Flash Fiction Friday

Mama handed me a book with my name etched on the front cover.  The cover was willow bark, not unlike the hat she had placed back on her head. “It’s all here, your life until now.” 

I took the book heavy in my hands from the wood cover, no doubt.

I opened it randomly to the middle, and read how I’d tripped over the log that Ethan had jumped over.  A couple of pages later, I read about Lucy kissing Ethan in front of me and how I’d gone up, pulled him out of her arms, and kissed him too. The remembering was painful. I scanned down the page to where she’d led us to the bed and he’d kicked me over the edge. I looked at the page more closely. It even had my last thought from that day:  “Why am I still here?”  

I flipped all the way to the back of the book. Empty.  I went through the pages until I found the last written thing.  He thought the book was heavy from the wood cover and started reading.

I set it down and knelt before it. The writing was scratching itself across the page. He placed the book on the ground, knelt and turned to the last written page.

“Mama… what?”  The book scratched out what I’d said.

Even as she knelt beside me, a hand on my shoulder, I knew what was going to happen. It was etched in front of my eyes. The book wrote, she closed the cover as she closed the cover.

“This book is for remembering where you came from, son. They have driven people crazy, because they want to know where they are going. But it only writes this minute-by-minute stuff.  So don’t look forward, only look back.  Looking back is what helps us discover how to be where we are now.  You have much growing and learning to do.”

Tears rushed down my face though I tried to hold them back. “I’m not sure I can handle all this.  I’m full of questions now. Why did Jeb feel so perfect and connected to me? Why did Sunder wait until now to get me? Why did mama run away the first time and die the second?  What happened to Pops?  Where is my sister? What is this place called? And why am I so f’ing special?”  

Mama patted my shoulder and the tears stopped. She laid her cloak upon my shoulders, a blanket of peace under it, she wore a grey shift and a medallion of wire wrapping red and blue gems.  It looked like something I’d made.  

She smiled, holding it up. “This is not something you made, though I’m so happy your Mama taught you this skill. This has been handed down from my Mama, and her Mama before her.”        

Then her voice wavered.  “Soon it will be yours.”

“Why?”  

Mama pulled me onto the sofa, and we cuddled in the warmth and softness of the furniture.  “I’ll tell you the story child. It’s a long one, and shared in homes all over the world, usually at the birth of a new child.  Since you are here, you are, in essence, birthed to us this day.”  

She took a deep breath.  “In Ireland, ages and ages ago, there was a woman who watched over all. She cared for all. If anything needed to be decided, the townspeople would go to her.  She was called the Mother of the Glenn, and life was peaceful in her presence.  

Her husband was the Father of the Meadow, and her children called each other Sister and Brother, though they had names that only the family knew.  This family and others prospered, until war came, and others wanted her powers, her nature, her very essence.” She reached for a small leather-bound book. It had been etched with the name Orla Ní Dhubhghaill on top. Below that it had the name “Mama Glenn” sewn in. 

“Over time, we found each other. We created our own families, our own lives.  Our names changed. Our lives did, too, and we ended up in a place in this world where it was safe to reside.  Mother of the Glenn became Mama Glenn; it was easier to say. I am the last, but I am not the only one.  I am the one in this neck of the woods, but I am not long for this world, and Fathers, who writes the histories and tells the tales, wrote that you would be important, so we bade Sister goodbye.” She placed the small leather book on my knee.

“It may be that you changed homes, changed lifestyles…” Mama Glenn drifted off, but her voice encouraged me to fill in what she didn’t know.

I nodded.  “We did move to the wealthier side of town.  It’s where I met Eth…” I let his name dribble out of my mouth, not finishing the entirety of it. “I…  but wait. This sounds like a fairy tale.”

She laughed again. “Oh, we have fairies, too. We are everything you’ve ever dreamed or fantasized about.  Everything you ever wished was true, we are. We are myth and legend, just told differently. They think they know the truth, the scholars who write of us, and every now and again we let one or more of us out into the world to keep the stories alive in people’s minds. But we are more than what they think.”

The flood of information set me reeling. It was almost too much to take in, and I sat on her lap with it, absorbing it like a dry and thirsty sponge absorbs the rain.

