The Gift of the Unborn

On the brink of some undefinable moment, on the banks of the Outer Curl, Neu Scoutsland, before a small audience of villagers, Hugh Reãl commanded his rare & beautiful calf to once again perform its magical act; and, as all subservient creatures must when they are instructed by invocations & demands, the calf obliged.

The calf then released from within itself a tiny pinkish embryo, which was made amber by the sun passing through its translucent skin. The embryo’s veins wound about the breadth of its body. Its ear-holes were completely undeveloped clumps of skin & its unfinished organs were on full display through its paper thin dermis.

Enhancing the strangeness of the moment, the embryo appeared to take a measured pause in an effort to survey the outside world with its goop-shut eyes, & then effortlessly proceeded to dance on the wire which had been placed by its enthusiastic commander, on two wooden spikes, each lodged into the mud at an arbitrary distance apart in order to facilitate the eerie & baffling performance.

The small group of onlookers faithfully represented the demography of this backwoods village of the Outer Curl, old and young alike, hard-working, but not quite sure for what, trailing & emanating weeks of caked on stink for their efforts, and mostly dull of mind.

The villagers had gathered by the bellflower patch just outside of the village, in the still-pink morning, at the behest of Hugh Reãl’s oddly stated sign. The bellflower patch, which was at present mostly mud-soup after a week of torrentials & tempests, acted as the grand stage for the bewitching performance, as the yellow-pink horizon radiated upon the shards and slivers of purple or blue bellflower jutting up from the muddy earth about one's toes.

The aforementioned sign, which was as flimsy as Hugh Reãl’s self-awareness, and which protruded out from the no-less-muddy main road, of which it could be said that it hadn’t hosted the feet of a stranger in the direction of the bellflower patch in a great deal of time, read: “Me tiny dancing beast, see’s it!”

Though the sign was vague, its alluring call represented the most meaningful respite for the villagers from their unending weeks of trudging drudgery; and so when Hugh Reãl heard the audible gasps of amazement, or disgust, or perhaps a combination of both, at the initial sight of his featured act, his mind catapulted into undetectably quick but no less meaningful machinations of fantasy about the honors & grandeur & riches which certainly would ensue.

For their part, the crowd of villagers was still enraptured by this most unique spectacle, a small pink calf embryo deftly moving about a razor thin wire. Their amazed silence seemed interminable & thick in the morning air; perhaps even heavier than the quantity of mud, which, if the villagers were not careful enough to jostle once in a while, would lock them in the place where they stood by the slow reliable baking of the morning sun.

“Yes, this time would be different!” thought Hugh Reãl, as his dark eyes darted from villager to villager, each one looking more perplexed than the last. The tall dark stranger, and apparent commander of the astonishing display, found himself impatiently awaiting for the villagers to erupt in uniform ovation; which would surely be followed shortly thereafter by the retrieval of wheelbarrows full of their most precious stones. Hugh Reãl, however, had to quickly admit to himself that the wide-eyes & gaped mouths of the totality of stolid faces before him seemed rather to represent a single wave of silent bewilderment which had afflicted them all.

“Simpletons! Even if these bird-brains had the capability to recognize anything precious which sparkled before them they probably couldn’t manage to get their wheelbarrows through the mud-soaked roads anyway. Fattish lazy arsh’holes…” thought Hugh Reãl neurotically.

The villagers watched, transfixed as the embryo, all veins and sightless, raised one small translucent hoof up toward heaven, as if coaxing the air above its head, & in so doing creating the appearance of a small pink demon weaving a majestic releve across thin air. As Hugh Reãl watched the embryo dance, he remarked internally, & with great pride, that such skill might only be rivaled by the great one, Agrippina Vaganova. He recalled his delight in seeing her as the Goddess Niriti in Petipa's grand ballet The Talisman.

Upon completion of this vertiginous display the embryo effortlessly returned to the source from whence it came, to no apparent discomfort of itself or the strangely sparkly eyed calf which sheltered it from the penetrating rays of the sun. Though admittedly none of the awed spectators could place where the dancing embryo had originated; only that it seemed to emerge from somewhere about the tail-end of the calf's earth-pressed stomach, this finer point would be lost in the melee which ensued.

Eyes now menacingly wide & bright, and with a grin which, had it not been constrained by the biological limits of his face might have traversed the breadth of the entire mud-soaked village; Hugh Reãl tipped his cap, genuflected insincerely and not without some disdain, then quickly sprang up high into the air like a frightened cat and in so doing catapulted a small projectile of brown sludge into the eye of a hefty village-woman who received the indignity with the same quiet resignation which guided the previous years of her life. Now back on terra-firma with his hands high and vibrating in the warm wet air, Hugh Reãl sang out the all-important words signifying the completion of the spectacle, and, what he hoped would trigger the frenzied calls for wheelbarrows full of gems to be brought at once, “TA-DA!”

The Devil's Work

Though it had felt eternal for most who spectated, the performance had indeed only lasted nine seconds in total; and so it had the effect that those who witnessed the pink blob and its alluring dance could not even be quite sure what they had witnessed, or if they had in fact seen anything at all. The astonishment and blanket of slow blinking silence began to give way to feelings of unsettledness & quickly thereafter concerns of irreversible and permanent impurity.

It was then that from within the small crowd of beguiled onlookers, Flossie Escobar, the largest and most square-faced among the villagers, cut the silence with a pointed finger & an immense screech, “Wiiiiiitchcraaaaaft!” Again Flossie yelled, “dis be duh devil's work!” With the power of his community standing behind him, Flossie’s powerful & confident screeching infected the villagers, who were mostly still in a stupor & without any reference for what they had just witnessed and therefore how they should react.

