she knew
we were flawed

our insistence
& our rush
to arrive
to be present
nearby
& unabashed
    lift the tenor

explain the gravity
or change the chemistry
for modern love
intuitively learned
& reworked 
to romance
our belonging

she knew
Mary Shelley
she knew

Mary Oliver too
who relearned herself
in nature’s garden

the patchwork quilt
readied for the deep chill.

Subsequent Harmonies

he’s different,
unmarried & early future,
where they’re all single,
educated, highly literate technologically
& fascinated by the plausibility
of that silicon beauty,
those automated responses &,
total subservience

he wonders
should he intervene,
bring her to life, define her
& be her champion
because he loves her sensual statistics
& that impending deference,
to him & only him

her manual will be his Bible
that narrative for shared fulfillment,
a new life’s quality dimension
for without her
he is just another aching man
awaiting a designer purchase,
where a formal request to dance
is no longer required.

There are still sapiens on Earth. Often do we remember and feel more than proud that only we Godlings exist – the most sophisticated & most exquisite human-robot compounds. It is true that occasionally we cannot help recalling one or two of them, like Shakespeare & Einstein, but that’s when they pop up unexpectedly from the back of a chip as a couple of forgotten algorithms. Their story tells them they are much more developed physically & intellectually than chimpanzees, while in reality the latter is at least spiritually far more respectable. Since sapiens have proven good for nothing & for nobody, just a sub species of waste wasting endless earthly resources, how can we get rid of them in such gargantuan crowds? — To eliminate them once & for all, or just to wait for their total self-destruction?

On the Recycling Day

One neighbor took out a blue box
Full of cat skulls and dog legs
Rather than glass or plastic bottles

Another carries out a yellow bag
Containing human bones, mostly children’s
Instead of magazines or paper products

A third pushed out a green bin
Filled with failed evils and devils
Where there should be leaves and twigs
While the garbage truck is setting a huge time bomb

The Moment My Soul Becomes an Electron

I find myself lost in a space of dark densities, where
The sun wind keeps blowing hard in all directions

Travelling as fast as light with other fellow electrons
I recognize few of them as my former acquaintances

Before swarming into antennas, sensors, end users
We all slough off our clothes made of digital codes

As we fill in every blank with our shapeless bodies
The whole world trespasses into a parallel universe

While resurrecting at every switch turned on

He flounces in snarling
Like a boiling kettle,
Eyes bloodshot, teeth grimacing,
With a lashed-out tongue.
Explosive cracks of breaking feet
Stunned the stool under her.
Father sags on the floor
Like a bag emptied of onions,

Where is the food?
Echoes in the darkness,
A sing-along, endless memory
Written on tablets of blood,
Like desecrated monuments,
Like the wooing of the wind,
In a stormy night.
She falls off the stool,
Blinded by love.

My head shot through the window,
Guilt straddling my face, my heart,
Telling me it is a mirage,
This quest for harmony
Or peace, or brotherhood,
Whatever that brings calm to bones.
Father’s power is flecked with ire
Of an inner darkness
Of a mountain screaming in my soul.

The body – it’s battered
The soul – it’s shattered
The heart – it’s aching
The pain – it’s rising

The eyes are closed
Can’t face the light
The crowd is jeering
Enjoying the sight

Standing condemned
Before the world
Waiting to pay
For all the crimes
And all the sins
That I have committed
Might have committed
Could have committed
Would have committed
Should have committed

The judgment is out
Guilty as charged
For all the things that I
Should not have done
Might not have done
Could not have done
Have not done,

we will
Kill the devil.
Kill the devil
Kill the devil
Kill the devil now

II

Why are you so nice and good?
Why am I so bad?
Why are you so happy?
Why am I so sad?

