In tales still told at firesides, he is El Antílope. Others name him the Flying One. Whichever tale or title, El Antílope is fleeter afoot than any mounted outlaw. In years past, many bandits and evil men learned this truth the hard way. El Antílope ran them down and sealed their doom. He is still out there somewhere, or so they say.

Old men say that even now, El Antílope will appear from nowhere, swift and silent, dealing out justice in this harsh land. He is bound to the code, as are the villains. Good and evil, both beholden to the rules, white and black pieces facing each other across the checkered board. This is as it must be, although the old ones cannot say why.

The passing years are not kind to storytellers, and less so to heroes. The tick-tock of time spares no one. There comes a day when the old must give way to those who are younger and stronger.

El Antílope finds no respite in the villages. The villagers are grateful, yes, but only until the bandits are defeated or the monster killed. When the deed is done, the villagers do not need a hero. They cork the mescal, hide their women, and pray that the hero will leave them in peace. The hero must vanish into the sunset. The rules of the tale remain unbreakable.

This will be his last journey. El Antílope does not know the place he searches for. He follows hints and whispers carried on the arid wind, the voices of those who have gone before him, searching for a place where fast or slow does not matter.

The soles of his moccasins leave only the faintest trace of his passage. As he nears a rock outcropping, he senses a faint presence, no more than the shadow of a ghost. His eyes read the ground. Yes, there, the husks of sunflower seeds scattered amongst the sand and rocks. Someone paused in the shade of this rock. Hungry, they cracked sunflower seeds between their teeth, savored the salty kernel, then spit out the husks.

El Antílope closes his eyes, feels the searing heat, listens to the wind. Once, a long time ago maybe, there were voices here. Only a trace remains; a hiss, a whisper brushing sun-bleached parchment. He wills his mind to hear the words.

I am telling you, Paco, the hills ahead don’t get any closer, and the mountains behind us don’t get any further away. This goddamn desert goes on forever.

He opens his eyes. Looking behind, he sees the rough scarp of mountains. Far ahead, a faint outline of dusky green hills dances in the heat. This place feels familiar yet unreal, like something glimpsed in a dream and then forgotten. He will follow the ghost voices. Perhaps this is the correct path. Where it leads is a mystery. The only certainty is that he must walk on.

El Antílope lifts his straw hat, wipes a stained sleeve across his forehead, then pulls the hat low over his eyes. His hands are brown and weathered. A coiled leather whip crosses his chest like a bandolier. The stock of a repeating rifle protrudes from a scabbard he wears across his back. A wiry man built for tireless speed, he is a hero by profession rather than stature. Unmarked graves hold many larger men who misjudged the difference.

Heroes do not spring fully formed from their mother’s womb. Some are chosen and others cursed. In the forgotten ages long ago, El Antílope may have been Juan Carlos, a common name for a barefoot boy in a dusty village. He cannot remember the name but knows there was once a child who could disappear in the blink of an eye. A fleet-footed village boy, always first in any game of running or chasing.

The old men watch as the children whirl past.

There, you see? That chico runs like the devil. I swear to you, the boy has wings. He flies while other niños only run. Nothing can catch him.

Time passes, and the quick boy grows into a swift young man. Then comes a day that changes everything. The early dawn stillness is broken by the wails of a frantic mother discovering an empty bed. Someone or something has stolen a young girl, spiriting the poor thing into the night.

The distraught mother’s panic kindles the flames of fear. The villagers run about like chickens. Someone screams the name El Coco, and others take up the cry. Yes, it must be El Coco, the monster who kidnaps children and devours them. Poor girl, it is too late. The older women encircle the grieving young mother, a protective ring of black dresses.

The swift young man does not believe in El Coco. While the villagers run in circles, he slips away into the gray dawn. At the edge of the village, he finds fresh tracks.

One man wearing moccasins, the footprints heading south on the main path. The young man sprints down the pathway. Not far from the village, the footprints disappear, replaced by the hoof prints of two horses. This was not the work of El Coco, but evil men, child stealers who will sell the girl to slavers. He runs after the horses, faster than he has ever run before.

He finds the kidnappers in the mountains south of the village. They have camped not far off the path, not even bothering to hide. The barefoot young man circles through the brush surrounding the camp, silent as smoke.

Two dirty men sit beside the smoldering fire, arguing over a jug of mescal. Two lean horses are hobbled nearby. Just past the horses, he sees the girl. She lies beneath a gnarled pine tree, her hands and feet tied with cords. He hears her whimpers through the knotted cloth bound tightly over her mouth.

He slips behind the tree, leans from the shadows, whispers to the girl. She cranes her head, eyes filled with terror. He holds a finger to his lips and waits. She nods, then casts a fearful look toward the dirty men. He pulls a knife from his belt and creeps forward. The sharp blade slices the cords. He lifts the trembling girl and carries her into the shadows. He whispers into her ear, then slips back to the camp.

The kidnappers are still busy with their jug. The young man cups his hands to his mouth.

Shoot them, Pedro, shoot! What are you waiting for?

The bandits lurch to their feet, spilling the mescal. They claw for their pistols while the young man sprints away behind the horses. He shouts again, feigning a different voice.

Juan, get their horses! Pedro, kill these hombres!

Pistol shots erupt as the bandits blast away at everything and nothing. While they shoot at ghosts, the swift young man dashes to the other side of the camp.

Now you die, you bastardos!

Hammers click on empty chambers. Drunk on panic and mescal, the bandits stagger to their horses. They claw at the hobbles, frightening the horses. Finally, the two heave themselves into the saddles and spur their rawboned mounts into a ragged gallop.

From his hiding place, the young man listens to the fading hoofbeats. He stands and walks across the empty camp. A coiled leather whip lies in the dust beside the forgotten jug. He picks up the whip and drapes it across his chest. Then he leads the weeping girl back to the village and delivers her to her family.

The memories swirl and fade. El Antílope touches the plaited whip where it rubs against his sweating chest. His eyes search the desert horizon to the line of hills far ahead.

Yes, hombre, and what was your reward for rescuing the girl? You left that little village behind, forgot your name, and became ‘El Antílope’. A hero’s life, full of bandits and monsters and trouble, an endless string of trouble. No, not a string, a chain. Each heroic deed forged a new link that bound you to the next task. But no more, do you hear? You are no longer bound. ¡Vamos!

He is on his feet and moving. The dragging weight of the past seems to grow lighter. Some of his former quickness returns. Now, he strides across the desert. The green hills appear to draw near.

The desert comes to an end, as all things must, but many travelers meet their mortal end before they reach the edge of the wasteland. Those that survive find a narrow band of scrubland. Passing through stunted acacia and mesquite trees, the way begins to climb.

The first slopes are covered with rough grass. A faint path appears, dips out of sight, then reappears on the next hill. Piñon pines rise in an abrupt edge across the bald hilltop, like the shaved tonsure of a fat friar. On the far side of the hill, a small lake nestles beneath the pines. Nearby sits a snug log cabin.

Smoke rises from a campfire. A rotund man leans into the woodsmoke, poking at a cast-iron skillet. He fans away smoke with a battered black hat and reaches for the skillet. With a fat man’s agility, he spins away from the stinging smoke. Rough laughter spills from his black beard.

“Lunch is ready, jefe. Lovely fried trout for El Sombrero and his faithful companion El Burro.”

The bearded man flourishes the skillet. A second man sits near the fire. He is as lean as his companion is fat.

True to his former nom de guerre, El Sombrero Blanco wears a huge white hat. The sombrero shades a hawkish face, an aquiline nose, and drooping black mustaches.

He shakes a warning finger at the fat man.

“Enough of that crap. We agreed, remember? I’m Raul, and you’re Paco. No more stupid titles.”

Still chuckling, Paco, once known as El Burro, sits beside his lifelong friend. He slides one fried fish onto a tin plate and hands it to Raul Garcia, then serves himself. Raul bends over his plate. Paco chews a mouthful while gazing out over the desert. He shields his eyes and stares into the glare. Paco lowers his eyes to the food. In a brief pause between forkfuls, he questions his old compadre.

