes them think only of themselves. Do not keep hatred in your deeps, little one. It poisons everything, and we carry enough mans poisons inside us as it is.”
Grandmother swung wide and swept in, butting her rostrum rudely into Aiko’s side. “Find a better song, little one. Find a song of love no matter what. For now, feel what you can for poor Yubi and Kentaro, mostly for Yubi.
The morning sun penetrated the dappled roof of the world, cleaving the waters with warming blades of white and gold. The light iridized the scales of red sea bream flitting in a vast school nearby. A squad of Japanese flying squid took notice, changing its course accordingly. “Yom!” sang Aiko. Both were tempting meals, but she and the other dolphins focused on their sister’s grief.
Then they heard it, a rumbling that disrespected the ocean’s natural anthems. In contrast to the deep pitches larger whales crooned to one another, this was an ugly whine utterly lacking a cetacean’s musicality or joy. It took no more than a second for the dolphins to identify the sound as a harbinger of mans. These were the machine boats that swam on the surface, some of them almost as fast as a dolphin! Aiko sang a warning note to Grandmother, who called out to the entire pod, “Stay together! The pod is life!”
Aiko wanted to dash off to the deep water, away from the cove. In that late summer and through the winter, the waters here tasted of dolphin blood. She did not like this place. The machine boats were getting closer… and there were many of them. She thought for just a second to abandon the pod, but that was madness. The pod was all. “Stay together,” she said, repeating Grandmother’s words.
The machine boats were moving in several directions now, slapping their bellies on the watery peaks. Some had already swung wide, getting between the pod and the open sea.
**
Takao cursed. He had to work twice as hard as the younger fisherman around him in order to look like he was working at all. He should be running the boat, but he was only a hooker. His hands hurt and trembled when he tried to grip anything. At least the weather was clear.
The boat captains revved the engines, frothing the water while men beat on the gunwales, filling the undersea with noise to further confuse the dolphins. Streamlined bodies stitched the waves, anxiously darting in one direction and then another. The animals were fast, but the captains knew their weakness: they tried to stay together at all times. Their group bond slowed down the entire pod, allowing the boats to drive them into the cove, where the crews could go to work.
Already the dolphins were squealing like frightened babies. They knew what was coming.
**
Dolphins don’t need anyone to tell them which direction to follow. Their movements come freely; the only paradigm is to keep the clan together. Now, the screaming of the machine boats was scrambling their ability to think, to plan the graceful arcs and playful corkscrews that made up their usual movements.
The ancient strategy was sound: stay together while facing danger. It would work against any predator. Almost any predator. “The pod is life!” Grandmother sang out. Dozens of her mates and cousins took up the refrain. Their singing was off, terribly off as fear fractured the tocs and clicks, and muddied the carefully constructed chords.
Aiko looked around. The mans were dropping nets into the water between their machine boats. Her senses detected lines pulling more netting below them, drawn by other machine boats. The nets were surrounding them and coming up from underneath, like the maw of a blue whale. Her family members were no better than hapless krill feeding this hunter’s insatiable appetite.
One of her mates, a burly male named Raiden, raced toward the shallows then abruptly reversed himself, at once using his mighty peduncle to whip his flukes up and down. By the time he passed Aiko, he was moving at full speed and headed directly at the raised perimeter. He meant to break the nets, frustrating the mans trap. If anyone could, it was Raiden! Closer and closer he got until his melon struck the mesh barrier. The nets gave slightly. Aiko could see the two nearest machine boats jerk sharply. Raiden issued a rude burst of whistles and clacks and drifted back into the main pod.
The netting remained intact… and it was creeping like a predator, driving them ever closer to shore.
More than ever, Aiko wanted to make her own run at the net, not to try to snap its nasty web but to jump over it. She could. Most of them had that kind of speed. Maybe not Grandmother, who had seen over eight hundred lunas. That was the problem. To jump the net meant leaving behind the pod, certainly leaving Grandmother and many of the younger dolphins caught in the trap. No, Aiko could not do that. “The pod is life!” she called, adding to the frantic voices around her.