III

The devil is lamenting
Ha ha the devil’s lament
The devil is lamenting
Ha ha the devil’s lament

He can say what he wants
But we will not believe him
He can cry all he wants
But we will not relieve him

Kill the devil
Kill the devil
Kill the devil
Kill the devil now

Break his bones,
Break his bones,
Broke his bones,
Break all of them now

He may cry, he may beg,
He may twist in pain,
His bleeding,
His pleading,
His cries for mercy
Will all go in vain,

He may well pretend,
That he will now repent
But we will not relent,
But we will not relent,

We will
Kill the Devil
Kill the Devil
Kill the Devil
Kill the Devil now

We will
Break his bones
Break his bones
Break his bones
Break his bones now

IV

I am dead
Oh how beautiful thought
When all is over
Nothing to worry about

I am dead
The twisted body can rot
No pleasure, no pain
Nothing is all that I’ve got

I am dead
There is nothing that I want
No possessions, no desires
Am reduced to naught

V

We killed the devil
Killed the devil
Killed the devil – Yes

We broke his bones
Broke his bones
Broke his bones – Yes

It took him around a month to understand he was dead, and another few months to understand that he was not in heaven; he hadn’t even left Earth yet. He wasn’t in his hometown of Tecumseh, Michigan, however. For whatever reason, his spirit was in a part of New Zealand Evan hadn’t even visited during his backpacking adventures.

The other two spirits wandering the street proved disinterested in his company, nor were they up for answering any questions he had. Their eyes almost seemed glazed over as they dragged their souls up one side of the street and down the other, and he often wondered if the two spirits even heard him.

Any attempt to leave the street was met with a sort of barrier that pushed Evan right back onto the street. His record in the eleven months since his untimely death was two meters, before being shoved back into a record store or into yet another trendy restaurant.

While the two spirits ignored him, Evan took to studying them mostly out of desperation and boredom. Despite being seemingly oblivious to their surroundings, they were clearly searching for something, he thought. Every now and then, maybe once every week, their eyes would suddenly snap to someone living who was walking on the street. It was always for a few seconds, always with a different person. A few seconds and the spirits—maybe one had been a woman, maybe one a little girl—would go back to their aimless wandering. The two spirits reminded Evan of a nursing home he had visited before his great-grandmother had died. He had seen quite a few people in the home with the same apathetic eyes as they had also wandered with abandon.

Was he doomed to be like them? Was this how all spirits became?

Evan was a firm believer in heaven, and it disturbed him that he was stuck. He felt nothing pulling him onward; nothing to suggest anything was amiss in his being on a strange little street in Wellington. Where was the guidance? Who was there to tell him what he was supposed to do? There was no one but the two other spirits.

Mainly to avoid them, Evan began wandering the halls of a lovely hotel called the Q Hotel. He attempted to be polite by staying in unoccupied rooms as he found every so often, he could knock a piece of paper off of a table or run his hands through some wires in the walls and flicker the lights. Most of the time this all occurred on accident, and he didn’t want anyone to see. The Q Hotel was a sanctuary for him away from the terrifying things on the street below; he didn’t want to see it closed because of suspected faulty wiring.

What was his unfinished business? Evan had learned from somewhere that beings like him… ghosts… were left on Earth because they hadn’t completed something. He had suffered a rather humiliating death—getting too drunk in Auckland, diving into frigid waters with his massive backpack strapped to his back, and almost immediately drowning. Was the embarrassment he felt his unfinished business?

He spent months attempting to come to peace with how he had died. He tried to reason away the death with the stupidity only a still-forming brain can act on. There had been alcohol involved as well. Surely, he could blame the alcohol.

Why did he have to be stuck in Wellington? At least if he had become stuck in Tecumseh, he could check in on his mother. If he wasn’t worrying about moving on, he was worrying about his mother. How was she going to live without him? He wished he could somehow float through the air like ghosts supposedly could and just go see her. Evan had no idea how she had taken his death, but he imagined it wasn’t going well. She was already a mess without his death helping her along.

When the hotel rooms all became full, Evan would quietly move through a wall back to Cuba Street. No one walking the streets paid any attention to him whatsoever, and he found himself wandering just like the other two spirits. There was nothing to do but wander, he realized. It felt like maybe he was waiting for something, but he didn’t know what.