“Hey, jefe, I’m trying to count in my head, but I’m not smart like you. How long we been retired?”

El Sombrero Blanco looks up into the noon sky. He turns to Paco and shrugs.

“Time seems strange here. Every day is the same. We hunt, we fish. The sun goes down, and we watch the stars. I’m not complaining, mind you. It’s peaceful. No one bothers us, nobody needs rescuing. But how long? I think six months, maybe more.”

For a time, the two men eat in silence.

Paco slips his empty plate to the ground and reaches inside his dusty black jacket. He pulls out a muslin bag, opens it, and pours roasted seeds onto his palm. Then he offers the bag to Raul.

“Sunflower seeds, jefe?”

“No, thank you, Paco. The trout was enough, perfect as always.”

Paco smiles, lifts a seed to his teeth, cracks it, and spits the hull into the fire. He gazes out to where the heat shimmers off the distant desert, smiles to himself, and cracks another seed.

“Tell me the truth, Raul. Do you miss the life?”

Raul snorts and shakes his head.

“You mean never having a home of our own? Sleeping on the hard ground almost every night of our lives? Riding back and forth across that goddamn desert chasing bandits or monsters? No, Paco, I don’t miss any of that.”

Paco grins huge and spits another hull. He throws his arms wide and bellows like a bull.

“Look, on the horizon! It’s the White Hat. The pistolero of the people. And his faithful companion rides with him. Viva El Burro! Viva El Sombrero Blanco!”

Dropping his arms to his side, he grins at his old companion-in-arms. Raul chuckles at the performance but waves it away.

“No, I don’t miss that either. The villagers stopped cheering the minute we chased off the bad guys. They were afraid of us, afraid we might steal their women or drink all the mescal. In their eyes, we were only one notch above the bandits. Bah!”

In the silence that follows, Raul watches Paco eat his sunflower seeds. A look of puzzlement crosses his lean face.

“Paco, why do you never run out of seeds?”

Paco dangles the bag by its drawstring. The sack bulges like a chipmunk’s cheeks.

“All these years together, jefe, and you just now notice?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“You see any sunflowers around here, boss? Look all you want. Not a one, right?”

Paco slips the bag into his jacket and spits another hull.

“It’s not just the seeds either. All those years sleeping on the ground, you and me living off what we carried in our saddlebags. But every morning we had coffee. Every night there was a bottle of mescal.”

Raul looks dumbfounded. He scratches his chin, then waves a finger in the air.

“Yes, but the villagers gave us food, if only to get rid of us.”

“Sure they did. They loaded us up with bad bacon and old beans. But if you think about it, you’ll remember that we were forever running out of food. And yet we always had coffee, mescal, seeds, and just enough ammunition to finish the job.”

Raul props his chin in his hand. He stares into the fire. Paco spits sunflower hulls and glances again at the edge of the desert. The silence is broken when Raul slaps his thigh.

“The three bullets. Dios mío, I remember now. It happened every time we got pinned down by scruffy bandits. Everyone shooting at each other, gunsmoke in our eyes, and then you ask, ‘How many bullets you got left, jefe?’ I’d crack open my trusty revolver to check. ‘Only three shots left, Paco.’ And somehow, those three bullets were always enough to finish off the bad guys. How is that possible?”

Paco shrugs and grins.

“It’s not possible, but that’s what happened. Maybe it’s a benefit of the profession, you know? The heroes gotta have coffee, they gotta have three bullets at the end. So, the bullets and the coffee just appear, you know?”

“What, you mean like magic?”

“Don’t know, jefe. We ain’t heroes no more, so I don’t care. I tell you, I’ve been thinking on this. I need a new profession. I decided I’m going to take up prophecy.”

 Raul laughs long and hard.

“At least you’ve got the beard for it, my old friend.”

“Laugh all you want, but here’s my first prediction. We’re going to have a visitor real soon.”

Raul does not laugh. Before a heartbeat passes, a huge revolver appears in his hand. He flips the cylinder, checks the loads, then snaps it closed. The pistol disappears back into its holster.

“Where?”

Paco grunts and points a fat finger. Raul squints at the rough hills and the scrubland below. He curses under his breath. Paco always had sharper eyes, and the passing years have not helped.

“My old eyes aren’t as good as yours, Paco. How many riders?”

“You don’t see them because there ain’t no riders, just one walker, and he’s on the small side.”

Raul stares where Paco points. If he holds his eyes just right, he sees a small blob bobbing through the scrub.

“That makes no sense. No one can cross that desert on foot. It would be suicide.”

“Si, I thought the same. But then I remembered some old stories about an hombre they called the Flying One. That ring any bells?”

Raul sinks into the stream of memory. El Sombrero, El Burro, so many years, names, and faces. Too many unmarked graves. Then a thought clicks like a firing pin against an empty casing.

“¡Claro está! You mean El Antílope, supposed to be faster on foot than an outlaw on horseback. But it can’t be him. El Antílope worked the northwest mountains. What would he be doing down here?”

“I got no idea, boss, but in less than an hour, you can ask him yourself.”

El Antílope follows a faint trail through the scrubland, happy to have the desert at his back. Prairie chickens scuttle through the dry grass. He crouches for a handful of round stones. By the time he reaches the hilltop, three fat birds dangle from his belt. Fresh meat will improve his welcome if any welcome is offered.

Cresting the hill, El Antílope spots the camp as he crests the hill. Two men on a log beside a fire and a rough cabin on the far side of an earthen clearing. He stomps to make his presence obvious. Never surprise a man in his camp, although they surely spotted him leaving the desert.

He stops just outside pistol range and raises a hand in greeting. Then he holds up the prairie hens. One of the men, the lean one with the white sombrero, waves him in. El Antílope closes the distance at a steady pace, no sudden movements, hands in plain sight. He stops at the edge of the earthen clearing.

“Buenas tardes, señores.”

The white sombrero answers. The dark-bearded one is smiling.

“Buenas tardes, señor. You have walked a long way.”

“Si, very long.”

“Come and sit. We have water. You are welcome here.”

El Antílope smiles and nods. They have made it past the formalities without gunplay. The hard part is already over. He steps into the clearing and walks to the two men, halting his footsteps at a respectful distance.

“They call me El Antílope.”

The two are standing now.

“Welcome to our camp, El Antílope. I am Raul Garcia, and this is my compadre Paco Valdez.”

“Am I right to assume that you are also El Sombrero Blanco and El Burro?”

“Yes, that was true once, but no longer. Here we use our old names.”

“Then I apologize for my nom de guerre, but I do not remember my birth name.”

“No need for apologies, my friend. Perhaps you will remember given time. We carried those silly names just as we were saddled with the hero nonsense. And why? Because peons with no cojones needed some sort of symbol. Aieee! But where are my manners? Come, sit down. You are tired from your long walk. Paco, some water for our guest.”

By the time the sun sinks to the western rim of the desert, the three men are talking and laughing like old friends. The spit-roasted prairie hens sizzle over the rekindled cookfire. Paco turns the spits while reeling out another tale from the old days.

“I’m telling you that feathered serpent was a real monster, and one tough bastard. The village headman told us this serpent captured virgins and ate them. Waste of a good virgin, if you ask me.”

Raul laughs and waves his hands.

“How could it be a waste? That old man lied through his teeth. There were no virgins to begin with.”

Then El Antílope chimes in.

 “Lack of virgins was a widespread problem.”

The three laugh long and hard. As the laughter fades, El Antílope is the first to speak.

“Ah, it is good to laugh. You know, one of those feather snakes almost got me as well. The sneaky bastard caught me having a piss. I waited all day outside its cave. Finally, I couldn’t hold it no more. I’m in the middle of a glorious piss when the serpent pops out from behind a rock. Like an idiot, I didn’t have my rifle. So, I drop my pito and unwind my whip. Meanwhile, I’m pissing on my boots. Maybe the sight of my little wet pito confused the feather snake. Anyway, the monster hesitated, and I cracked my whip right in its eye.”

“¡No me digas! Then what happened, hombre?”

“That snake screamed like an eagle and ran for the hills. I buttoned up, dragged the alleged virgin from the cave, and ran like hell. Pure luck, muchachos, nothing more.”