Hugh Reãl’s mile-long smile snapped back like a rubber-band, all the way back from the rocky cliff-edges of the Outer Curl, and painfully rejoined his face, which now began to more closely resemble the uncertain faces of the village simpletons which stood before him and his defiantly relaxed calf.

Hugh Reãl wondered if perhaps the intended flavor of the performance had not been adequately conveyed. Perhaps the inclusion of his own personal flare at the end of the performance was to blame for the apparent disconnect between the special dancing embryo and the audience he intended to dazzle into a frenzy of praise and excitement?

“Am I the fool...?” Hugh Reãl wondered. He looked around. “No,” he quickly concluded. “Might it have been the tip of my hat...hmmm...the ‘ta-da!’ might have come across a bit self-congratulatory,” Hugh Reãl plainly noted.

Hugh Reãl’s internal dialectic was shattered by Flossie Escobar's resounding call to “apprehend the witch!” Hugh Reãl wasn’t sure if Flossie Escobar was referring to him or his companion performers, but concluded that they all might be best served by fleeing the situation at once and avoiding the small but fuming mob so as to be able to wait until a more sure moment in order to reconsider how to improve the act to make it more palatable for the apparently dim masses of the Outer Curl.

With the embryo long since secured in the homely depths of his sparkly-eyed calf, Hugh Reãl trilled out an odd bird-like sound, which the calf appeared to know well as it leapt to attention, and they began to make their escape from the bellflower patch across the goopy mineral-rich terrain.

Perhaps partly from frustration or bitterness, as the embryonic dance was, in Hugh Reãl’s estimation, “the best one he’d ever seen;” before completing the turn northward to make his escape up the hillside, Hugh Reãl called out to the crowd, in what can only be labeled a miscalculation, shouting “ye’ lazy devotees, ye’ who pray at the altar of normal & usual, ye’ may have been confused by the otherworldly marvel which dazzled yurn’ simplest of stink-fil’d eye-holes, ok...fine, but surely, ye’ is too fattish, too slow, ayn too stoooooooopid (Hugh Reãl sang this word out in the same manner as when he called his calf) to catch me!”

Smiling even larger now than he had at the completion of the enchanted dance performance, when gemstones tantalizingly bounced through his mind's eye, Hugh Reãl held long onto the vowel as he completed his turn away from the crowd and began the effort of sloshing up the hill through the unkind terrain. Unsurprisingly, it brought Hugh Reãl great satisfaction to put his feelings into this insulting song for all the villagers to absorb.

Hugh Reãl looked up from the muddy holes his feet had made toward the distant hill crest, then looked back at the crowd, who appeared no further in the distance than when he sang his curses to them, and realized the depths of his miscalculation. That’s when Hugh Reãl saw Flossie Escobar draw a large hand-carved wooden boomerang from his side-belt and uneasily noted that from the current distance he could admire its detailed craftsmanship.

Though the villagers, who were more frightened than angry, seemed to bear no intention of following Hugh Reãl and his demon-calf up the mud-soaked hill, Flossie Escobar, being an order of magnitude larger, squarer & more ornery than his village companions, took particular offense to being called “simple, fattish & stoooooooopid,” and so determined that Hugh Reãl must pay.

Hugh Reãl began to trudge faster now, hastily whistling his bird-like-call once more, and again, and multiple more times in rapid succession, frantically imploring his calf, and himself, to move faster through the mud; perhaps even hoping the calf had one more trick up its sleeve & might sprout wings to carry them all to safety. Hugh Reãl, whistling so urgently and repetitiously that he lacked the breath to complete the call, was now himself audibly indistinct from an exceptionally moronic bird, looked back at Flossie Escobar and the crowd, and then forward again, and noted that he was not making great progress in escaping. He then felt the bowel-y pang of deep regret at holding out the word “stoooooooopid” for so long. That was Hugh Reãl’s last thought.

A Monk’s Revenge

When Hugh Reãl awoke next he felt a searing pain emanating from the back of his head, and his vision was blurred. It took a few moments for him to realize what had happened, and his stomach churned with feelings of sickness, which were really just the physiological manifestation of his sadness upon realizing what his foolishness had earned.

He tried to stand up, but felt the tug of the floor, heard the rattling, and then felt the cold steel of the chains against his legs and hands. He cried out for himself but also for his dear calf. He whistled the special call they shared but there was no reply. Hugh Reãl lifted his head, his vision now clearing, he could see that he was shackled to an anvil in the back of the blacksmith shop; his only consolation was to be the warming glow of the blacksmith's furnace repelling the coldness of the stone floor.

A stark realization set in and overtook the physical pain of the boomerang assault. Whereas the morning had radiated with the promises of an evening filled with carousing at the finest foodery in town, devouring a hot plate of spiced meat and potatoes, drinking copious amounts of some intoxicating fermented brew, regaling his well-to-do, if uninitiated hosts, of a great many of his harrowing adventures, including how he himself had come to discover the marvel that they had all witnessed in the bellflower patch; and perhaps finishing the immortal day with a fancy lady of the evening, he was now instead completely distraught & hopeless. He had lost his companion. He did not know what would become of them, but his premonitions were dark.

Some time passed and Hugh Reãl could see that the light of day was beginning to fade into twilight. He let out a sigh of resignation but was stirred to hopefulness almost as quickly thanks to the sudden memory of one of the marvelous things he had learned in his time adventuring. Now deep in some vision of the cold vivifying peaks of the Ganesh Mountain range, the orange, red & yellow draping of monk cloth, Hugh Reãl had resolved to saving himself by way of the ancient prayers of the Far-East and he intended to do so in the way that an enlightened Buddhist Monk, named Alonzo Ali, had taught him some years ago whilst he & his calf were traversing the mountain-side villages of Kathmandu, Tibet.