At least his ashes had been put into an amusing fountain. It seemed to have been installed for the entertainment of passersby because about once every few minutes, the top bucket would fill with water and pour that water quite sloppily down to a series of buckets attached on a pole beneath. The result was water that splashed all over the place on its way to the basin below. Evan delighted in watching several businesspeople sit on the edge of the basin only to get soaked. He learned many new swear words in foreign languages this way. Sometimes people liked to jump into the waters and swim. Usually, they were drunk and usually it was late at night.

Time dragged despite the small light of amusement the fountain brought him each day. There was no need to sleep, to eat, to do anything in particular. No one was even paying attention to him. It felt crushingly lonely the longer he endured the street. Even watching people as they chose clothing from shops or vintage records from a music store failed to capture his interest any longer.

He noticed the two spirits seemed to avoid the bucket fountain just as they had avoided the Q Hotel, and so Evan often took to standing in the basin, watching the water fill the buckets. If he concentrated, Evan could almost start to tip the buckets forward before they were full, which would catch even the locals off-guard.

On the anniversary of his death, Evan was hard at work trying to figure out how he could reach the top bucket. He reached up yet again to see if somehow he was floating upward when he sensed someone was watching him. He looked down to see the woman and the child standing right in front of the fountain, glaring at him.

It was the first time he had gotten a good look at their faces. He felt a cold dread creep into him as he noted the whitened eyes, the dark hair with missing patches, the sallow cheeks and white lips. The woman reached one hand out to him. Evan leapt back with a cry and landed on the other side of the fountain.

The woman and child walked through the fountain to reach him. The child reached her hand out as well. Evan felt himself backing away from them with his own hands up. He went through the wall of a clothing store and then hit the invisible barrier that trapped them on the street.

He turned around, away from the approaching ghosts, and banged on the invisible wall.

“Please!” he cried to no one. “Please!”

He knew they had touched him when an icy sensation burned through his neck, then his head. His spirit refused his commands as it turned back toward the two ghosts. They had their hands on his head now, his face, his eyes. It felt like they were attempting to bury him beneath the icy waves he had endured in his final seconds of life.

“HEY!”

The two spirits snapped their hands away, and a small sensation of warmth returned to Evan. With the startling realization that he had been kneeling, he leapt to his feet and looked to the opened door of the little shop. It was in the middle of the night for the living, yet here stood a still-alive woman. She was panting hard, her hand up and pointing at the two ghosts like she was trying to push back lions. They stared back at her with indifference and waited.

The living woman turned to Evan.

“Get out of here!” she yelled.

Evan wanted to scream that he couldn’t leave the street, which made running pointless, but she was the first being to have spoken to him since his death. He listened.

He waited outside near the bucket fountains again, annoyed now by the playful splashing of water. He was trying to listen inside the clothing store, but all he could hear was the fountain. What was going on? Should he check on her? What could he possibly do, though? What had those ghosts been doing to him?

Two agonizing minutes later, the woman came out of the shop and sat on a bench near the fountain. She was still breathing hard, and she rubbed her forehead like she was nursing a bad headache.

“You’re safe now,” she said after a minute. “I sent them on, so they won’t bother you anymore.”

“Thank you,” Evan could only think to say as he marveled at her.

The woman, who was maybe in her 30s, looked up at him and smiled.

“You’re young, too,” she said. “How long have you been here?”

“Maybe a year?” Evan said with a shrug. “I can’t keep track of time.”

“Of course, of course,” she said. The woman spoke English with an accent Evan couldn’t place. The revelry of speaking to someone had taken him so completely off-guard that he hadn’t even noticed the accent at first.

She stood and watched the fountain for a while.

“Do you want to go onward, too?” she said at last.

“Who are you?” Evan said.

“I guide spirits,” the woman said. “I go where I feel lost souls and help them out. No one else seems to be doing that right now around here.”

“And how do you know the way?” Evan said.

The woman smiled.

“No one’s ever asked me that one before.” She studied his face. “You’re so young. What happened?”

“I was an idiot,” he said with a deep sigh. “Do you think that’s why I can’t move on?”

“No, plenty of idiots move on,” she said. “Actually, I have found being an idiot helps you accept your circumstances and move on by yourself. It’s usually the more intelligent people who trap themselves here.”