Her arm settled behind my shoulders and her other arm snaked under my knees. “Be ready, son. It’s time for you to meet us – not all of us, but it’s time.”  

On the far side of the room, a door creaked open. A trickle, then a river of folk entered the room, and before I could stand to meet them, Mama Glenn rose. She was small and had seemed frail, but her arms were like iron bars as she held me above her head. 

Startled, I grabbed at her fingers where they laced around my knee. “Hold still, son. It’s been told – you’ll be down soon enough.”

Still tense, I let go her hand and looked at the crowd filling the room front to back and wall to wall. So many people – or were they people? In the dimness, I couldn’t be sure.

“Come, my children. Come see him,” her voice rang out, stronger than I’d thought possible. The people around us murmured acknowledgement, quiet whispers of affirmation. 

She continued holding me up for several long, long seconds before setting me on my feet before the crowd. As they gathered around us, I was nudged toward the center of the room, where a cleared space had – magically? – appeared. Through the crush of bodies, I could see a redheaded boy jumping in the back of the crowd, his head appearing and disappearing, bouncing like a ball, backlit through the open doorway.

At a signal I couldn’t see or sense, the crowd fell silent. How they did it I don’t know, but the silence felt like a living thing in this room full to its brim with people. It pressed against me like a blanket, and tears stung my eyes. 

Mama cleared her throat and her voice raised in a call that shook the room. “I present to you Eoghan mac Carthaigh, now come home to us.  Welcome him, but don’t crowd him – we don’t know what he can do.”  

There was a beat, and then she chuckled. The tension swept out of the room as they chuckled with her. Then another beat, as though all in the room had taken in one large breath together, and the crowd spoke with one voice. “Welcome home, Eoghan mac Carthaigh!”

I can tell you the words, but I can’t describe the sound of them speaking all at once like that. It wasn’t a cheer and it wasn’t a hurrah. It was… almost solemn, but with an undercurrent of relief flowing through it. Expectation twisted through me, but I had no idea what I was expecting – or what they expected of me.

And then they touched me. 

The stinging in my eyes opened into a river of unexpected tears as they did, murmuring “Eoghan,” “young master,” “good to have you home.” Rough, callused hands touched me. Soft, springy, never-touched-a-hard-thing-in-their-life-before hands brushed me. Stumps of arms, and hands missing fingers, lay reverent on my skin. The paws of a dog or two entered my hand as if to “shake,” a wolf’s mossy pelt brushed against my leg, and a horse-faced man bent his forehead to my knuckles, nearly weeping. There were more bird people like Sunder and others whom I couldn’t even fathom what they were. But despite this tide of folk around me, I was never afraid. Everyone was so gentle and welcoming, caring and loving, that fear became impossible.

Through it all, Mama stood behind and beside me. She’d wrapped her cloak around those weak-yet-strong shoulders, her aged eyes watering again. Occasionally she’d touch one of the folk, murmuring something in a language I didn’t know, but it didn’t seem to matter that I didn’t. 

The flow of people had moved across the room, and I realized the crowd was getting smaller, when I finally saw the redhead again. He approached me with studied elegance, far more impressive than when I’d seen him at the back of that massive crowd. He was taller than I’d imagined, and older than he’d looked. 

Then I saw that his hair wasn’t red. It was covered in mud.  He was regal and elegant, and he was covered in mud. I tried to make sense of it and failed, wanting to laugh at the absurdity of it all, but I was caught in the solemnity of the moment like a fly trapped in amber. 

He knelt at my feet.  I reached out to him, surprised, to raise him up, but he motioned my hand away. He wouldn’t rise, so I knelt before him instead. 

Our eyes locked.  He reached his hand out to my face, his fingers tracing the scar I’d forgot on my chin, fingertips tracing a feather’s touch across my lips.  I opened my mouth to ask why he’d knelt, but his voice overrode my stammer.

“I am sorry, Eoghan. I am Jeb. It is so good to finally meet you.  I wish I could have dressed up for this occasion, but I was pulling our cow out of the mud in back.  She got the better of me, so I finally gave up.”