“Ok, so if I remember correctly, I need to, hmm...put my hands together like so, yes, like so, and...urrrmmm, what..is...next...legs! Right, legs!” Hugh Reãl attempted to gather his legs together into the peculiar pretzel-like posture served up into the void of his mind's eye, however, before he could even come to the realization that his ankle shackles would inhibit him from folding correctly into himself in order to begin his prayer for salvation, he frustratingly rattled his chains and shook his clasped hands, which balled into fists in the process, and began to curse the heavens.

Hugh Reãl muttered aloud, “why hath thou saddled me with these non-bendy donkey hips, which neither made for a quick getaway through the mud, though they should have, I might add, and currently insults me further by disallowing the necessary positioning for me to ask you divine arsh-holes to help me? Why? I implore!”

Now having completely abandoned his focus on the importance of the sacred body posture, Hugh Reãl frustratingly tapped his forehead as he attempted to search his memories, hoping to unearth the most critical element which the wise old monk, Alonzo Ali, had imparted. Hugh Reãl’s mind swirled backwards in time, and he could see the caramel monk sitting in that un-achievable position, smiling, calm, “too smug,” Hugh Reãl thought.

“Remember…the most important thing...” the words bounced around in his mind, “is to think….of...nothing.” In that moment Hugh Reãl understood that the monk had heard the calls of his heart echoing all the way to Kathmandu, and in order to mete out Hugh Reãl’s well-deserved punishment, the vengeful monk beamed his consciousness directly into the blackness of Hugh Reãl’s mind’s eye in order to mock him. Hugh Reãl’s head slunk.

“Fackery onn’a meee!” he yelled out, almost sobbing. “How will I...ever be able to do that?” Hugh Reãl whimpered. It was precisely at this lowest of moments that the large wooden door to the blacksmith shop swung open and in the frame stood a short, but otherwise substantial, grey haired woman with a long dark amulet, clasped in gold, swinging about her neck. The next most prominent feature, her nose, was long and swooped down toward her thin pink lips, and upon her long swoopy nose sat a sizable brown mole, from which three dark hairs sprouted proudly. She smiled slightly, and introduced herself to Hugh Reãl, who unbeknownst to himself at that moment, was shrinking away from her hefty visage like a child who has been caught emptying their siblings piggy bank.

The Pope Pays a Visit

“Hello dearie, my name is Wilfreda Pope, though you might hear these special lot call me “Wilfreda of The Forest’. I am what you might call an ‘Dodo’ around these parts of the Outer Curl...Anyway, as fate would have it, I was minding my special garden- (Wilfreda showed the palms of her dirt-caked hands) when Flossie Escobar sent word that I must make my way into town post-haste in order to witness some kind of miraculous spectacle...Uh, I believe the poor lethargic gofer then used the words ‘enchanted embryo.’”

Wilfreda couldn’t help but to giggle gleefully. “And by the light of the heavens, here you are, right on time…marvelous” she said, pointing to his chains. “You’ll see that I’m something of a recluse and so I don’t get into town very much, well...outside of delivering some of my famous remedies & overseeing executions now and again, you know, the humdrum stuff; but when I heard this doooozel of a tale, I figured I ought to make the journey to find out what the fuss was about. Let me ask you this, does it really dance?” Hugh Reãl was silent, sitting with the feeling growing in his intestines that the Himalayan Monk wasn’t finished with him yet. Wilfreda nodded comfortingly, or...menacingly, he wasn’t sure, the back of his head throbbed.

“Shall we go see if the juice was worth the squeeze?” Wilfreda threw her head back and cackled, releasing a monumental snort, compelling the half of her nose which dangled in defiance of the laws of nature to bounce with delight. She then looked behind herself past the heavy door, signaling into the pastel darkness, and in walked Flossie Escobar followed by a few other oafish villagers. Together they collected the solemn Hugh Reãl from the floor and carried him out of the blacksmith shop & out onto the mostly dry dirt road, but for the odd patch of deep wet muck now and again, into the buzzing purple twilight.

Wilfreda led the way with Flossie and the others quietly dragging Hugh Reãl from under his armpits. Hugh Reãl imagined that the present scene might invoke correlations between himself and the arrival of the Christ in Golgotha, and that perhaps if the villagers made this sub-conscious connection it might lead to mercy, or perhaps torture and crucifixion, he couldn’t be sure with this deficient lot; but as it turned out, for the villagers the scene was quite a bit more temporally proximal, reminding onlookers less of Christ’s sacrifice and quite a bit more of the meandering death march from a few nights prior, when a poor shackled thief, convicted of coveting and then swiping a bale of his neighbors hay, was led off to his demise at the proudly tall gallows in village center.

The lights of the village were sparse, but Hugh Reãl could see that there was a well lit shack a few hundred paces ahead, around which the entire small village of idiots seemed to be gathered; and though the lights of the village were indeed meager, the electromagnetic energy of the sum of dull and well-worn magnets was still enough to light the way. Hugh Reãl’s heart was announcing its concern.

“I’ve seen more evenings than most…” Wilfreda took a deep breath, consuming the essence of the surrounding elements, “...but this one is truly magnificent! It’s quite an enchanting evening, isn’t it so, Hugh Reãl?” but before he could answer, Flossie interjected, “ya bettuh enjoy it ne-cro-man-cer, cayz I’ll see it’ll be yer last! Ha!” Hugh Reãl could nearly taste Flossies rancid breath, but, perhaps appropriately, was more affronted by Flossie’s curses upon his narrowing future.