“It’s my mom,” Evan said. “I don’t know if she’s ok.”

The woman smiled again.

“I knew you were a good one. I just had a feeling about you. That’s why I saved you.”

Evan watched a few people nervously walk faster on the other side of the street as the woman pulled out her phone. He reached up and managed to tip one of the buckets slightly faster than it normally did, which prompted the three people to break out into runs. The woman laughed.

“What were they doing to me?” he said as he watched the humans run.

“They wanted company being dragged into oblivion,” she said without looking up from her phone. “It happens when spirits aren’t guided in a timely fashion. They start to lose their memories of being human in the first place, and then they get lonely and want other spirits to feel the same. It’s like a virus, really.”

The woman held her glowing phone out to Evan.

“Is that you? You said about a year ago, right?”

Evan peered at the phone’s screen to read out a headline: American drowns in New Zealand in suspected suicide.

There was a photo of him beneath the headline wearing his hiking backpack and beaming.

“Suicide?” Evan said with a shudder. “My mom can’t think that! I didn’t try to kill myself.”

“Do you remember your mom’s phone number?”

The spirit stared at her. Silence fell over the street for so long the woman looked up from her phone.

“I don’t even remember her name,” Evan said. His eyes widened. “Oh my God, I don’t remember my mom’s name.”

“Don’t panic,” the woman said. “It’s ok. I’ll look it up. The article says you’re from Tecumseh, Michigan? Never heard of it.” She flicked her finger across the screen. “Ok, ok, you’re Evan Adsit. Right?”

“Am I?” he said. He felt the same coldness from before, though the ghosts were gone.

“Evan!” the woman snapped. He looked at her as though from the wrong end of a microscope. “Stop it. It’s ok to forget things. It’s my fault I didn’t get here sooner. There are others like me, but we’re stretched thin at the moment. It took me longer than it should have. I’m sorry. But don’t give up.”

The woman held up her phone again.

“Is that her?”

Evan squinted at the photo on the woman’s screen. He saw his mother smiling in a family photo that, with a start, he realized was part of an online obituary the local newspaper had run for him. For a moment, he could almost feel heat return to his frozen limbs as he remembered those light brown eyes gazing with adoration at him every time he came home from anywhere. It didn’t matter if Evan had come back from the gas station, his mother’s eyes would silently greet him like he’d returned from the other side of the world.

“That’s her,” he said. The burning ache he felt to be near her again pulled him out of the cold. His eyes could only see her.

“Her name is Maria Adsit.”

“Yes, that was what it was,” he murmured. His eyes were still transfixed on the photo.

The woman slowly moved the phone away from Evan, and she began furiously typing on the phone. She pushed a button on the phone to put it on speaker. 

“Hello?” the woman said into the phone’s receiver. “I’m sorry to bother you, but I have new information on the death of your son I thought you’d want to know.”

There was a pause before his mother’s enraged, almost incoherent voice poured out of the phone’s speaker, momentarily filling the street. Evan felt a thrill of fear as his mind took him back to when he had been a small child who had almost run into a busy street to retrieve his runaway kickboard. His mother had screamed at him the same way she did now. 

The woman was calm.

“Yes, I know lots of horrible monsters have tried to take advantage of your loss. I’m so sorry. It’s just that I’m with your son now.”

There was a click as the phone went dead. The woman sighed and dialed it again. There was no answer. She tried again. And again.

On the fifth attempt, Evan’s mother angrily answered the phone again. The woman was met with a string of profanities that vibrated out of the phone before the woman had even put it on speakerphone again.

The woman looked up at Evan as she muffled the receiver with her fingers.

“What do you remember about your mother?”

Into the receiver, the woman said, “Please, I know it’s insane. I’m not asking for you to do anything but listen. I’m not asking for a fee here.”

“She made me take an amulet she’d bought from Japan that’s supposed to ward off evil,” Evan said. “I had to stick it on my backpack.” He laughed. “I mean, I told her I was going to Japan so I could just pick one up myself, but she insisted I use hers. It made me worry she was going to lose whatever protection it gave her.” 

The woman relayed the information into the phone, which was enough for Evan’s mother to stop shrieking in rage.