Aiko looked around again. The pod was bunching in close together. Now, the machine boats had driven a second pod of moon-faced Risso’s Dolphins into the trap. The two clans were not friendly and this only made things more confusing. They were moving. The mans were forcing them through a small opening in a new net wall that surrounded a secluded cove.
It was hard for Aiko to see anyone. She tried to find Yubi and Kentaro, but they were nowhere to be seen. Without warning, a group of dolphins found themselves surrounded by yet another of the mans nets. It rose from below, rolling her among four other dolphins, including Raiden. He contorted himself wildly, crushing them in even tighter. Aiko felt her slick body pressed between Raiden and another dolphin, forcing her backwards like when she bit into an urchin and wound up squeezing the tasty guts out of her mouth. She was free of the net! Before she could sing for joy, however, she saw the others pulled upward and through the rippling surface. Their screams never stopped as they transitioned from sea to air.
Not far away, Grandmother was trying to calm her relations. She had gotten close to the white hull of one of the machine boats. Above the surface, Aiko could see the mans bodies moving menacingly against the blue vault of the Great heavens. There was a sharp motion and a missile pierced the water, creating a line of bubbles. It had a fierce looking metal tip. It was a bloodstick, and before Aiko knew what was happening, the bloodstick was buried deep in Grandmother’s side. Crimson mist formed around the wound. Even as she cried out in anguish, one pale hand dipped down from above holding a shorter blooding stick with a wicked hook at the end. Aiko tried to sing out to Grandmother. The hook found the older dolphin’s side, plunging into her, releasing a second cloud of red.
**
Takao felt the blubber hook slice deeply into the big female and lodge firmly in place. He wanted this one. She’d be good eating. It looked like a Pantropical Spotted. The man in the dark glasses usually liked to keep these alive. Too bad. There were plenty more dolphins in these waters: Risso’s, Striped, even False Killer Whales. They would capture many today to add to those in the pens. This one – this one would feed the working men and their families.
One of the captains called out, “Spread the tarps!”
Damn them! Takao thought. He looked up to see if a drone camera was overhead. He couldn’t see one, but they were close to shore. A group of outsiders up in the hills had cameras pointed at them. They were trying to shame honest fishermen with videos on their computers and phones, the kind his idiot sons stared at all day. His boat mate got a line around the dolphin’s tail. Together, they hauled the animal close to the boat and secured it there. Then they wasted a quarter- hour rigging a tarp over the work areas to block the onlookers’ view. It was awkward, working in a wetsuit, plus the extra exertion hurt his back and legs. When he thought no one was looking, Takao pulled a flask from his back pocket and took a long sip of liquor.
Never having worked a single day on the water, these outsiders demanded the hunt be “humane.” So be it. Takao grabbed a T-handled metal rod with a sharp blade on the tip. He carefully positioned himself over the wounded dolphin’s front end. Pressing the tip just behind the blowhole, Takao thrust downward into the spinal cord. “Humane!” he yelled through the tarp to the hills above the cove. Men then hammered a cork into each of the dolphin’s wounds. This was supposed to reduce the bleeding and keep the cove’s water from churning into a bright red. This was another pointless chore the owners had added on to placate fools. Stupid! They would spend the next several days driving, netting, and gaffing the dolphins. Just wait till they began flensing off the blubber and meat. The cove would sparkle under the sun like cherry wine.
**
Grandmother’s body, leaking ruddy life, was pinned against the machine boat. Her tail lolled and bobbed with the motion of the surrounding water, and it was plain Grandmother no longer controlled it. She whimpered. Wanting desperately to free her, Aiko thought to chew the bonds, but they were made of the same mans rope as the nets and would not break.
“Grandmother!” she cried.
“Poison, little one. I am full of poison.” Aiko was confused. The mans had not used poison, had they? Surely, their blooding sticks were enough.