As the emotionally dissonant group reached the well-lanterned shop, the redolence of raw butchered meat wafted about and caused Hugh Reãl to manufacture a mini dry heave. He hadn’t passed any sustenance through his lips from the moment he awoke that morning. His mouth was dry, his head pounded, and his sad empty stomach was signaling a mutiny for unkept promises of spiced fatty meats and fine fermented drinks.

The gathered villagers, who had been craning their necks & hoisting themselves upon their neighbors shoulders in an effort to get a good look at the unusual beast; the tallest and most fortunate among them having seen what could only be described as a very usual calf, ceased their erratic movements & their general clamoring altogether as the party transporting the condemned man, led by Wilfreda of The Forest, approached.

Wilfreda led the party into the small yellow-glowing shop through a parting sea of villagers. The smell of flesh now seared Hugh Reãl’s nostrils. Flossie too was not gentle with his handling of Hugh Reãl, dragging him into the room by the strength of his single tree-limb of an arm. It was when Flossie slammed Hugh Reãl up against the nearest wall, that Hugh Reãl winced and lifted his gaze from the blood stained floorboards, and in a bittersweet moment of recognition, connected his gaze to that of his beloved sparkly-eyed calf, who was chained to an elevated granite slab in the middle of the hut.

“We’ll now see whurts in the depths of yur’ bee-lov-erd''” Flossie said, spreading his mucosal foulness about half of the small shop, causing a hefty red-headed woman, with as many teeth as eyes, to grimace and wave away the air in front of her nose. Hugh Reãl didn’t acknowledge Flossie’s attempts to rile him. He kept his eyes fixed on those twinkling dark galaxies of his old friend and let some light into his own mysterious dark-eyes in an attempt to convey his grief for getting them both into this situation.

Wilfreda then lifted her hands and a complete & total silence rushed into the space. At this, Flossie kept his mouth sealed tight, for he knew well not to risk an interruption to the concentration of Wilfreda of The Forest, particularly by some accident of misdirected deep breathing.

Wilfreda of The Forest then produced an inauspicious tan case, though nobody could honestly say that they had seen where it came from. She unlatched the case and peered deep into it as if it was a fire, dancing, and portending the future of one random soul unlucky enough to be in the wrong case at the wrong time. Wilfreda proceeded with her motions, producing one small scalpel, one syringe, one vial labeled “Diamorphine” and a bucket which seemed a bit too large to have fit within the case. None about the shop could see what was in Wilfreda’s bucket, but at least five percent of them could phonetically make out the label, “Deh-voohl’s Breh-t.”

Wilfreda appeared quite pleased with the occasion, everyone else, including Hugh Reãl, Flossie & the calf, was either awed or terrified, or both. “Pay attention, the squeamish amongst ye’ lot might wish to exit...as I will now anesthetize & open the creature before us in order to determine what it is...if anything, which lives inside of it.” Wilfreda announced the procedure in such a manner, calm and calculated, which made Hugh Reãl think she had done this before. Hugh Reãl felt sick, his stomach churned and called for reinforcements to storm the esophagus, but none responded. Unwavering, Hugh Reãl kept his gaze on the twinkling dark eyes of his old friend, she calmly stared back.

Wilfreda filled the syringe with the liquid from the bottle and while stroking the calf’s head sweetly, plunged the syringe into the calf’s hind. The calf twitched once or twice and everyone watched as the sparkle flitted and disappeared from her eyes; which then slowly closed as her head sank down to the cold slab. “Good girl,” said Wilfreda. Hugh Reãl’s head slunk down back toward the floorboard. A tear rolled down his cheek, fell to the floor, and mixed with a small patch of mostly-dried chicken blood. He knew he couldn’t watch what was to come next.

“Now, Flossie, tell me...from where did you see the ‘devilish’ creature emerge?” Wilfreda asked with the demanding confidence of a war-time general.

“Uh, well, uh, ayn thinks it twas...yah, that’s right...it twars’ from about the ayyy...nooosh...uh...ma’am,” Flossie said, with a clear wash of embarrassment.

Those in the crowd who had not been privy to the original bewitching dance display that morning erupted in a bout of nervous maniacal laughter. “Dee ay-noosh!” one man shouted as he slapped himself on the forehead. With a sharp turn of her neck, Wilfreda cut him down with her gaze, and the rest of the villagers quieted.

“Very well, then...let us incise about the ‘ay-nooosh’” Wilfreda said, looking closely at Hugh Reãl for a reaction, hoping to confirm whether or not this was the correct area of the sleeping calf to probe. Hugh Reãl however, kept his eyes on the floor, he had resigned himself to his fate but was resolved not to be made to watch his old friend be split open for the villagers delight.

Wilfreda scanned the crowded room. All of the laughter had long since dissipated out of the thatch roof and the villagers now appeared to be entranced in some bizarre & oxymoronic coalesced state of excitement plus dread. For though the weathered villagers delighted in the entertainment of regular executions, none could really say they’d ever seen a heifer, a man & a translucent dancing fetus be put to death in a single enchanted evening.

A solitary bead of sweat clinged to Wilfreda’s dangling beak as she inched the scalpel closer to the sleeping calf’s anus. Alas, density won out and the sweat droplet found the calf’s soft underside. The infinitesimal sound of the droplet hitting the calf's-hide rang like a bell in Hugh Reãl’s mind, he could not contain his sorrow and cried out, “Nooooo!”