“Ok,” the woman said into the suddenly silent phone. “Maria, are you still there? I just wanted to tell you something, ok? Your son, Evan, didn’t commit suicide. Ok? He said he was being an idiot.”

“I was drunk and thought I could breathe underwater or something stupid like that,” Evan said without a trace of humor.

The buckets relieved themselves into the basin below as Evan moved to sit beside the woman on the bench. The woman spoke Evan’s version of his death into the phone and was met with more silence.

“I also want to add that I’m going to help him move on, ok? He’s been trapped for some reason in an odd section of New Zealand, but I found him and I’m going to help him move on. He’ll be ok now, so don’t worry. He was so worried about you that he couldn’t move on, so I need you to just promise me you’ll keep it together as best you can for his sake.”

For a solid minute, there was silence on the other end. Then, a shaking voice barely above a whisper said, “I will.”

The two words were a scorching knife piercing Evan’s soul, temporarily paralyzing him as he sat on the bench, staring at the street before him. Whatever the two other ghosts had done to anchor him to the street seemed to dissolve thanks to his mother’s quiet words.

“Evan says he loves you,” the woman said as Evan put his head in his hands. He could hear his mother crying. “And he knows you love him, too. So don’t worry about him anymore. He’ll be fine.”

The woman hung up the phone and smiled at Evan before tossing her phone into the fountain.

“I can’t have your mother calling me back,” she said. “You won’t be here for much longer to answer questions.” She sighed. “I’m going to have to pay the phone rental company a hefty sum for this one.”

Evan looked up at her from his hands.

“Is this going to hurt?” he asked quietly.

The woman laughed. “No, I’m not at all like those crazy ghouls.”

There was a brief sensation of warmth Evan felt flow through him, then there was nothing.

Imagine, he said, being able to go back and watch history’s greatest people and events. Stand in the senate in Rome and watch the great Julius Caesar speak. Well, watch Caesar speak anyway, as there could hardly be speech. Images would remain but sounds lost, or so his theory went. See the Pilgrim Fathers’ landing in America, famous battles, the building of the pyramids. The possibilities were endless. Then of course there would be a massive market for the more seedy and gruesome. The gladiatorial games in the Coliseum, Roman orgies, the bedroom antics of anyone famous in history. Brice insisted the mere idea of the money coming in made his head whirl.

Except of course, there was no way that he could find a way to view images from the past, once the events were over the images were gone. However, Brice did realize that he could do something else. He tried to explain the mathematics to me when he came to see me in my shop, but it was way beyond my understanding. Then of course Brice always did have an odd way of looking at things. “Thinking outside the square,” it’s called. And with mathematics, he was definitely out somewhere. So he explained as much as he thought I could handle and what he had been trying to do.

“So you didn’t,” I asked, “come up with a time camera, I mean?”

Brice grinned. It was a little weird, that grin, as Brice had been neglecting his teeth. He and toothbrushes were obviously only casual acquaintances. Brice had been working on his time camera theory idea for most of the year, and his appearance had suffered. As well as his poor dental hygiene his clothes were scruffy, his hair lank and none too clean. His usual designer stubble had extended to a full sized beard, complete with forked ends. “Something better,” he told me after several seconds of that unsavoury grin.

“Better than your time camera?”

“Yes,” Brice explained again that he realised that images, like sound, were gone as soon as they were made. But he could make a time machine.

“Never,” I said dubiously. “A time machine?”

He nodded happily. “Definitely.” He tapped his head. “All worked out in here. Worked out, refined, definite time travel!”

“But isn’t that dangerous?” I protested. “Isn’t there that thing about killing your own grandfather?”

Brice nodded enthusiastically. “Of course. Go back in time and kill your own grandfather when he is young.”

“Then your father can’t be born,” I continued, “so you can’t be born to go back and kill your grandfather in the first place?”

“Oh yes, I’ve thought of all that.”

“And?” I prompted.

“Well it’s obvious, isn’t it?”

“No.”

Brice spread his hands. “Well when we go back, we’ll just be very careful.”

“That’s it?”