Raul passes the bottomless mescal bottle and slaps El Antílope on the shoulder.

“If not for luck, we’d have been vulture shit long ago, right Paco?”

“Si, jefe, luck saved us many times.”

The three men swap tales as the fire burns low and the stars shine overhead. They talk of embarrassing mistakes and lucky escapes. The mescal bottle passes from hand to hand.

El Antílope rolls a cigarette, lights it with an ember from the fire, and blows a cloud of smoke at the stars. Then he begins to speak in almost a whisper.

“Let me tell you about the worst and best thing I ever did. I have never spoken of this to anyone.”

Raul and Paco lean in to hear his words.

“Years ago, I met La Llorona.”

“Dios mío, you met The Weeping Woman?”

“The very same, Raul. It came about because of a missing child, a little boy. You know the story of La Llorona. In life, she was a poor woman named Maria. Her husband ran off with a whore. In a fit of rage, she drowned her two children in the river. She regained her senses, but it was too late. Her children were dead. She was damned forever. Maria drowned herself and became a ghost haunting the riverbanks, searching for her dead children.”

Paco waves the bottle in the dark.

“Si, I remember La Llorona, the river ghost. She never found her dead kids, so she snatched living children from the riverbank. A sad story.”

“But not just a story, my friend. The villagers sent for me, like always. I tracked the missing boy to where his footprints disappeared beside the river. You would think the boy had drowned, of course. But there was another trail, faint and strange, like cloth dragged across the ground. This trail led to a cave. Always a damn cave. And there I found the boy and La Llorona.”

“Did you fight her?”

“No, my friends, and this is my best and the worst deed. She was very beautiful, dressed in a tattered gown. The child lay at her feet, whimpering in fear, but I was not afraid. I sat beside her. The night grew old as she told me her tale. Never in my life have I felt such grief. At dawn, she allowed me to take the boy, and in turn, I left her alone. I am sure she took other children later, but I could not bear to harm her.”

Paco passes him the bottle and sighs.

“Do not regret mercy, my friend. Is that not right, Raul?”

“Paco speaks the truth. All our lives we have chased evil up and down the mountains, across that damned desert, and back again. But no matter how many evil things we defeated, the world did not change. Now we find ourselves here, three old men around a dying fire. I suppose this is the retirement ranch for old heroes.”

Paco laughs aloud.

“What’s so funny, Paco?”

“You’re right, jefe, but we need a better name. Meanwhile, you two heroes gotta promise you won’t start bragging about who was the best and the fastest. You’ll end up shooting each other, and then I’d be a sidekick with no boss.”

El Antílope raises his hand in a solemn oath.

“I swear it will be so. You have welcomed me, and for that I am grateful.”

“Si, and I, Raul Garcia, swear the same.”

“Well done, my friends. Now, here under the shining stars, I name this place the Camp of Old Heroes.”

He waves the bottle at the night sky.

“Look how the stars shine. We are nothing to them. Maybe we will see a shooting star and it will bring us luck.”

As if his words bear prophecy, a fiery trail shoots across the heavens. El Antílope gasps. The others turn to him, see his starlit face staring open-mouthed at the firmament.

“What is it, hombre? You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.”

El Antílope shakes his head, still staring at the stars.

“I remember! Dios mio, I remember!”

“What do you remember?”

“My name, the name I was born with. My mother called me Miguel. Yes, that’s my name, Miguel.”

Miguel drops his eyes from the stars. He wipes tears from his cheeks and smiles at his new compadres. Paco passes him the bottle.

“Welcome back, Miguel.”

Raul reaches out to squeeze his shoulder.“Si, amigo, welcome home.”

The chill breeze that skips off the waves to power her flight tells she is somewhere north (the Bering sea, maybe?). Her shoulder muscles, the ones that power her flapping, ache. There is not so much as a piece of driftwood. There is only the vast, unbroken sea.

Calypso flies for days.

She expects hunger to gnaw at her stomach but she only feels emptiness. It’s like meditation, just like emptying my mind, but I’m terrible at that, aren’t I. Her muscles suffer but do not fail. She yearns for sleep. Calypso soars onwards.

Days become weeks become months. She waits for the moment when her body can no longer sustain her, but it never comes.

What torments her more than the starvation, the sleeplessness and the physical fatigue, is the boredom. The ubiquity of her numb flight never changes. One day she looks around and wonders if she has moved at all. The slapping of the waves is the same as it has always been. Calypso has adjusted to the sensation of air under her feathers so much that she is unsure whether she is moving or floating in one place. Maybe this is meditation, maybe I finally figured it out.

Calypso angles her beak downward and closes her wings into her body. She plummets towards the waves. The arctic air is freezing but the water will be colder. Bald eagles cannot swim. Even this sensation (faster, faster) of dive bombing does not shock, exhilarate, or scare her.

The moment Calypso the eagle’s beak pierces the surface is the moment Calypso the woman wakes. Under the outline of her body, the mattress is damp with sweat that has cooled. On the bedside table is the empty potion bottle, which is really no different than a mason jar, but Calypso can’t help but think of it as a potion bottle. A dried film of the purple liquid paints the floor of the bottle and traces a riverbed up one side towards the mouth to record the path the draught flowed on its way to her lips.

The enormously fat man, built like a blob of melted wax, shuffles over to her bed.

“Just coming up on fifteen hours. Not so bad.”

Calypso wonders hazily what his name was. Pemba. That’s right. Her bed is the third in a row of identical cots. Every other one is unoccupied. Calypso tries to sit up but Pemba forces her down with meaty hands.

“Don’t stand. You’re awake but that doesn’t mean that all of the chemical has left you. Stay and rest.”

Pemba presses something with his foot, and with a metallic vrrr, Calypso is sitting up. The sheets shift slightly and Calypso recalls she is naked.

“How did you get your hands on a dozen hospital beds?” Calypso’s voice is dull and feels like it is coming from somewhere far away, certainly not her mouth.

“You were out for fifteen hours. Pretty good for a first potion.”

Calypso shakes her head, trying to rid herself of the fatigue like a cloud of black flies. She feels the pounding of a bell knocker between her ears. Her head droops the way your eyelids do after many hours of sleeplessness, but she cannot shut her brain as she has just woken up from fifteen hours of unconsciousness. In the back of her throat is acid.

She looks at Pemba and says, as clearly as she can, “Where was the fucking sage?”

“That potion does not induce a sage. You know this.”

“I was an eagle. A stupid bald eagle! And I didn’t see shit. So what’s the point?”

“Your mind needs time to adjust. Otherwise it will be unable to handle the stronger drugs. This first potion went well.”

“I paid for a sage. Give me the fucking sage.” Calypso glares at Pemba. She may not have the physical strength to overpower the man, but she knows what she looks like. She knows the half-moons beneath her eyes and the menacing darkness behind them. Calypso has seen the effect she has on passersby when she pierces them with her gaze; she’s seen how they shrink on the sidewalk, how they are caught between pretending she does not exist and keeping an eye on her.

Pemba does not flinch. Pemba sees people as desperate as her every day.

“You will not see a sage today. It would kill you. I have told you this.”

“Give me the sage or you can kiss goodbye to any more cash you think you’re getting out of me. Don’t think I haven’t noticed you’re not exactly overflowing with customers.”

“If you die, I will receive no more payments.”

The cloud in Calypso’s head is dispersing, leaving a biting vacuum. She lurches forward, and, lightning quick, Pemba pushes her back down. Now Pemba is the one scowling, and Calypso, despite herself, is shocked at how the round, even countenance can flip to hostility.

“I need you to behave if we are going to have any relationship. I cannot bring the sages to those who don’t behave. It is dangerous, and I don’t do well with danger.”

“Fuck.”

“I do well with trust.”

“I’ve gotta get out of here. I’ve gotta get home. I need to sleep.”

“Can I trust you, Calypso?” Pemba’s hand is on Calypso’s collarbone.

“Goddamn it. You can trust me.”

“Stay here to rest for one hour. Then you may leave. I will see you in a week. You will bring me the rest of the payment then. If you try to see a sage today, you will die. And then neither of us will get what we want.”