Wilfreda snapped her head around to intercept his gaze. “Yelsh! Do you want me to kill her by accident! Flossie, take him outside and wait for me.” Flossie delighted at the opportunity to inflict a bit more pain & grabbed Hugh Reãl by his shirt and swiftly launched him out of the shop. Hugh Reãl landed face first in one of the few remaining puddles of cool damp mud, and for a moment forgot where he was. “Der yahr go” said Flossie, “now whoo’ds der stoooooopid one!” he said, spitting a dense dark green glob into Hugh Reãl’s general direction.

All who remained in the shop returned their eyes back to Wilfreda & her scalpel and to the sleeping calf. Wilfreda once again took a slow accounting of the eyes in the room, and the villagers were smart enough to take the meaning of Wilfreda’s daggers, every last one complying with their utter silence. Wilfreda then drove the scalpel into the slumbering calf, just above the right hind thigh and cut cross-ways towards the calf's anus. The gash she made was deep and the blood poured over the wound like an overfilled bath. Her eyes sealed shut, the calf did not advance even an inch; outside the butcher shop, his eyes caked shut with the rich wet mud, Hugh Reãl too, offered no advancement.

Wilfreda then proceeded into the calf’s newly formed gulch with her fingers and stretched open the wound. It wasn’t long before she laid her sights on the very reason she excitedly abandoned her garden work that afternoon; Flossie was correct, the location was about the anus. Looking up at Wilfreda from the comfort of what looked like a bassinet of beige intestine was the promised diaphanous calf embryo, slowly breathing, its visible heart slowly beating, alive.

“Well I’ll be damned” she muttered under her breath, “you are a site for sore eyes.” Hands caked in blood and viscera, Wilfreda reached back into her case and pulled out a small wooden box. It was dusty but well-crafted, containing the fine exterior design of a large forest stag, its deciduous horns striking out handsomely.

Having not a one of them passed a breath in many moments, the villagers silently craned their necks to see the luminous monster, but as they could not see past Wilfreda’s heft, they turned their eyes to Wilfreda’s back & to her box, knowing that in just moments she would rip the creature from the depths of the calf and produce it for all of them to behold However, on this mysterious and exciting night, much like every other less-mysterious night which preceded, the villagers collective powers of estimation about the procession of events were misguided.

Having all components precisely arranged, Wilfreda looked up from the calf innards and said “now my friends, it is time to go to sleep,” and as one nincompoop looked around the shop and found only the puzzled faces of other nincompoops, the collective desperate hope to decipher Wilfreda’s meaning waned as she pulled a large triangle patterned scarf up around her face, reached into her bucket labeled “Devils breath” and pulled two big scoops into her bloody hands.

“It has in fact been worth the squeeze” she announced with an enthusiastic laugh, and then clapped the dust together into a giant cloud which floated about the small shop, and landed upon the bare lips of all in attendance. In an instant, the formerly tantalized village folks were deep in slumberland in a heap of blubbery malodorous clumps on the floor. Wilfreda then carefully nestled the prized embryo into her fine box, picked up her scalpel once more, grabbed the sleeping calf's head and, pulling it back toward herself to reveal its neck, said “I’m sorry it was you dearie…”She took a deep breath and focused. “Light of the forest, ruler of this realm, accept the blood of my devotion, and may it nourish you for one-thousand years,” and then she slit the calf's throat.

Outside, Flossie kept one eye squarely on Hugh Reãl, who was still face down in the mud with no apparent intention of doing anything other than suffocating himself, while trying to peer his other, naturally wandering eye, around the corner of the door to see what was happening inside the butchery.

“Yahrn flurbin’ ay-nah-mal is more den likely blaydin owt all ovar de fluhr by nawn,” Flossie said mockingly, peeking his head over his shoulder & taking his eyes off of the face-planted Hugh Reãl for a moment; but there was nothing to see, the door was closed and the night was eerily quiet.

“I bet dat witch-no-zed Wheelfredo is…” Flossie started, but the door flung open, “is what” said Wilfreda, materializing with the case tucked into her armpit, her hands caked white, though interrupted by a few small sanguine streams, as if she just butchered a reindeer in a flour factory. Flossie stumbled, “I warn’t sayn’ narth...narthin, swuhr!”

“No mind, Flossie. Say, come here and give me a hand with this case,” Wilfreda said. “Did yahr see it, the beast what we all was spakin’ o…” responded Flossie with the excitement of a child mid-tattle. “Oh yes, Flossie, I saw the creature, but...you my friend...I am afraid that you will surely never see it again,” Wilfreda lifted her palm toward Flossie’s face and blew a handful of Devil's Breath into his eyes, and he too found the floor below him in a heap.

Hearing what sounded like a sack of heavy spuds hitting the dirt, Hugh Reãl lifted his face from its less than effective tomb, and peered up into the night sky, finding Wilfreda, a large case in her powdery hands, standing dominantly over the inert folded pile that was Flossie Escobar.

Looking, himself, like the beast of the forest that the children of the Outer Curl sang cruel songs about, (“dirty stinkin’ giant mut, runnin' through the forest bare, wait until we find yer’ butt, and hang it in the village square!”) Hugh Reãl had only the strength to muster two words; “she...dead?”

“I’m afraid so son,” said Wilfreda sighed, her nose swinging like a small pendulum with every confirmatory shake of her head. “And what’d you do to him?” Hugh Reãl motioned his head towards the dark limp pile that was Flossie. “Oh, never mind his fattish dumb-arse, but let’s just say I’ve ensured his foulness cannot propagate” said Wilfreda pointedly. Hugh Reãl plunged his face back into the mud pit and with great determination began furiously gathering enough of the dense earth into his mouth in order to choke on it.

Wilfreda watched with some measure of delight as Hugh Reãl filled his cheeks. She was reminded of the midsommar festival and the Outer Curl’s pie-eating champion Mai Short, but then she returned to her senses, conceding that Hugh Reãl’s recent loss of his companion allowed for some erratic behavior.