“Of course. No genuine historian would try and change the past. Anyway, they’d have to be licensed or something to use one of my machines. It would be part of the contract. And we could keep modern human activity in the past to a minimum.”

“How?”

Brice tapped me on the chest. “That’s where you come in.”

I had been wondering why Brice was telling me all this. We had been to school together but we were hardly best friends. “Me?”

Brice looked round my shop at the display cabinets of cameras and recorders. “You and your video cameras. We’ll send cameras back.”

I hadn’t thought of that. “You can control them from here,” I asked, “present time I mean?”

Brice laughed. “Of course not. I mean we go back just long enough to put a few cameras in place and video everything. Then recover the cameras and their videos later.”

“But you won’t be able to control what it videos,” I pointed out.

Brice shrugged. “So what? Just think how many people will want to watch a video of a medieval street for example. Watching everything that happens and how they are dressed.”

“You think?”

“Yes.” Brice was emphatic. And he was probably right when I thought about it. I’d watch a documentary about a medieval street.

Brice continued, “Or a camera set up to video a famous battle, or set up in a palace when a king was holding court.” Brice waved his hands around as if to indicate a king’s court. “Of course, you’d have to go to the exact location to set up the camera.”

“You would?”

“Yes, I can’t move the time machine to another place. Only through time. It videos where we place it, just in the past.”

The idea of all this was getting more and more intriguing. But I could see an obvious pitfall. “But the cameras might be found, then what? You’d change history.”

Brice had thought this through and gave me another unpleasant grin. “So they’re found, so what? A roman soldier or medieval knight is hardly likely to know what they were, let alone how to work them. And just getting a battery recharged back then is impossible, so they’d soon stop. And we’d stay away from the recent past where they might be copied. No, the camera can be set up to record for an hour or a day, then we recover it. And selling the videos will make us a fortune, and once we are rich we can work out a safe way to send people back.”

“Rich?”

“Of course. Everyone else will want to see the past as well as us. So why not charge them for it? We will have a new product to sell with no competition.”

For a man who makes a living out of selling, repairing and using video cameras and recorders, the whole thing was quite intriguing. I could set up spy cameras in places where nobody in the past was likely to spot them. This would be a real test of my talents. Well not me actually set them up, because I’ll do lots of things but going through time is out. “And you want me to get the cameras for all this, get someone trained to set them up?”

“Of course. You do all that and I’ll cut you in for five per cent of the profits.”

Five per cent?” That sounded measly, particularly if I was paying for all the cameras and recorders.

“Five per cent of a million is what?”

That shook me so I had to calculate the answer carefully in my head. “er…fifty thousand, I think.”

“And of one hundred million?”

Now I was really shaken and took longer to work out this one. “um…five million? You think we can make that much?”

“Oh, much more I expect. How much do you think we will be paid to produce videos of the Spanish Armada, the Vikings, Christopher Columbus discovering America, dinosaurs?” I was obviously looking stunned here because Brice paused then leaned forward and asked, “And what’s five per cent of a billion?”

I swallowed and tried to drag my excited imagination back to the practicalities. “Yes, okay, so when are you making this time machine?”

“Making the prototype this afternoon.”

“This afternoon?” I was surprised. I had thought of several years of experimentation first.

“Yes, it’s quite simple to make really. Got the theory all mapped out in the brain,” here he tapped his head again. “Got the actual stuff together to make the circuit board, so I’ll make the prototype this afternoon. Only a small scale one, of course, running off small batteries. I’ll need a bigger power source for the full sized one.”

“The one to carry a human?”

“Correct. I mean the videos will sell but eventually, historians will want to go back, plus someone has to go to place and recover the cameras to start with. Anyway I’ll make the prototype this afternoon and give it a whirl. All going well I’ll make the full sized one tomorrow.”

“That quick?”

“Oh, yes. There’s not a lot too it really.” He strolled over to the door and looked back. “So I’ll be off. I should be sending the first machine back before dinner time. Just thought I’d make sure you’ll be on board for the cameras, editing videos, fitting in a commentary on a sound track, maybe some mood music and all that.”