Calypso remains silent and refuses to meet the man’s gaze. Pemba appears unbothered.

“Do your best to relax. Clear your mind. You have been meditating?”

“What the fuck do you think?”

He is nonplussed. “Have you been meditating?”

“Of course! That’s the one thing you told me to do, isn’t it?”

“Keep meditating. I’ll see you in a week.”

Pemba ambles away from the bed, easy as can be. His bulk vanishes into the darkness.

As soon as the fat man is out of sight, Calypso grabs the handrail and pulls herself up from the bed. “Probably stole ’em from a fucking hospital,” she mutters. When she gets to her feet she sways and her vision shrinks to a tunnel through which the only thing that can be seen is a colorless plastic package of syringes. As her sight returns, she throws on her clothes and flees the basement as quickly as her feet will take her. Calypso bangs her head on a hanging pipe and bruises her knees falling on the stairs and yells out a cuss each time, but Pemba does not reappear.

A week later, Calypso is supine on the hospital bed and Pemba is holding a vial to the light. The circles under her eyes are no smaller.

“I told you to rest.”

Calypso doesn’t know if she can feel the dried sweat from her last visit still on the mattress or if she’s imagining it. There are no windows in Pemba’s lair.

“I’ve been sleeping like a baby.”

“If you lie to me, it does not matter. If you lie to yourself, you may die. You know this is true.”

“I’ve been fucking sleeping. Shut up and give me the potion already. I don’t pay you to talk.”

“You don’t pay me at all.”

“I’ve paid you some.”

“You don’t pay me what you owe me.”

“How many fucking times do I have to tell you? The money’s on the way. It’s tied up with the lawyers.”

“Calypso, you must rest. Rest clears your mind. And meditate. This is the only way the sages will consent to meet with you.”

Calypso does not so much as twitch a muscle. The only sound that can be heard is the drip of some unseen liquid.

Pemba sighs and walks away. “Sleep for a week and come back with money.”

“Hey!” Pemba wheels at Calypso’s shout and raises his eyebrows. “I can’t fucking sleep, don’t you know that? Why the hell else would I be in this hellhole spending my last dime shooting up all this shit with some fucking crackpot?”

Pemba returns to the bed and stands statuesque for a moment. Then he hands her the vial. “Be careful,” he says. “You are in a tough spot, and the sages may help. But they can only reveal what is already inside of you. There is no help from outside that can fix what is inside. You must do that.”

By the time Pemba has finished talking, Calypso is adjusting to her form as a silkworm. Crawling with six legs comes instinctively to her and requires no more conscious thought than walking on two legs does. Her body trundles across the web of silk like a sleeve of coagulated milk.

“Look up,” says the silkworm (is she the sage?) next to her. Her tone is serene and Calypso feels that if the silkworm had been a human, she would be smiling. The two silkworms are alone on a cluster of mulberry leaves pockmarked with holes where they have grazed. The stem of the mulberry bush curves downward into a white abyss, giving Calypso the sense that they are above the sky. As Calypso moves, the plant jiggles, but she feels certain she will not fall.

“You must be the sage,” she says to the other silkworm (fucking finally, a sage!). The sage does not respond. Her back is arched in an upward-dog yoga pose.

Calypso follows suit. Two inches above them, a tapestry of silk extends infinitely. It is dense enough to block the view of anything behind it. Calypso looks from filament to filament, entranced by its luster. The weave contains no discernible pattern but instead a random assortment of dizzying colors. These colors are so vibrant they give the impression that they’re not dyed silk. The silk really is that color, right down to its core.

“What is this?” Calypso asks.

“You should have listened to Pemba’s briefing,” says the sage (damn it, she’s right, isn’t she?), and lets out a slow, echoing laugh.

Some threads, Calypso notices, are the same color as others — the exact same color. The most common color is somewhere between yellow and pink, like the blush she’d blend onto her cheeks (don’t think of that) or the rosé that she and Britt would drink on the rooftop of the Classics department (don’t think of that, for god’s sake). She hones in on one thread of this color. As she stares, its end disconnects from the web, leaving a pinpoint of white light, and bends towards her. Calypso the silkworm stares at it in recognition. I know exactly what color that yellow-pink is.

The other silkworm swivels towards her. “Don’t touch that,” she screams. It is too late. Calypso’s silkworm nose nudges the tip of the strand to find that it is the soft of pure silk, not the poke of plastic twine.

The yellow-pink strand doubles, then doubles, then doubles again. It grows to a sheet of threads, slapping and rubbing its ends against Calypso’s face all the while. They tickle her and she feels as if she is going to sneeze so she pushes forward, hard but controlled, an equal effort between her two arms (I have arms again?) like pushing a swing. The fluttering of the silken head of hair flies in the breeze (no) but it’s a few feet ahead of her and below it, she can see the furious pedaling of sneakers that she found at Goodwill not two weeks ago (No) and the girl is biking, she’s biking all by herself and something like pride is (no no no no NO) swelling within Calypso’s chest and she’s laughing (oh god!) and her legs burn with the running she’s not so young any more is she but she doesn’t mind she sprints trying to catch up and the worry and the fiero are equally balanced in her and the girl is squealing in delight (please no no no no) and Calypso’s stride is opening up maybe she’s not so old after all eh but the girl is pedaling faster and faster around the little asphalt loop in the pocket park she’ll never catch her now and

The other silkworm is pressing her body against Calypso’s. Silkworms are not warm-blooded, but Calypso can feel the little warmth where their exoskeletons touch.

“How was that?” the sage asks.

“Get the fuck off me,” says Calypso.

“I should have warned you. The webs can bring back ghosts.”

“Let’s get this over with,” says Calypso. “What the hell is all this,” she attempts to gesticulate upwards but can’t (goddamn it! I’ve lost my arms again), “shit?”

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Let me guess, those are all my memories?”

“Not quite. They’re figments of your character. This is your life’s tapestry.”

“Like bits of my brain?”

“Sort of. But your character is about who you are. It’s not about your cognitive processes.”

“So explain to me, then, what the hell all these things are.”

“I’d be happy to.” The sage turns to face Calypso, who upward-dogs to look at the tapestry.

“Every strand is a piece of who you are. Not your ability, not your history, but something that makes up you in the present day. These pieces comprise exclusively of what you have learned from other people. I don’t mean learning like you learn in school; I mean learning like you absorb in your everyday life. Everyone knows that you grow alike those who you spend your time with, but most don’t realize how fine-grained this is: every interaction you ever have contributes to your person in a big or small way. The colors, of course, correspond to the individuals who changed you. The light-ish blue ones — you see those scattered about — those are from your mom. I’m sure you’ve noticed that they’re the color of her eyes. If there are twelve strands, your mother’s blue is one of them. That’s how responsible she is for who you are. One in twelve. You might not think that’s a lot for the person who raised you, but really it is, when you start to consider everyone who has affected you. She’s left a strong mark on you. That murky black one, that’s from you dad. If there are one-hundred-and-ninety fibers, he makes up seven of them.”

“Nope. I never knew my dad.”

“And yet he left a mark on you all the same. We learn nearly as much from someone’s absence as we do from their presence. Like it or not, what he taught you is seven in one-hundred-and-ninety of your being.”

“Yeah, well, three percent’s not so fucking great for a parent. Look at my mom, she’s got ten percent. That’s what a parent should be.”

The sage acts as if she can’t hear Calypso. “And these sort of light-pink ones, the ones that are all over…”

“Doesn’t take a genius to figure that one out.” There are so many.

“Well, I suppose you don’t need any help there. You just saw that memory, after all. What I find really interesting is that so many of these fibers are not repeated many times across the tapestry. A lot of them are even one-offs. And that’s across this whole tapestry, which is miles wide. A less diverse tapestry is the sign of a narrow, closed mind. You’ve got a beautifully multi-colored web, Calypso. You’ve taken influence from thousands and thousands of people in your life. That’s good. You’ve learned from every friend you’ve ever had. People you’ve worked with or bumped into on the street or served you coffee. It’s all here. It’s all a part of you. It all makes up who you are today.”