Occasion? What occasion? Being flung into a fairytale? Being touched by people who… might not be people? Being caressed by you with a lover’s touch? The moment I saw you, I fell for you like a sudden rain falling from a clear blue sky.

The undeniable touch of destiny. This man – Jeb – brought it to me. 

Then he dropped his hands from my lips. “I’d love to stay and chat, but I have a cow to save.” He clasped my hands in his and we rose in a single motion. 

It was as though I knew everything about him. I could see how he’d fit into my life, how our bodies could grow old together, could be… held together.  I never felt anything like that for Lucy or Ethan. 

Who is Lucy? Who is Ethan? Fading from my memory just as I’d faded from theirs.

And then he was gone, his fingertips lingering on my lips.  I turned and no one was left in the room, just Mama Glenn and me. Even Sunder was gone.

Rain rattles against the high windows, and in the distance heavy thunder rolls. But I pay it no mind. Tonight I’m sworn to vengeance.

This night, I have paper. Graphs and diagrams are all laid out before me.  I have their work schedules, pictures of their cars and smiling faces, and I wonder if they were ever this happy with me in their lives.  

Lucy was always so worried what other people would think if they saw Ethan and me out doing things together – like they might think that two old school friends were still buddies? I asked her once.  But she couldn’t get past the fact that back at the house, the three of us shared a bed.  She agreed to our three-ways so she could have us, but every time I tried to explain that it was perfectly natural to love more than one person, she’d tilt her head like my old hound dog. I half expected her tongue to slide out of her mouth and drip all over the floor.  

To my right, I see the altar Mama used all those years ago. Walking to it, I find myself making an offering of a couple of bracelets and some found-object wire pieces I’d made recently for Ethan, forgetting that he didn’t live with me any more.  I sit there, rocking in place, remembering the chants my Mama used to sing as Fathers and I would carve things out of hard, old stone and soft, new wood.  Some of the ancient words come back to my lips and tears drip down my face.  

A tap-tapping brings me out of my reverie.  I look over my shoulder and freeze.

Outside the high basement window crouches a bird, or a man…? I’m not sure which. There are feathers and leaves and a muddy grey beard, shouting at me.  The tapping grows louder and more insistent. I shake my head, frozen in place, noticing his rugged, chiseled features, that strong nose, that black red-streaked hair, and the feathers, so many feathers surrounding his face.

He’s screaming at me, but I can barely hear the words.  He’s motioning for me to open the window, but I’m lost in those midnight blue eyes.

The sound of glass breaking brings me to my feet.  “What are you doing?” we shout at the same time.  Then he’s reaching down to grab at me.  I scramble away, shaking my head.

“You need to get out! A storm’s coming and this place won’t be safe for you!  I vowed to protect you, and Mama Glenn will have my hide if you’re found floating in this basement!  Now come out here, or let me in.”

I hear the words, but I can’t believe it.  I haven’t heard her name in years.

I am still thinking Mama Glenn – or did I dream it? when water begins pouring through the broken window. “Come on,” he yells. “It’s going to flood!”

I shake away the thought, and shout back, “You broke my window! Of course the basement’s going to flood!” I glare up at him. “What are you, stupid?”

“Get that ladder over there and come up this way. Your house is already flooding, and you can’t come up the stairs.”

I glance at the door – water is seeping under it.

Suddenly, doing what he says seems like a really good idea. I look around wildly and see the old willow ladder Fathers had made the year he died.  “Fathers had it in a book. He told me to make it this year. Why? It was told, son. Sometimes, you just do what is told. You’ll learn someday.”

I reach for the ladder, lean it into the waterfall pouring through the window, and start to climb. As I get closer, I see that the man has a mantle of black feathers around his neck. “Guard your eyes,” he orders, and without thinking, I turn away and raise my arm to shield my face. More glass breaks, and when I look up again he’s cleared the window frame. “OK, come on!”

Getting through is harder than it looks. He didn’t get all the glass, and I leave skin behind. As he drags me to my feet in shin-deep water, I get a better look at him.

“Who are you? What are you doing here? And…what’s with this getup?”  I point at the feathers, glimmering with drops of rain like dew on a leaf.

He laughs and walks me away from the window. “They told you nothing?  Oh, Sister… Well, this is going to be tough.  I’ll let Mama Glenn tell you herself.  Now come on.”  