Well it didn’t happen quite that fast or easily. Brice was back in my shop the next morning. “Got a problem,” he said. “Should’ve thought of it before. Don’t know why I didn’t.”

“Yes, I was thinking last night,” I agreed. “I mean how will you know it won’t break?” I patted the shop counter. “Put the machine on this counter, send it back a hundred years. This counter was not there then. So the machine will appear in the past, and fall to the ground and break.” I raised my eyebrows in a question.

My question seemed to annoy Brice. “No! No!” he snapped. “That’s all been sorted out. That’s not my concern.”

“Then what is?”

“I can’t tell where it’s gone.”

“What?”

“Well I sent it off the first time after dinner. Programmed it to return in five minutes, which it did.”

“And?”

 “Well there’s no physical proof, is there?”

“What, where it went?”

“Well I know where it went, it went to the same place but back in time. There’s just no proof that it went through time.”

“No proof?”

“None. Well how could there be? Unless there’s an old newspaper clipping somewhere that this mystery machine appeared one day, then vanished in five minutes.”

“I see what you mean.”

“I’ve sent it off thirty-two times and it’s always the same. Been up half the night doing it. So I need proof. Need to bring something back to from the past as proof.”

“What, send a human to grab something? Better ask for volunteers then. Something like that could leave you in the past.”

“No, no,” Brice said then pointed to my shelves. “Need to send one of those back.”

“A camera?”

I got another unsavoury smile. “Of course. Video the scene for five minutes back a hundred years, then we will know it’s done it.”

I couldn’t help Brice that morning, I was far too busy. After all I had a business to run and I wasn’t going to hand over a video camera to him and say “Go for it” Instead I did something I rarely do, I shut for lunch.

Brice had a house overlooking Stockade Hill in Howick and his idea was to mount the camera on the time machine so it pointed at the hill and send the machine back two hundred years. “Video of the hill two hundred years ago should be fairly conclusive, don’t you agree?” he had asked. Well of course it would be, there was no settlement here then, and the absence of the war memorial on its peak would be a definite clue. So I was round at his house ten minutes after I had shut up, with a camera.

Brice had the machine already set up on an old table on his scruffy patio pointed at Stockade Hill. The time machine was a disappointment. A piece of board no bigger than a paperback book was its base. On this were mounted four type ‘D’ batteries wired together, a homemade circuit board, a triple digital display that had today’s date and time in the upper part, and some other odds and ends off to one side that I could not recognize.

Brice was impatient to be off but said he would show me the machine working once before we tried it with a camera. He pointed to the upper part of the digital display. “That’s today’s date and time to the second, okay?” I could see the seconds of the upper display changing and said yes.

“Right, now I’m going to set the middle display to be the same but the date to be two hundred years ago, right?” I said yes again and Brice set the middle display to be a mirror image off the first, apart from the difference in centuries which now showed two hundred years ago. Brice pointed to the lower display. “Now I’m going to set the timer for five minutes, which is how long I want it to stay in the past, right?” Again I said that was a yes and Brice set up the lower display to read five minutes.

“Can I ask a question, Brice?”

“Yes, what?”

“How long will it be gone from here?”

“Well five minutes of course.”

“Well why you don’t get it to be gone for five minutes in the past, but reappear back here merely a second after it left.” It seemed an obvious thing to do to me. To Brice it seemed absurd.

“What?” He glared at me which was nowhere as bad as the weird smile. “Were you listening when I explained how this worked?”

“Yes, but who can understand all that maths stuff? But why five minutes? Why not go back to the past then return here in the same second or so that it left?”

“No, I won’t know then if it went. Or I might be wrong and it might return before it’s gone, and I don’t know what would happen then with two machine occupying the same space. Maybe I’ll get round to just seconds away when I’ve refined it, but for now if it’s gone five minutes in the past then five minutes will pass here, okay?” The ‘Okay’ was obviously a signal; that he did not want an argument about his machine. So I just said yes again, and left it at that.

There was a single push button in the middle of the circuit board and Brice hovered a finger over it. “Ready?”

“Sure.”