“If you say so.”

“Take this thread.” The sage nods towards a royal purple thread, handling it with practiced mind-control, and it bends towards them. The silk loop falls between the noses of the two worms, so close that an exhale from either would push it into the other’s face (be careful, don’t touch it like you touched the other one). It is tiny and diaphanous like a spider’s rappel and Calypso instinctively recoils, worried that it will break.

Calypso feels the memory incompletely, the way you hallucinate when you’re drifting into a nap.

She sprints up the steps of the library, each footfall crunching a cluster of brown rock-salt beneath her boots. At the top another student — a sophomore, by the looks of it — pulls the key from the door and adjusts a checkered scarf wrapped around his neck. Between breaths that make puffy clouds, Calypso pleads with him to re-open the library, just for a minute. She needs a book, she says. She has a test in the morning. The boy looks out with eyes that tell the story of another tired college student more than ready to hit the hay and says no. The library is closed, Calypso should have come earlier, what kept her so late anyways. But the boy doesn’t walk away just yet. Calypso hangs her head. She meant to come earlier but had to run to the drugstore. Her baby is sick and so, of course, she can feel it coming on too. She needs this class to pass, and she needs to pass to graduate, and she sure as hell needs the degree to get a job. The boy shakes his head and the key clicks as it fits in the lock. Five minutes, he says, drawing a cigarette from his jacket pocket and looking blankly into the night.

“That act of kindness,” says the sage, the thread retreating from the pair of silkworms to return to its place in the weave, “changed your character, just a tiny bit, even though you forgot all about him the next week. You never spoke to that man again — you never even got his name, and he doesn’t remember you either — but he’s a part of you. He’s just one strand, but he made you kinder.”

“And now I’m a regular old mother Teresa.”

“It might be imperceptible, but it’s there. The threads just go on and on and on, and there are new ones all the time. No one’s tapestry is ever finished.”

“How nice!” says Calypso (really, thanks a lot, off my rocker in a basement off Spring street for an art lesson). “That’s really something special. Now how does that help me?”

“Help you?” The sage nibbles the leaf they stand on. “I’m a silkworm. I’m just explaining the silk.”

Calypso (fuck this!) trundles towards a patch that is entirely made up of the yellow-pink threads. She focuses on them and they bend as if an invisible finger is curling through them.

“Calypso, what are you doing?” Calypso ignores the sage. She backs up as she pulls, concentrating with all her might. As the threads stretch taut she feels resistance build up like a headache and she grits her silkworm teeth (pull, damn you). They’re at their maximal stretch. One snaps. Oh God!.

Calypso shrieks. Her chest seizes (I’m on Fire oh dear God). The other silk strands rubber band back to their original spot in the tapestry. Her silkworm body curls into a fetal circle. She rolls and rolls and falls from one leaf to the next (on Fire Fire Fire). The sage hustles towards her, hopping from leaf to leaf, but can’t catch up. Calypso cannot grasp at her chest because she is a silkworm (I’m Trapped) so she rolls and rolls and rolls and falls.

When Calypso wakes, her eyes are stained with tears.

Pemba is standing over her. He’s smiling. “You have been meditating.”

Calypso wipes her eyes on the sheet and sits up. “Didn’t I fucking tell you that?”

“Very good, Calypso. Was your mind clear enough for a sage to come?”

“I’ve been meditating every day this week. Like I told you.”

“Very good, very good.” Pemba’s face grows rounder still as he beams at Calypso. “Which sage did you see?”

Calypso stumbles to her feet, again feeling the darkness creep in from the edges of her vision, and Pemba does not stop her. “How soon can I see the next sage?”

Pemba stands in the direction of the exit. He is still smiling but his eyes are sad as he watches Calypso dress. “None of the sages can bring her back, Calypso. I have told you this. You know this.”

“Get out of the way. I’ve gotta get home. When can I come back?”

“You have the payment?”

“I’ll get the fucking money.” Calypso picks up her belt, drops it, picks it up again.

“How?”

“How do you get these hospital beds and besides that the fucking potions? Ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies. What that means is, none of your goddamn business.”

“Come back in a week. Don’t forget to meditate.” Calypso is dressed but Pemba remains in the corridor, blocking it with his bulk.

“Move it.”

“The potions can’t bring your daughter back, Calypso. You know this.”

Pemba swirls a potion the color of sewage. When he shakes the vial, dark clouds rise from the bottom like muck in shallow water.

“Shake it again before you shoot it. And make sure you get all the dregs down.”

Calypso extends her hand but Pemba does not proffer the potion. “Which sage is next?”

Pemba shakes his head, and Calypso imagines this motion stirring his thoughts from rest like the potion. “I have told you this. The sages only bring out what is already inside of you. I can’t predict the next sage any more than I can predict what you’ll eat for breakfast tomorrow. You know this.”

Calypso makes a swipe for the potion and misses.

“Trust,” says Pemba. “I need to trust you.”

“Fuck. I’m sorry.”

“How can I be sure you’ll pay what you have promised if you are the sort of person who grabs the vial out of my hands?”

“I told you, you’ll get the money. Tuesday by the latest. If you can’t keep this business on its feet for another six days, that’s on you.”

“It’s a lot of money, Calypso.”

“Fuck.”

“I’d like the money now.”

“I told you. The life insurance payment comes on Tuesday. Then we’ll be square.”

“You have promised me the life insurance payment before, Calypso.”

“They delayed it. You know how lawyers are. Always want to cross more T’s and dot more I’s. I crawl up his ass whenever I have the chance. This hurts me too, you know. I want the money just as bad as you do. He promised me. Tuesday.”

“Do you trust his promises?”

“I’ll get it to you. Don’t worry about it. Don’t go fucking soft on me, Pemba.”

“Can I trust your promises?”

“The life insurance payment gets delivered Tuesday. Maybe the bank will take a day, so Wednesday I’ll get the cash and bring it in. First thing in the morning. I’ll wake up early to bring it in. I’ll bring you a bagel too. Lox and cream cheese and scallions on an everything bagel. How’s that?”

“My patience is wearing thin.”

“You can trust me.”

“Tell me something to build my trust.”

“The money’s on its way.”

“How did your daughter die?”

“Fuck you.”

“Let’s trust each other.”

“I’ll bring coffee with the bagel.”

“Calypso.”

“Cancer. Leukemia.”

“Did she suffer?”

“Fuck off. That’s enough of this bullshit. Give me the potion. Give it.”

“Being honest with me may help you be honest with yourself.”

“Go to hell.”

“If you’re seeing my sages, I should know what you’re asking them. ”

Calypso seethed. “She didn’t suffer much. They do a good job in the hospital. They keep the kids happy, as best they can, you know, given the circumstances.”

“Did your daughter have to go through chemotherapy?”

“Fuck.”

“Calypso.”

“Yes. A bit. That part was tough. But we made it through. As a family, you know.”

“But your husband left?”

“Boyfriend, not husband. And that wasn’t until after. He couldn’t take it.”

“Thank you for sharing, Calypso.”

“You’re sick in the head.”

“I feel certain I can trust you.”

“You’re sick where it counts. Something’s fucking wrong up there.”

Without warning, Pemba jerks forward and wraps his fingers around Calypso’s throat. When Calypso’s mouth gasps for air, Pemba upends the potion into it. Calypso is under before she can make a move.

Calypso the cicada nymph is underground. She senses it is dark, though she does not have eyes, and she can also perceive other elements of her surroundings: the soil on her back and under her spindly legs. Goddamn it, he put me under without my consent, I’ll see how he likes a lawsuit (well, I can’t exactly call the cops, can I?). Beside her is another cicada, though Calypso does not comprehend how she knows this.

Calypso and the sage set into chewing what is at their mouths: wet, chalky, like tree bark. It’s not tree bark, she realizes; it’s tree roots. Calypso isn’t exactly hungry, but is driven by a deeper atavistic instinct that overrides hunger as it overrides all of the brain’s desires. Chewing is a default instinct for cicada nymphs, so eating involves relaxation more than conscious effort. It is reassuring to Calypso to have her brain’s noise drowned by one aim.