“Oh come on now, spit out that earth pie, I’ve got something to show ya…” said Wilfreda. Realizing that the task of self-asphyxiation by sludge was more difficult than he had anticipated, Hugh Reãl hacked and spit and coughed out the chunky dirt that had made it half-way down his throat, and looked up at Wilfreda. “I’ll tell ya what, if when we’re finished you still wanna die, I’ve got a brew just for the occasion, much quicker than trying to choke on wet earth and horse excrement, ha!”

Wilfreda set down the case and looped her arms under Hugh Reãl’s armpits, and with one great heave and an audible grunt, had him upright. “Now, I intend to leave your hands shackled, because I fear you might go for my throat if you have half a chance, but I’ll be unshackling your leg cuffs, so we can make good time getting back to my abode. We’ve got a journey ahead.”

“And if I run?” Said Hugh Reãl. “Well, I suppose you can run if you’d like, but both us know you wont make it far before the lot of these blockheads awaken from their slumber, what with the mud and hills and darkness and unfamiliarity of it all, and I can’t imagine they’ll throw you a party.” Hugh Reãl believed her, after all, she seemed to be the only one in control since he laid his eyes on that commanding proboscis and dark black amulet of hers. Hugh Reãl nodded and Wilfreda returned the gesture, then produced a key and bent down to release his ankles from the iron.

“Like I said, we’ve got a bit of a hike ahead of us now, and I figure we won’t be back until the moon is at its apex. So, now that you can, shake a leg twiggy,” Wilfreda said with some softness, noting Hugh Reãl’s slender presence. The two began to walk down the hard-packed road toward the forest, away from the relative safety of the villages sparse lights and close human proximity, out toward the mysteries of the forest; leaving behind them a pile of sleeping uglies, who would awake many hours later, no worse for the ware, only a bit confused about how they got to where they were; but then easily convinced that it wasn’t so important after all that they shouldn’t just move on with their day.

That is, all but one of the sleeping uglies had the pleasure of waking. One Flossie Escobar never did manage to make it to the next day, though no one could figure out how such a tremendous amount of mud might get trapped in one's airway, “he must’ve hoovered it, after a strange night with the absinthe bottle,” said pie-eating champion Mai Short, who knew a thing or two about hoovering up dense matter.

The Last Stranger

It would be thousands of steps before Wilfreda and Hugh Reãl arrived at the entrance to the forest. “Stop here, look...” Wilfreda said, and she pointed off toward the darkness of east where the walkable earth was abruptly disrupted by a jagged cliffside.

“Can you make it out-” not waiting long enough for Hugh Reãl’s answer, “that, my friend, is the east-ward delineation of the Outer Curl, that’s what gives this region its peculiar energy.” As Hugh Reãl was peering into the darkness trying to make out structures by use of the rising moons light, Wilfreda simultaneously vocalized a perfect mimic of the deadly red loggerhead snake and struck with her fingers, pinching Hugh Reãl’s tired and unsuspecting ankle, making him simultaneously shriek and levitate six inches off the ground.

Wilfreda threw her head back and crowed with the delight of a thousand clowns. “You old witch, I nearly left my body!” Hugh Reãl shrieked, but then quickly covered his mouth in embarrassed realization that his mouth was the reason for his current plight and the death of his calf companion; but Wilfreda was stoic, and kept her eyes locked on his.

“Now you’re talking,” Wilfreda said with a wink and a nod through her wry expression. Again pointing to the jagged cliffs of the Outer Curl, Wilfreda began,“I wonder if you were ever made aware...Hugh Reãl, that those jagged cliffs, just off in the distance there under the moon, is where Ras-Tarkhan and his men committed their crimes, purging the children of the Outer Curl, after he and his mercenaries landed here many ages ago...?”

He was a great general and sea-farer, that Ras Tarkhan, and he did in fact marshall an army of well-compensated warriors, but what that Caucus General didn’t account for, what nobody really does, not even the folks who call this area home today, was Cernunnos the spirit of the Outer Curl...and as it went, Cernunnos didn’t take kindly to Ras Tarkhan carelessly tossing away all that fresh baby meat into the depths below; and so one evening Cernunnos paid a visit to the men of Ras Tarkhan’s infantry as they slept among the pine & sycamore, and do you know what he found when he awoke...? Well, Ras Tarkhan found his entire army decimated by that vengeful and hungry spirit of the forest. Each and every mercenary had been given a gift by Cernunnos on that wrath-filled night. They had each been found on their own special tree, hopelessly pinned & each man had been set upon them a host of forest animals to devour them alive before Ras Tarkhans eyes...

And so it was that the great general was forced to watch his men be devoured alive, some by ants and beetles, some by the cutest little squirrels and rabbits the forest had to offer, and others still by the noble stag and fleet-foxes; and oh the screams, I too remember the screams of that early morning. Well, upon discovering the horrors that befell his troops, old general Ras did the noble thing and threw himself over the jagged cliffside, and...well, yes, come to think of it, that was the last time we had any foreigners visit our humble lands....”

Now faced with the flashes of vivid and brutal imagery, the colliding thoughts and sensations they produced all about his body, Hugh Reãl’s mind turned blank. The blankness itself was a respite, until a single thought wormed its way into his consciousness, “now I know what the old monk was talking about…”

“Ok,” Wilfreda said in an disturbingly cheerful manner “let us keep moving then, for as the Buddha once said, ‘The forest is a peculiar organism best trodden while it sleeps, for if it wakes and mistakes you for the axe-man, you will ne’er again utter one single peep.” Wilfreda’s eyes, fixed and powerful, were black as the night, and Hugh Reãl understood right then and there that his oddly jovial captor was a witch. Hugh Reãl also knew that she could have killed him one hundred times over by now, and that the forests of the Outer Curl were no place to be walking around unaccompanied, half shackled and half blind, and so, with his heart beating quickly and his head on a swivel, Hugh Reãl kept an uncomfortably close distance behind Wilfreda of The Forest, Wilfreda The Witch.

