Ensemble
Thirteen Stories
by S. P. Elledge
Ensemble: Thirteen Short Stories
By S. P. Elledge
Copyright 2016 S. P. Elledge
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because of G. A. Elledge
Table of Contents
Mummified Couple Found in Peatbog
Wordblind
Mona and the Witchdoctor
After Ovid
Frog Baby
The Last Day of June (The Old Ones) Quintana Roo
from Impossible Musics I: The Omniphonium
Kisses
A Fever of Unknown Origin
Lazarus Risen
Game Over
The Flight
Mummified Couple Found in Peat Bog
How could we forget the day we died? It was after the first blush of autumn, on a day that was still and warm—there was no wind; we remember there was no wind. The cloudless sky shone more white than blue, and the cidery scent of fallen apples hung in the air. On the way to our grave we saw a herd of elk grazing peacefully in a meadow. We walked on.
This much is true: our fellow villagers had led us to this lonely place. Here they would judge and then strangle us. They wanted us, this time, to sleep together forever. First our foreheads were branded with iron and ashes; next our clothes stripped from us. We were ashamed. Our children and neighbors looked on. The ones we had married turned their backs. A rope was wound around my neck, then his, and pulled. Our last breaths caught in our throats. Life... life lost us so easily. We fell staring into the sky. Above a raven was poised motionless on the face of the sun, as if the world had stopped.
After the dust blinded us the raven spoke from afar, and it said: Wait. We lay beside one another in the grave they had dug for us, his hand in mine. Soon the earth held us so heavy we could not move even if we had been able. With their picks and shovels our friends flattened the mound above us. Then wordlessly they left. We were alone.
The earth at first was cold, damp, bitter in our mouths. Even so we knew we were next to each other; our souls remained with us. Our own friends had executed us, but we were together in death. For a while we listened patiently for our hearts to begin beating again, as if death, like an illness, would come and go. But our hearts remained silent, and death never left us.
Although we could not tell days, seasons, or years, time did pass, and in time we sank deeper into the softening soil, our bodies pressing closer together. Gradually we became aware that tainted water had seeped over us, and somehow our bodies were kept whole. We did not decay. Instead we seemed to grow stronger as we drank this foul water. Our arms felt powerful enough to burst through earth and reach sky. Our brains, our desire remained intact. Perhaps soon we would throw back the sod like a blanket and rise from our bed. But we remembered what the raven had said. We would wait.
More water came, and it did not go away. We were aware of being at the bottom of a shallow lake. The lake was our fingers, ears, mouth: We felt, heard, and tasted all that which entered, drowned, and did not leave. When a flock of geese landed on the water above, our empty veins seemed to rush with blood.
The idea came to us that there might yet be a child growing within my body. For was it not possible that, although we were dead, our child was alive? When she had grown large and strong enough she would burst forth from our tomb, a miracle to the villagers we had left behind —our gentle vengeance. Nothing stirred within me, however; I realized my womb was barren, and our sleep went on.
We slept, if it was indeed sleep, endlessly, never moving, never changing. And what of the world above? We wondered if the ones we had married ever forgave us, or if our children were able to forget. What happened to them all—whom did they come to love, and when did they too die? But after many centuries their names and faces blurred, faded, and we could not remember. We longed only for the world we had loved apart, yet together: There had been blue flax flowers in the meadow above the pines, the chiming of goat-bells below. There had been windswept fjords and singing caverns along the sea, and the midsummer sun which never left its watch over the earth, just as now we never left one another.
A thousand other things we recalled too and missed: the linden bowing in the wind, the willows, the waterfalls we bathed under, the smooth stones in a brook, the lark at daybreak, food we shared, thunderstorms we ran from, stags locking antlers in the woods... We used to pull burrs from each other’s hair and eat berries from out of our cupped palms. When it grew hot among the pines, we cooled by kisses placed on eyelids and ears. When we were shivering on the cliff sides we huddled under one fur. How we missed everything! Even the flies which alighted on our bodies afterward, when we rolled apart and looked down at the pastures and their flocks.
We dreamed of our bodies, of their moist, mossy scent, of the way we tasted, of the veins and muscles and bones we could trace under the skin, of the ways we had slowly twined arms and legs like two old trees which have grown around one another. We had burned into each other with such intensity it sometimes seemed we would forge into one body, one mind.
If ever we were to return the best world to find would be this world we had lost, a world that like us had changed very little. In the world we returned to, however, there would no longer be anyone left to accuse, lie, or keep us apart. There would be no cruelty, no sadness. There would be only us and us only.
The waters of the lake receded, and what we knew to be peat began to form around us, pressing us closer still. Like a bridegroom drawing his bride down for a longer, firmer embrace the peat drew us deeper into the earth and held us there. Roots twisted around us, tying knots in our fingers and hair. Animals burrowed alongside us, licked our faces, and moved on. Otherwise, nothing touched or disturbed us. The peat kept us safe for eternity. We were its secret, like pearls within shells from the sea or crystals inside rocks from the mountains.
After we had waited until we no longer thought or dreamed of anything but white, empty sky boots sounded over our heads and shovels grunted. We awoke. They had come to release us!
We broke into the world again, facing the same sky we had always known. But here were strange new men, and they dropped to their knees when they saw us. Though we were still naked we were no longer ashamed. We had lasted when all else, we knew now, would be changed or gone forever. The field around us was burning, and through the smoke we saw a raven rising with the smoke until it disappeared.
Other men came, whispering in an odd language, as if they did not want to wake us. These men were as gentle with us as mothers washing their newborn children. Soft brushes caressed our faces, and they scrubbed us all over, finding new places to touch and examine like inexperienced lovers. They scraped the mud out of our mouths and combed the dirt from our hair. We were lifted up and carried away, hands still tightly clasped.
Soon we were left in a cool quiet room under a dim white sun. They circled the table we lay upon, pointing and prodding and intoning words like holy men in a ceremony. Our stomachs were opened, our last meals examined, our hearts and livers and the rest cut out. Then we were sewn and sealed up again. Something which stung was painted over our bodies. And lastly, with very delicate tools, they pried our fingers apart and we were separated. Once more we were swaddled and carried away, and this time placed in narrow, padded boxes. There was darkness, and then we were removed to a larger, brighter room.
Now I lie in my cold coffin and he lies in his across the room. Many people come to see us, some to gasp or laugh; others refuse to lo
ok. We will last forever, this we understand. We will never crumble into dust. But never again shall we touch one another.
Wordblind
The god of the giant silvery oak at the edge of Mar’s garden, the god of misshapen and hapless Jack trapped inside his box until you crank the handle just right, the god of the church clock down the hill which pronounces one of its twelve names every hour, the god of the toads and snails and caterpillars and other tiny beings with monstrous faces in Mar’s garden, the musty god who creaks inside Far’s carefully locked desk drawers, the indecisive god up in the sky who sometimes looks like a pinkish cloud and sometimes like a pearly mist, the god of shoes—the ones that hurt you and the ones that don’t, the god who muddies up paint-boxes, the gods of wind and earaches, the god of rainy days indoors, the god of cracks in the ceiling, the whispering gods who gather only behind closed doors, the gods in Mar’s unlocked jewelry case with their glittery eyes, the gods under the bed and in the closet and even the silly one who tickles ears from within feather pillows, the gods for everything which has no real name, these gods have all agreed:
Don’t tell!
Tell what? Nothing! And that is the secret Mar and Far want so badly to know—that one tells nothing because there is nothing to tell. No words could tell. One could hold one’s breath forever and still keep