“Okay, give it to me straight, sage. Just tell me your speech or whatever and get it over with. I’ve been jerked around enough today.”

“We’re chewing to get to the sap. We’ll get there soon.”

Calypso nibbles and nibbles only to reach more root. Past the outer layer of bark, like substance she finds healthy, wet wood like cords of muscle. This is almost tasty.

“And the amount of sap we find represents how much piss is in my body, or something?”

The sage laughs, a full-throated genuine laugh that surprises Calypso. Am I funny? I’m not funny.

“Not quite. It represents how much you have lived.”

“So twenty-eight years. Ding-ding. Mystery solved.”

“Not how long you’ve lived, but how much. Most twenty-somethings have a few ounces of sap collected in their roots. A few have more. Some have none at all. Sap accrues the same way memory does: each experience nurtures the tree as does sunlight or rain or fertilizer, which crystalizes in one drop, or a few drops of sap in the roots. Diverse and novel experiences add up. Days that are boring and uninteresting and redundant, your tree won’t grow at all. But the times where you produce something or open your eyes in wonder or spin the silk of those you care about, those times sap flows in abundance. Those are the times, rich and varied, that lead to gallons of sap. Those are the times that matter.”

“So it’s just a measure of how many different types of food I’ve ever had. Great.”

“Variations in food and travel, yes, those things can comprise much sap for folks your age. But more of it is due to interpersonal experiences with those who matter to you.”

Calypso does not stop nibbling. The faster I get through to this sap the faster I can get the fuck out of here to a sage that will actually fix me. She and the sage work in silence for some time.

Finally, Calypso’s chewing produces a noise reminiscent of Pemba popping the cap off a tube and the two cicada nymphs retreat a step. A dribble of sap leaks from the spot Calypso has been chewing.

“So there it is. That’s all.” But that’s not all. As the sap covers their tarsi, the opening widens and sap flows thicker, faster. Oh shit!

The sage chuckles. “Very good, Calypso.” The sap fills their cavern, its tide reaching their bellies, and still the hole from which it emanates grows and soon their claws are no longer embedded in the hard subterranean soil (woah!) and they’re flowing away downstream (holy shit!) in the torrent of sap, its thickness buoying them pleasantly like a lazy river. The sage is laughing, and, despite herself, Calypso is laughing too.

“That’s a lot of sap!”

“Damn straight, a lot of fucking sap!”

“A windfall.”

The two cicada nymphs float lazily, side by side. Thank god we’re done with that chewing. “How much is that? It’s gotta be more than an ounce, right?”

The sage looks at Calypso with wonder in her eyes. “You have lived much, my friend. You have lived more than anyone I’ve ever seen. You are fulfilled.”

“No, no, no. Fuck that.” Calypso shifts, trying to turn away from the sage, but in the flow of sap, it’s impossible to maneuver. “I haven’t done shit. I lived in New York my whole life. I never left. I never had the money to go gallivanting around. I work at a gas station, for Christ’s sake. So I couldn’t tell you where this sap comes from.”

“Let’s find out.” Without so much as a gesture, Calypso knows what the sage is asking of her. She brings her mouth to the liquid and tastes the sugar of the drink almost sooner than she feels the crystalline texture.

Calypso is on her roof dangling her feet off the side. Isn’t it funny how the wind is stronger on my legs than on my arms? There must be some sort of wind tunnel effect. Below her, trash bags line the street like ugly black shrubs. Someone (is the white line on the road painted crooked, or is the whiskey getting to me?) calls up at her, asks her if she is okay (ignore it). For a moment, Calypso sees a yellow-pink head of hair belonging to an eight-year-old girl on the streetcorner and her hands stiffen beneath her, as if she’s ready to leap from the sixth-story roof and chase after her, but in the next (shit) moment, she realizes it’s only the shine of the streetlamp on the naked head of a firehydrant. I’m really losing it now. The man on the street is standing between two plywood sheds (from up top you can really see how shitty they are. I mean, make a restaurant or don’t, but don’t half-ass one in the middle of the street) from which waiters shuttle food and cocktails from the Bistro directly beneath Calypso. I can almost see the roof of my old apartment from up here; it’s only a few blocks east. The man looks up (what are those white lines called, anyway?) at Calypso on the roof, then to his right and to his left (he’s wondering if anyone else sees what he sees), and then takes five steps down the street, checks his watch (he’s got somewhere to be), then looks up again (he really does have a good heart, doesn’t he?). The voice below implores her not to jump, but she wasn’t going to jump anyway. It’s late, the man says (well, my apartment was too lonely to sleep so I came up here). He’s dialing someone (goddamn it, it better not be the cops) and saying something else to her (I can’t deal with fucking cops tonight) and she rolls backwards onto the roof, out of his sightline onto her back and stares up at the sky. I wish I was out of the city and could see a star, just one.

And then once again, she is a cicada nymph in a river of sap.

“That sounds like a rough night,” says the sage. “And yet it added meaning to your life.”

“That was last night.”

“You had a hard time sleeping?”

“I’ve got fucking problems sleeping, who doesn’t?”

“Sleeping can be hard,” says the sage, “but so can being awake.” For a moment, the two cicada nymphs float in silence before she continues. “I should have noticed it earlier. Sometimes you can tell these sorts of things from the quality of the sap. A bit sweet, a bit watery. Calypso, an overwhelming majority of your sap derives from suffering.”

“Oh great! So I’ve had a shitty life. Like I didn’t know. Wonderful.”

“Surely you had already realized that. But, you see, suffering has as much meaning as joy.”

“That can’t be it. My life has no meaning. Not anymore, that’s for sure.”

“Your life is as rich and complex as anyone’s. The amount you’ve lived is more than nearly anyone in the world.”

“I hate my life. I might as well be dead.”

“Right and wrong. You’re not happy but you’re alive, and that’s what living is, joy and pain, and sometimes one is disproportionately larger than the other. That is all part of living. As long as you can feel, you are alive, even if only what you feel is suffering.”

When Calypso wakes, she is babbling. She is talking even before Pemba comes into her frame of vision. Her pupils are dilated enough to swallow her irises. She makes no acknowledgement of Pemba when he places a glass of water on the bedside table.

“I keep moving west. Every time my lease is up, I move west. In each new apartment, after I get adjusted, I have my new go-to spots: my grocery, my liquor store, my whatever. Then, every day, I start to notice which way I head when I leave my house. I can’t help but keep track of it, it’s just some shit my brain does. And you always go one way or the other, when you leave your building. You go right or you go left. And you’re always walking somewhere, in New York. So the way I go most often — right or left — that’s the direction I move when the lease is up. It makes sense that way. And for years I’ve been moving west. Ever since she died, and Britt left, and I’ve been going from place to place, I’ve been moving west, a few blocks each time. It seems like each time, everything I end up doing is just a bit more west. But there’s one place I always go that’s east, no matter where my apartment is. In my new place, the door faces south, so that means when I exit I turn left. It’s the only time I leave and turn left. But when I do, I walk all the way to East River Park. After all the moving house I’ve done, it takes me about forty-five minutes of walking to get there. And when I get there I turn around and come back. I always think I’m ready to see the spot where she went under but I’ve never made it all the way back there. I walk all the way there, probably twice a week, and I’ve never made it to the little pier where East River Park pokes out into the river. My daughter didn’t die in the hospital, did you know that? We didn’t want her to. She was suffering too much. It was taking too long. She had no chance. I was lying to you before, when I said she didn’t suffer, but I’m sure you figured that out. She was in the hospital for two years. People always said she was strong. Fuck that. There was no hope by the end. It was her idea, going off into the river. When we set her in the water, off the end of the pier, she couldn’t swim. She couldn’t even flail. She was too weak. Couldn’t move her limbs. I was wearing my patagonia zipped all the way up and I had tucked my chin into it because of the cold. She went right under and barely any bubbles came up. No struggle. Britt tried to hold my hand but that felt wrong. And then we walked away and all I could think about was how loud our boots were on the wooden dock and that was the end. So, yeah, she suffered. She suffered like all hell. It killed me. It fucking killed me. I mean, that’s obvious. Why else would I be in this shithole? She suffered and suffered and suffered. I would have ended it sooner if I could go back and do it again. I held onto hope for too long. Or I would have held onto it longer. I don’t know. And there’s nothing I can do about it now. I just keep moving west.”