As calm as Hugh Reãl’s calf was after receiving a syringe full of Diamorphine, Wilfreda whistled as they walked the path which she knew as well as any other thing in her life, and once every so often one of the creatures of the forest whistled back. Thousands more foot-steps were required before the tandem arrived at a small stone cottage, its roof thatched in hay and other foraged grasses, which leaned so far eastward that it appeared that the kiss of a hummingbird might lay it entirely to waste. Hugh Reãl stumbled across a walkway of oddly shaped stones, dehydrated and wearing a face mask which might elicit a jealous stare from the wealthy patrons of the finest establishments in Baden-Baden, only the whites of his eyes shone like spotlights through the darkness.

The witches' door flung open before them, “thank you dearie,” said Wilfreda as she caressed her hand across the heavy wood, leaving a streak of white chalk and dried blood in the process. Wilfreda gazed with some admiration at the tall and thin Hugh Reãl, but he did not reciprocate. Hugh Reãl’s eyes professed a remoteness, he was elsewhere, still watching the previous morning's sunrise in a place where his friend was still alive. Back here now, deep in the unknown forest, about to enter the home of a witch, yes, indeed, he was here, now; his greasy black hair cut inward towards his soft cheeks, his physical exquisiteness belied the truth, he was a mess of a man to be sure. “You’ve come a long way dearie, best to come inside now, I do believe that I’ve got the cure for what ails ya.”

A Gifted Future

Hugh Reãl stepped into the witches' round room. He saw the glowing fire and the bubbling black cauldron balancing above it. He saw animal heads stacked on a shelf, a fox, a stag, a peculiarly large and unidentifiable lizard face. He noted the quantity of jars which lined the shelves, none of them marked, all containing various shapes and colors which Hugh Reãl did not readily wish to interpret.

“Admiring my animal friends I see,” Wilfreda said, motioning toward the various creatures. “That stag, let me tell you, this is exciting...That stag was in rut, just about to mount an awaiting doe when I crept from behind it and, whoosh, (Wilfreda slid her thumb quickly across her neck) sliced it’s throat nearly taking the head clean off! Ha, what a rush!”

“I’d like to show you something dear.” Wilfreda put down the case and moved toward one of the low-set shelves, plucking a clear glass jar from amongst a sea of other clear glass jars. “You might want to sit down for this one Hugh...Reãl,” Wilfreda said, motioning to a small chair in the corner of the room. Hugh Reãl kept his eyes fixed on the ambiguous white cloud floating in the jar as he carefully made contact with the chair.

“Ok, this is exciting. Here we go.” Wilfreda took a deep breath. “Where are you from, Hugh Reãl?” Wilfreda asked in a manner which made Hugh Reãl pensive and a bit dizzy. Hugh Reãl paused, and tried hard to think through his haze, looking right-ward and upward into his memory, “I...I’m from…” Hugh Reãl’s mind was puzzled. “Don’t fret now. Let’s try this...Do you remember how you got to Neu Scoutsland?” He shook his head no. “Ok, how about the Outer Curl? Do you remember that?” Hugh Reãl again indicated no. “Hell, do you remember how you got to this side of the world? How did you cross the dark waters of the Somnium...would have required being on a large and sturdy, can you recall the journey...a crew...a captain?”

Hugh Reãl was perplexed and the questions advanced his dizziness, though he was not entirely distraught. He reasoned that he had been through a lot over the last spell of time which might easily explain his temporary amnesia. “Now I’m going to tell you a few things, which you already know...deep down, but aren’t currently aware of, because, uh...that’s just part of the game I suppose,” Wilfreda smiled, bouncing her eyebrows and ears in unison.

Hugh Reãl’s head was tipped towards the floor but his eyes stayed fixed on the cloudy jar in Wilfreda’s hands. Wilfreda continued, “my friend, there hasn’t been a vessel to cross those swirling waters for at least 500 years, like I told you by the forest entrance, it hasn’t been since the days of Ras Tarkhan that the Outer Curl has been landed upon; and I would know! I’ve been loafing around this forest twice that duration, and a day...but somehow...somehow...here you are. Well, thankfully, not just you, but you, your peculiar old calf companion and that unborn whirling dervish it kept...TA-DA...” Wilfreda smiled so contentedly and a tear rolled down her wrinkled cheek.

Hugh Reãl thought of his old companion, of waking up the previous morning near the cliff-side with the rising sun and bird songs, of knowing precisely what he intended to do that morning as if it was programmed. He thought of their walk into the village that morning, of his peculiar lack of discernible thoughts while making the sign and posting it, of walking directly to the purple flower patch without hesitation, which lay far down the main stretch of road and sat in the valley of the villages tallest hill. He thought of how he passed up plenty of other well suited areas to put on his display. “Why did I…” Hugh Reãl thought, but was interrupted by Wilfreda.

“What was her name...Hugh Reãl?” He looked up to meet Wilfreda’s cosmic gaze. “You know, your ooooold companion…” Wilfreda moved her head in circles while dragging out the word “old.”