I look over my shoulder. Does he realize I’ll have to leave everything I’ve been planning? Then I realize, Well, what do I have to lose?

What do I have to lose?  I can sit here in my misery, or go to jail for murdering my two ex-lovers, who had decided being with each other was far better than ever being with me.  Or both.

Or, maybe, I can follow him.

Are they worth drowning for?  Is he worth dying for? 

Haven’t you already made your choice?

I stand stock-still in the rain and the water, the past and the future warring in my mind. 

With them, I always felt so left out, so not wanted. But now I feel wanted. It makes no sense.  One minute I’m planning their deaths, the next I’m climbing up a ladder, through a little broken window and into the arms of a bird-man.  If I’d wanted to become a murderer, wouldn’t I just stay at the bottom rung?

I follow him.

He wasn’t lying – the storm is furious: rain blowing, wind raging, trees bowing over to the passing of the storm gods. Water clamors all about us, into the lake around our legs and into my face as I look up. 

He is taller than I’d first imagined.  He towers over me, seven feet or more.  I feel small, and weak, and suddenly helpless, like the ten-year-old I had been when I moved into this house.

“I am Sunder, your… uncle, for want of a better word, nephew.  Sister didn’t tell you much, so… I’m sorry I’m going to have to do this.”  

“Do wha-” I start to say, and then a sharp pain flares and everything goes black.

****

Awareness returns slowly. It’s hot, so hot, and the back of my head hurts. I drag my eyes open. Except for one corner, the room is dark, smelling of dirt and moss and moisture. I roll over toward that corner, and a fire dancing in red embers in an iron pot-bellied stove reminds me of the one Mama used to sing about.  My skin tingles, my head throbs, and I groan while thinking, Sunder? Did he hit me?

The deep chuckle is near my ear. “Yes… because you couldn’t get here otherwise.”