Aiko was terrified. She flipped and swam, bumping against strange dolphins to keep out of reach of the blooding sticks but she kept coming back to Grandmother’s side. The old dolphin’s eyes would not focus, and the only sound she produced was a song of misery. After a long time, she died.
**
The man in the dark glasses checked the list on his fancy phone. His fine clothes were not stained like the other men’s. “It’s been a good haul,” he said with a smile. “My clients will be pleased with these specimens.” The man’s trucks had come and gone, taking more than two dozen of the chosen survivors off to dolphinariums around the world.
Takao stood behind his boat captain, who said, “Our numbers could be higher, if we didn’t have this fucking quota limits. We had to release a lot of good animals.” It was the same excuse his captain gave Takao when he explained why his share was smaller than last year. Takao blamed the dolphins.
“In time, when the world is distracted, things may go back to the way they were. For now, play the game,” the man in the dark glasses said, drawing good-natured laughter all around. The boat captains reported the annual take. Sometimes someone checked, mostly not. Police kept the activists back, so the men usually got an extra dolphin or two. Indeed, the butcher had not sent back his usual two pallet loads, but rather three heaping pallets. The boat crews eagerly divided the bundles of meat among themselves. It made Takao’s back hurt to think about hauling the heavy load home. Stepping in close so no cameras could see, the man carefully slipped each boat captain a thick envelope and drove off in his big dark car.
**
Aiko poked her head above the crimson swells and she watched the mans on the shore. Sadness and the taste of the cove water filled her senses. Her mind was sharp. It knew these tastes. If she concentrated, she might be able to identify which blood came from which dolphin. The thought made her heart race. She was angry.
She looked on until all the mans but one had left. He stood, taking up his bundles of dolphin meat. She tried not to allow the word to form in her mind. Tried. It burst through her barriers unbidden, complex, lovely, unbearably sad: Grandmother.
The old dolphin’s words came back to Aiko. “Do not keep hatred in your deeps… It poisons everything.”
Fine, let him eat her poisoned meat! she thought. It felt good to think of the mans feeling pain. Mans had poisoned the water. Mans had murdered her grandmother. Aiko cherished the thought that mans own mistakes would…
Aiko’s insides went cold. This was the old dolphin’s warning. This was what Grandmother was saying.
At once, Aiko swam closer to where the lone mans was standing and called out. “Poison! Danger! Warn others! Not yom! Bad!” He heard her. Their eyes made contact, mans to dolphin and back. In that moment, she could almost sense his thoughts.
Yubi’s head popped up a short distance away. Her calf was nowhere to be seen. Yubi heard Aiko’s warning cries, but did not join in.
At last, the mans reacted. He dropped his wet bundles and scraped up a fist full of jagged stones, white but stained pink. These, he threw viciously towards Aiko. Most plunked harmlessly into the water, though one bounced painfully off the young dolphin’s melon.
Aiko and Yubi ducked under the surface and swam out of the cove.
**
“Hit you! Ha! Next fall, I will put my hook in you and eat you up!” Takao laughed loudly. With a grubby hand, he pulled the flask from his back pocket and swallowed the final drops inside. It dulled the pain in his hands and back. He picked up his heavy bundles again, feeling unsteady on his feet.
As walked toward home, he looked out at the sun settling into the red waters. The color would fade to blue as it did every spring after the hunt. He’d be back next time. For now, he had a little money. Maybe he could save up and buy his own boat one day. Then he could smile back at the cherry blossom scented girl at the market. At least he had good dolphin meat to feed his wife and sons. They wasted their time playing computer games and dreaming of expensive schools. Something was wrong with those boys. They were dumb. No matter. Let them smell the cherry blossoms of their free spring. When winter came, he would bring them here to the shore. They would work the cove, just as Takao and his father had done, and his father before him.
If you found this story moving, please check out Come the Eventide by Chris Riker -
https://chrisrikerauthor.com/news/novels/a-free-sample-and-a-story-unto-itself
- Details