Hugh Reãl could now feel the distress which manifested as a cold shiver rushing up his spine. “Why didn’t I name her…” he thought. “I’ll tell you her name, Hughey, and then I’ll do you one better. Your buddies name is the same one she showed up with 500 years ago, it’s Korban, which is ancient Hebraic for ‘sacrifice,’ and though you’ve changed quite a bit since last we met, your name stayed the same too, my friend, U-riel.” Hearing his true name spoken out loud the Archangel Uriel started to tremble in his chair, as he became acutely aware of where he was and where he was not.

“Oh come come now, calm yourself Uriel, this is what we both wanted! You wanted in and after a thousand years and a day, I want out, haha! Let’s hope it works this time...and I don’t see why we shouldn’t both get what we want this time, that is, so long as you don’t jump the shark again!”

Wilfreda paused, and looked back at the dusty box with the fine engraving. “You sure brought us a beautiful specimen. So when our efforts pay off, and you awaken next, this’ll all feel like some distant mad dream, and here you’ll be to take my place on this earthly plane and enjoy all of its fruits! Imagine.... eating...drinking...copulating, so keep those fingers crossed for a successful tribute!”

“But...but I do remember some things...traveling the world, being an adventurer, learning from mountain monks & street prostitutes...I remember...” said Uriel, his mind now spinning in distress.

“Ah, adorable….but, all just the fevered dreams of a sleeping angel, but not useless in the least, it were those persistent and insatiable desires which brought you back here to me now, and it is that same desire which will grant me my return ticket home!” (Wilfreda made a motion sliding the palm of her top hand over the palm of her bottom hand, out and upward.)

Twisting the cap of the cloudy jar leftward, Wilfreda flung her head back and away from the opening and said “oooh-wee, that is an unholy odor, but I suppose such is the unsurprising essence of that which was never meant to be!” Reaching her bare but still-floury hand into the cloudy liquid, Wilfreda produced a very still peach-complected embryo, which was otherwise identical to the one Uriel had watched dance on the wire he had constructed the previous morning.

“Thiiiiis little thing is 500 years old, plus a day. You, Uriel, brought it to me the first time you landed here on the Outer Curl, but first, as required, you let it perform its magical act for the natives. Being, however, to your benefit, the villagers of the ancient Outer Curl were quite a bit more adept and happened to be well acquainted with black-magic, and so the dance of that original tribute didn’t quite stir them into the same murderous frenzy we experienced this time around.”

“What went wrong the first time?” asked Uriel. “Well, turns out there are some rules to this whole switcheroo, and in your untethered excitement you got a bit ahead of yourself, and before I even had the original tribute in its gift-box in order to deliver it to Cernunnos, you decided to fill your new belly with earthly delight, and wham! In the same instant that drop o’ drink hit your tongue, I watched your vibrantly colorful essence shoot upward through my roof. All that was left was a lifeless pile of skin on my floor, but don’t you worry, we’ve learned that lesson well!”

At once, the inside of Uriel's mouth shriveled and cracked and became aware of its own dryness. His stomach rumbled and spun and called out to be sated post-haste with some hefty matter. Then his human loins began to pulse with energy and begged for a relief he had no conception for, he stared at Wilfreda dismayed. “Welcome to the world, daddio” said the old witch, “and don’t you get any ideas, I’m a very old lady!”

Wilfreda set down the cloudy jar and went to the case which had been resting on the floor, producing from it a small wooden music box. “Now I believe this will suit Cernunnos fancy quite well, don’t you?” Wilfreda lifted the mahogany top upon which the noble stag stood, and revealed a glass tube. Inside the clear tube was the luminous enchanted embryo; spinning, pirouetting, swaying, dancing to a tune that neither of them could hear. “Quite beautiful for an ugly little bastard,” said Wilfreda, “but I guess that’s what you get when a forest demon fucks a cow, ha!”

Uriel became transfixed on the spinning creature. He watched it move gracefully within its glass house, and in that moment he knew that he had made a terrible mistake. “If I can just find something to put into my belly…” He quickly scanned the witch's house for an opportunity to transport himself back home; back to where he belonged. Any small morsel would do, but none was in sight

In a moment of deep despair Uriel thought, “if I could just grab the music box from the witch, smash the glass and swallow the embryo whole, I’d be…” He looked back up to Wilfreda and before he could muster the energy to lunge forward from his chair, poof...he was covered in a cloud of white chalky dust.

“We couldn’t have you go and ruin such a beautiful gift now, so long in the making...” He heard Wilfreda say as his body fell into total paralysis. “Fear not, sweet Uriel, light of The One, I’m sure you’ll find many enjoyable delights here on this plane. After all, our little world is full of wonders; one such wonder being that not everything is born, some things do in fact simply appear, and then poof, before you know it, they’re gone...”

The Archangel Uriel’s eyes went blurry and the sounds of the room started to swirl and refract around him. “I’m awfffff tooooooo seeeeee Cerrrrrr….nuuuuuu....nosssss. Wiiiiissssshhhhh meeeeeeee luhhhhhhck...”

Wilfreda Pope removed the dark amulet from around her neck, pressed it to her lips and carefully placed it around Uriel's limp hanging neck. Music box under her arm and with the verve and excitement of a wolf pup attending its first hunt, Wilfreda began to skip and dance her way through the light of the newly rising sun, which effortlessly penetrated the forest canopy.

Wilfreda of The Forest, who was soon to exist only in the cloudy memories of a generation of dull minds, left the Archangel Uriel slumped over in a state of twilight in her thousand year old home, in the middle of the ancient forest of the Outer Curl. Whistling a joyful tune as she weaved her way toward the cliffs of the Outer Curl, off to meet the great horned forest spirit Cernunnos; this time, Wilfreda Pope had the feeling that Cernunnos would whistle back.