The first time I tasted desire, I was standing in the back corner of the used bookstores on Chartres in New Orleans. That desire was more than I could imagine, it was as though I were in a dream. I saw my hand reach for the bumpy leather binding of the book I had stumbled upon. I felt the soft cordovan binding with the tip of my index finger, sliding along the spine like I would a lover.
I pulled back as though I were burned, but I wanted more. My hand clenched and I licked my dry lips, before biting my bottom lip. The spine was flush with the other books, there wasn’t an edge to grab. If the book wouldn’t come to me, I’d have to go after it. On the left side, I pulled a useless too thick medieval history book, a book on exercise and a hardback copy of Gone with the Wind. The exercise book, I slid on the shelf beneath.
The four fingers of my right hand explored the front cover, bumps, a face, and a… “Ow.” I yanked my hand back to see the blood bubbling out of my middle finger. One step to the right and I glanced the oxblood cover; the shadowy face had two metal teeth in the mouth.
My need was growing and I wanted the book, I pulled three more from the other side of the tome. A biography of a singer that didn’t belong in this section and a civil war book. A voice in my head told me to be calm, not to ask for help or to yell that there is a thing called organization, but even I knew used book stores never excelled at anything close to a system, for all I knew this was the shelf of red books.
The tome remained fixed in its spot, the removal of four or five books on each side would have made even a thick paperback slide over on its pages. This book stood tall and proud. I licked my lips again and leaned in to snap a picture of the cover and then leaned the other way to snap a picture of the back.
I felt hot breath on my neck just as I slid the phone back in my pocket. “Jamie Jones, you are the slowest hunter ever.” His lips were pressed against my left ear, his breath wafted over and smelled of chicory coffee and powdered sugar.
“Ray, no. I… stop, the blood.” Thus, began our adventure together. He always grabbing and me investigating.
I watched as he brought the book close to his face, as his eyes glanced over the book, and he shook his head. “Is this your blood Jamie Jones?” He turned to look at me with disappointment on his face. Or was that fear.
“How was I to know it would have teeth on it?”
“What kind of investigator are you?” He held the spine out to my face. “What does that say?”
“My Latin is rusty, but I think it says Pro studiis hominum, Ray.”
“Right and what I remember from class… its Human tastes?”
“The Tastes of Men.” I said biting my bottom lip.
“Well, it got a taste of you my friend. Maybe it won’t be anything serious.”
“I’m keeping a tally and that’s the tenth lie you’ve told me, Ray.”
His laughter echoed around the bookstore. “Theodore said the book was from the 1800’s, I can’t imagine it being too dangerous.”
“Eleventh.” I pulled out the notebook where I listed what Theodore Wattingham told us about the books he had been seeking. This had the same binding that he’d requested, but the name isn’t one of the eight he listed. “This isn’t on the list, maybe it’s just a journal.”
His heavy hand dropped on my shoulder and that laughter echoed around me once more. “My dear Jamie Jones, you are an optimist. This could just as well be a chef’s grimoire or a witches Book of Shadows.”
“Are you going to open it or just make me beg?” I looked up into his eyes, a look I soon regretted.
This time there was no laughter, but his lips turned up into a grin, his head tilted and he winked. Then he reached across the cover to pull open the front board. The creak reminded me of a long-closed door, or floor board on a much-used stairwell. My eyes copied his as we squinted at the sound.
I glimpsed the cover page, it was hand written in a dark brown ink. “At least it’s not written in blood, it’s brown.” I pointed.
His sigh was one of the things I hated most about him, it contained a sense of superiority. “Did you not learn anything at school?”
“What do you mean, I graduated with honors.”
“But, did you just memorize things or did you study them and ingest them?” He looked down on the page and he nodded a quick jump of his head. “This is dried blood, it dries into a deep dark brown, sometimes if it’s very old it turns black.”
“Ray, I want to say twelfth, that can’t be blood. Maybe it’s chocolate.” I laughed a laugh that even I didn’t believe. That’s the twelfth lie you’ve told yourself Jamie Jones.
“It is blood and below the title page, it’s written in English, poorly spelled English. That what meester Tayler eatz.”
“Still doesn’t mean anything, the teeth on the book could just be an embellishment.”
“Now, Jamie Jones you are lying to yourself.”
“There aren’t vampires, any more than there are ghosts.” I laughed and nudged his finger with my own. “Ow. A Paper cut?”
“This book wants you. That’s two tastes, maybe it’s thirst is slaked?” He smirked.
“No such thing. Twelfth.”
The book didn’t contain recipes, it contained names, dates, times and locations. The pages were decorated like a well-traveled journal, with drawings of things perhaps seen, or places found. Page one had a couple French names. With gold leafed roses and leaves. I was lying to myself when I said the dates had to be faked.

Martinus fili Rheci         1239        Siting near the fountain
Theobald de Brecons    1244        Repairing the wall

Page three had German names with drawings of a castle

Ulrich Bader                     1497        Butchering the animals
Wolfgang Fogler              1497        Stoking the fires 
Gabriell Pess                     1497        Farmer

I turned away.
“Don’t you want to see more Jamie Jones?”
“No… yes, how many pages are there in the book?”
“It looks to be only about twenty pages of writing; all the other pages just have pictures or other artwork. In the middle there are words cut out of books, pasted with definitions written below.”
Before Jamie could close his eyes, Ray stood before him, look the author learned how to write. Mr. Taylor’s delectables, or what he enjoys late at night.
“Delectables isn’t a word, he didn’t learn.”
“No, you are right, the next page he changed it to the men that Mr. Taylor bites before bed.”
“It doesn’t say that.” I looked into those dark cerulean eyes, pleading.
He nodded his head and turned the pages for me to see.
I grabbed it and the pages turned, I screamed and dropped the book.
“What, what is it Jamie Jones.”
“I saw my name.” I backed up against the books. No one came after my scream, maybe we were too far back in the corner, maybe Mr. Taylor was already here or the unnamed calligrapher of the book.
“You didn’t, this is your thirteenth lie. I’ve been keeping track too, you know.” Ray knelt in front of the book and went through the pages. He gulped and shook his head, feigning a laugh. “It’s not your name it was from the 1950’s and it said James Edward.”
I knelt in front of Ray Drown, placed my quivering hand on his shoulder. “That is my name and that’s your thirteenth lie. Open the book.”

It was there in the same script.

James Edward Jones      2018        Looking at books in New Orleans