Pemba looks at her for a long while before the smile returns to his face.

“I trust you, Calypso. Bring me the money on Wednesday. And get me a bacon-egg-and-cheese on an everything bagel. I can’t eat fish.”

Calypso waits an hour before standing. As she puts on her clothes, she mutters, “at least I got all this fucking sap.”

As Pemba swallows the last bite of the bacon-egg-and-cheese, he looks off into the distance, as if what he sees is a mountaintop view rather than nailheads intermittently protruding from a brick wall. He finishes the bagel, wipes his hands on the napkin, and throws the paper bag of scraps into a corner before turning to Calypso and saying: “I take it you do not have the money.”

“The lawyer said he needs confirmation from the bank. He said it would take another few days. A week, tops.”

Pemba shakes his head. “I don’t think so.”

“I’ll get it. I promise. This bagel was an act of goodwill. Doesn’t that count for anything?”

“No. No, no no.”

“I fucking promise, okay? The goddamn lawyer is screwing me royally.”

“There is no lawyer. You did not have a life insurance policy on your eight-year-old daughter. You know this.”

“What the fuck’s wrong with you?”

“You have spent the trust you earned. You have used up your credit. Come back only with the money you owe me. Otherwise, you will never see the sages again.”

Calypso stands and the straightening of her knees kicks the plastic chair to the ground. By the time she is upright she has a gun in both hands. “Give me the fucking potion, Pemba.”

“A gun hidden in the waistband. How clever. Well done.”

“Give me the potion.”

Pemba is calm as he regards her. “A potion is not worth a bacon-egg-and-cheese bagel, Calypso. You know this.”

“I’m not asking. I’m ordering. I’ll fucking kill you.”

“You can be rather abrasive at times. Has anyone ever told you that before?”

“Don’t you know how fucked up my life is? I can’t sleep. I can’t think. I can’t look in a fucking mirror. I need this sage to fix me.”

“You still do not understand. Only you can fix yourself. Besides, you have not paid.”

“I paid for the first potion.”

“You paid for half of the first potion. I help you, and this is how you treat me? You disappoint me, Calypso.”

“You know, you’re not some fucking saint. You act all high and mighty and tell me you’re helping me, but all you give a shit about is money. I don’t know what, but I’m sure there’s a good fucking reason you’re not practicing medicine in a hospital any more. I looked you up and you did have a medical license at some point. So what the fuck happened? You’re down here with the rats. That’s what you are: the fattest fucking rat in the city.”

“You know, cussing does not give the appearance of strength. It also does not make you stronger.”

“I was right about you. You’re a fucked up guy. You’re sick in the head. And you’re not helping anyone.”

Pemba is smiling. “Then why do you keep coming back?”

“Because I’m an idiot, obviously. Now give me the potion.”

“You’ll need me for this last potion. It’s not like the other ones. You need a healer to administer it.”

“I’ll take that risk.”

“You can’t drink it. You inject it, slowly, over the course of six hours. Every hour I empty one-sixth of the syringe into your veins. Any less and you won’t see the sage. Any more and you’ll die.”

“So, fucking administer it.”

“And then what’s to stop me from killing you while you’re under?” Pemba licks his fingers, then wipes them on his pants. “That really was an excellent bacon-egg-and-cheese. There’s nothing like them.”

Calypso’s hands are trembling on the gun but she does not speak. Pemba rises and turns away to amble down the throat of the room. “Get me the money, Calypso. Then I will happily administer the last potion. I won’t ask you where it comes from. But bring it here, please. And in the meantime, don’t forget to keep meditating.”

When Calypso squeezes the trigger she is surprised at how easily it gives. There is no resistance. The gun does not care that she is ending a life. The recoil jerks her wrists upwards but the bullet flies true.

Pemba screams at the impact of the bullet but falls silent when his bulk hits the ground, as if the floor has knocked the sound right out of him. Calypso tries to flip the fat man onto his back, is unable, feels through the pockets of his lab coat with one hand, the other holding the trembling gun. His body is still. Surprising he isn’t too fucking fat to be pierced by a bullet. When she pulls the syringe and the vial from its hiding place, she sees his eyes and finds that they hold neither fear nor hate but pity. Oh god, what have I done?. They are already beginning to glaze over.

When Calypso springs from the basement door, the daylight hits her like a slap to the face. Shit, it’s still daytime, how did I forget?. She sprints down Spring street, rounds the corner, forces herself to slow to a brisk walk. The gun is still in her hand (shit!). She shoves it in her waistband and pulls her shirt over it. I’ve got blood on my jeans!.

In Washington Square Park, the density of the crowd allows her to be anonymous if not alone. She reaches a square of benches half-blocked by curtains of leaves and lies on her back (meditate, meditate, meditate, empty your mind, empty your mind). From the path, a boy stares at her, too young or too new to New York to have honed his disregard for tramps or his awareness that it is rude to gawk. He does not blink. She stares back, the two foreign creatures regarding each other with cool caution and curiosity as a giraffe and a wildebeest would.

Calypso gives up on emptying her mind and thrusts the syringe into her quad. She depresses the top until it is empty.

She is a frog (a frog?), feeling the texture of the lilypad beneath her with webbed feet in more detail than she had ever thought possible. It’s like I can feel every individual atom, or at least each little cell of the lilypad (all these tiny little bumps, they’ve gotta have a name). Beside her, the sage looks out over the water, her throat bulging and deflating in the rhythm of steady breath. Oh, god, I killed him. I killed Pemba.

They are together on a single lilypad (he’s dead, lying in his own fucking basement) in the middle of what appears to be (how long before he’s found?) endless still water. It is too small (weeks? days?) to turn around, but Calypso (does he have other patients? patients isn’t right, and it’s not druggies, either, it’s fuckups like me, people who have found some way to fuck their mind up without even any drugs) believes the lilypad is rotating, letting her see that the gentle curve of the horizon can be seen in all directions. Even if no one goes in there at first, the smell will go up to the apartments above.

“What’s the lilypad?” asks Calypso (there are tons of smells in New York, who’s got time to check them out), the exhaustion apparent in her voice. “What does it mean? Just give it to me straight.”

“I thought you’d never ask,” says the sage (maybe I am a druggie, I’m flat on my back in a park like the rest of them), letting out an easy, ribbity chuckle. “This is the sum total of your contributions to humanity, good and bad. The more sap” — (back to the fucking sap, good lord) — “you add to someone’s life, the more positive threads you weave, the more you contribute to their happiness, the more contributions you accrue. Most people can see the direct effects” — (maybe I’ll go to East River Park after this. Maybe this is finally the time, I’ll be so drained from the drugs I can wander over there and look at the spot where she went under; maybe I’ll jump in too… I’m not sure if I could drown, I mean I’m physically able to swim and my brain… stupid fucking brain that causes all my problems… might force me to be alive from some basic instinct I can’t override… did her brain have that instinct? Did she want to survive, when she was under?) — “of their actions, which are obvious — bullying is bad, helping an old woman cross the street is good — but the indirect results are much more wide reaching.” — (I killed her and I killed Pemba) — “Here are the downstream effects of your actions, all laid out for you.”

“And all I’ve given to the world is this lilypad.”

“No. What you have contributed is the water.” The water is light and clear, but Calypso is unable to see to the bottom.

“That’s the impact I’ve had on others?”

“Each positive contribution to someone else’s life, direct or indirect, adds a drop of water.” — (a drop, well what’s a drop, really, what does a frog think is a drop) — “A negative contribution results in water evaporating.”

“No, that’s wrong.” Calypso edges forward (there were hardly any bubbles when she went under. I should have counted them, it wouldn’t have been hard), shuffling towards the edge (let’s see the bottom). The motion of her frog-legs causes the lilypad to crease and a dribble of liquid breaks the meniscus. It slides down the green plant to touch her feet.

The memories (oh god oh fuck) come in flashes. Calypso knows that they are memories (they’re memories but they’re Real, they were real then and they’re real Now), but that does not soften their bite. Each scene hits her like a staggeringly bright slide of a ViewMaster (like I’m right up against the movie screen… I haven’t seen a movie in so, so long; I gave up when I couldn’t sit through one, when I couldn’t concentrate, I would walk out not even knowing the plot… everyone else around, chattering happily and I didn’t even have anyone to go with) from which she cannot look away: balancing the textbook on her knee as she rocks the baby back to sleep, bleary street light filtering in through the sheer curtains, tying shoes and teaching to tie shoes (she learned quick, didn’t she? That surprised me, I thought that would be more trouble, but no, she learned so quick), filling up the tiny backpack with donated school supplies before the first day of kindergarten (I had to beg for those like a beggar, but I did it, didn’t I, I filled that bag right up to the brim), glancing up above the storybook to see if she is asleep in the hospital bed, seeing the bald head (oh god) and the closed eyes and the emaciated body (no no no no) and trying to cry softly so as not to wake her (I cry loud now, as loud as I please, all alone).

When Calypso is a frog again, the sage rotates to face her. “Nearly everyone is surprised by how much water is in their ocean.” — (I killed him, Pemba’s lying dead in a pool of his own blood) — “Even those who we consider to be bad people usually have a net-positive effect on the world. There is no necessity for balance between good and evil. Humanity is overwhelmingly kind to each other. We naturally help each other and build each other up. That’s why our few negative actions bubble up in our memory. Our shame propels us to fixate on them because they are unusual.”

“No, no, no.” (wrong, all wrong; who does this frog think she is?) Calypso is shaking (no bubbles, almost no bubbles at all) her head. “You don’t understand. You don’t know what I’ve done.”

“I am a sage. I understand.”

“What I could tell you… I don’t ” — (she’s probably still underwater, under the East River… not the only one, I’m sure the mob has sent men to sleep with the fishes… what a fucking cesspool…, her rotting corpse… is there anything down there? fish? that eats human flesh? Or does it just degrade slowly?… Eventually she’ll be just bones… that’s better, that’s more comfortable, somehow…, child’s bones) — “deserve all this water.”

“It’s not what you deserve. It simply is. Calypso, anything you could tell me, I already know. I’m a part of you.”

“You’re a sage. You know wise things. You don’t know what’s in my head.”

“I’m a drug-induced fantasy, Calypso.” — (I should have jumped off my roof the other night, do what I did to my daughter, end all the suffering because what’s the point of only suffering?… somewhere in me, there’s still hope). I’m a product of your own imagination. I only know what’s in your head, and nothing else.”

“Then you know I killed my own daughter.”

“Yes.”

The two frogs face each other, neither speaking, each gullet pulsating in a tense rhythm. That’s it, it’s out, nothing else to say. (it feels like I’ve puked, something… revolting, acidic, secret… out of my system that needed to get out and now there’s an empty spot in its place… for once, nothing to say… we walked away and I wouldn’t take Britt’s hand and I felt so utterly numb as if I were the one under a thousand pounds of freezing East River water and I thought the guilt would lighten but it hasn’t, it’s only killed me since).

“The good outweighs the bad, Calypso.”

“No. This is all wrong.”

“You have a rich tapestry of silk” — (my dad, where did he go? he got three percent of me, and I never even knew him, he got three percent for free; what percent of my daughter’s tapestry did I have?) — “, a river of sap,” — (don’t think of those same memories… pushing the bike… tying the shoes… bedtime stories… they’ll never stop coming back)) — “and an ocean as far as the eye can see. You have learned from others; you have lived a meaningful life;” — (the day when she told me about the East River plan she was so sad, but a little happy too; she had found a way out and she had thought of something I hadn’t) — ” you have been good to the world.”

“I can’t, I just can’t. I still just…”

“You’re stuck. You can’t move forward.” She didn’t struggle when she went under; almost no bubbles came up; when I walked away I don’t know if I heard the clacking of my boots on the pier or the pounding of my blood in my head or nothing at all.

“Then let me say” — (Pemba’s dead, he’s bled out by now, he’s dead on the floor of his lair, dead like a dog) — “this. You need to hear it.” (you’re just a figment of my imagination).

“Say it!” Dear god, is it what I think it is?

“I forgive you.”

The words ring out like a clarion dinner-bell, reverberating as if they are in a cavern rather than at sea.

Over the sage’s shoulder, Calypso can see land on the horizon. She doesn’t feel anything but stillness from the lilypad, so it surprises her to learn that they have been moving. The land approaches at a rapid clip, and soon it clarifies into blocky shapes above a sliver of earth, disjoint but connected into one mass. The shapes grow. They are distant, then significant, then towering, then comforting as she recognizes the skyline of the southern tip of Manhattan. It takes her a moment longer to process the view since she’s approaching from the east, meaning the buildings stack in an unfamiliar order. Just to her right is the Williamsburg bridge, and far to her left is the Manhattan bridge. She knows that if she were able to turn around, behind her would be Brooklyn. There are no ships in the East River, and no waves. The lilypad has not wobbled once.

“It’s New York,” she mutters, without thinking. “I’m headed home.”

“And I’m almost there.”

Tigers in the Sky

Last night the sky split open,
ribs of starlight cracking,
and tigers leapt through constellations,
paws sparking comets over sleepless cities.
I counted stripes as I ran,
through markets smelling of spice and fire,
wondering if the stars
were teaching me
to hunt my own shadow.
A child laughed somewhere,
jar of wind in her hands,
and the tigers bowed
to taste her air
before slipping behind fractured clouds.

In the garden where bones bloom,
petals curl around ribs and skulls,
white as forgotten ghosts,
soft as the rain that never falls.
The wind hums between marrow and marrow,
a lullaby for things that cannot sleep.
I plant my fingers in soil that remembers
every story I forgot,
every lie I whispered to the stars.
A crow perches atop a femur,
tilting its head,
watching me learn
how to speak without a tongue,
how to grow without soil,
how to love without living.
And in the moonlight,
the bones shift,
forming shapes that blink
like eyes I’ve never seen,
breathing in the dark
with a language older than memory.

The Mathematician

He went seeking primes so monstrously large
even the cosmos blanched at their breadth.

He scribbled formulas,
stuffed them with numbers
to the point of gagging,
then fed them all the more.

His masterpiece — ten thousand digits of pride —
was pricked with one unforeseen pin —
it was divisible by 10007.

Not thirteen, his usual foe,
but this fifth columnist,
hiding out in the land of five digits.

He folded up his brain
like old clothes,
tossed it in the nearest donation box.

In the city, there’s a homeless man
who will prove 1=0
for spare change.

Weightless.
Yes. I’ve been that,
floating around in a cabin
like a dust mote,
waving my arms, kicking my legs,
anything to introduce myself
into such an absurd situation.

I’m sorry but I can’t really
explain it to you,
other than,
without gravity’s anchor,
the body’s about as useless
as your brother.

I drift up.
I touch the ceiling.
I maneuver myself
but, like an oar
in a maelstrom,
my intentions rarely
match the results.

Yes, it’s strange.
My heart, every now and then,
has abruptly ascended,
(like the time when I first met you
if you remember)
but, on those occasions,
the rest of me
didn’t come along for the ride.

As for my head…
nothing’s changed there.
After a while, it tells me,
“You can do this.”
Of course,
that’s after I’m already doing it.

enchantments. I wake up
full of myself like the earth,

full of the sun. The room,
full of my shadow & full of

my fear. The world is upside
down. And gravity levitates.

Levity gravitates. In this
world of mine, the sun falls.

& the rain rises. Morning’s
yellow glory sits at my

windowsill like a bird. On
the wall of my room, I make

a list of all my nouns. &
erase every one that pronouns’

pronounce me dead. In the
cavity of my mouth, my

teeth sit in the socket of
my alveolar process like

the keys of a piano. & my
tongue is the pianist. It plays

to an empty room. Emptiness
is a big audience. It sings along.

Night rises. & darkness goes
up on the earth. And I’m down

on the cloud with the moon
& the stars— shining until

we are out of light.