“There’s a five second delay before the machine takes off,” he told me. “Gives me plenty of time to get my finger clear of the field.” I didn’t like the sound of this field, so stepped back so I was at least two meters from the machine. Brice saw what I did and smiled. “The field doesn’t reach out that far.” He pushed the button. Two LEDs came on, one red and one white. Brice pulled his finger clear but kept leaning over the machine. Five seconds after he had pushed the button the machine disappeared.

It was so instant that it was like a conjuring trick. Except it was no trick because I could clearly see the patio, table and Brice the whole time. So he could not have pulled off a conjuring trick. Any doubts I had went now. Brice had sent his machine in to the past. I went through five per cent of various numbers of millions and billions in my mind while we waited for the machine to return.

I was timing the machine on my watch and five minutes after leaving it reappeared. “Brilliant!” was all I could think to say.

“But no proof,” Brice insisted. “That’s why I need your camera.”

“Yes, well there might be a bit of a problem there.”

“Why?”

I went over to my bag and opened it. “I thought your machine would be a bit bigger.”

“So?”

I pulled out an old clunker of a video camera. “I think this might be a bit on the large size.”

Brice cursed me for nearly two minutes. Obviously putting the video camera on his machine was not going to work. The weight alone might break the machine, plus once the camera was in place Brice would not be able to switch it on. He stopped swearing long enough to ask why I had brought an antique camera.

I tried to explain that I wasn’t going to risk an expensive new camera on an untried time machine, but I don’t think he was listening because he started swearing again. Finally Brice calmed down. “Can you get another camera? Something smaller?”

Eager to please, and keep my five per cent interest, I said, “Of course. Can we try this tonight? I’ll come back at five-thirty when I close up the shop.”

Brice agreed, and said he would transfer all the machine’s bits and pieces to a bigger board to leave room for the camera. I gave him a rough idea how big my smallest camera was, and he went off to find another piece of board while I went back to my shop.

That evening when I returned Brice had the whole machine mounted on a much bigger board, with a space in the centre to take the camera. Apart from two more batteries he had added to create a bigger field around the machine, it appeared to be the same. “Tried it, tested it, she works,” Brice told me as I set up the camera in the middle of the machine. He had fitted a couple of hooks to the board, and insisted string tied to these and over the camera would keep it steady.

I had brought a small monitor along and I connected the camera to the monitor cable. The monitor showed a slightly tilted view across the patio and towards Stockade Hill in the background.

“Seems to be okay,” I told Brice disconnecting the monitor cable from the camera. “Recording now.” I switched on the recording function. Brice had the machine already programmed to go. Two hundred years back for five minutes like before.

He pushed the button on the circuit board, the LEDs came on and five seconds later the machine disappeared. I spent the five minutes calculating five per cent of innumerable billions that I could earn over my lifetime, while Brice paced up and down. Once he stepped towards the edge of the patio and pointed to Stockade Hill and said, “We should find some old photos of the hill to compare it. Isn’t there a historical society around here?”

“Think so.”

“Well they should have some photos shouldn’t they? I mean when the settlers came here. Give us some idea of how it was two hundred years ago at least.”

I didn’t know if there were settlers here then, but was sure they would not have had a camera. However it didn’t matter as just then the machine reappeared on time. I stopped the recording and hooked the camera up to the monitor, pushed rewind and then play. The recording showed the tilted view across the patio with Stockade Hill in the background. There was a shadow across the foreground which I assumed was Brice’s as he switched on the time machine, then the shadow went away as he stepped back. There was nothing but the tilted view across the patio. Stockade Hill looked the same, with the same houses and trees.

“What’s wrong with it?” Brice asked after at least a minute had gone by of the playback. 

“Nothing.”

“Well something is wrong, because it’s just the same view.” Another minute or two went by. “It’s from before, when you were trying out the camera,” Brice whined.

“No it’s not. I wasn’t recording then, we were looking at a live picture on the monitor.”

Brice’s voice had taken on a real whiny tone now. “Well this is the live picture now, not the recording.”

I waved my hand in front of the camera but it didn’t show on the monitor. “No, this is the recording all right.”

“Then where’s the video from two hundred years ago?”

I pointed to the monitor. On it Brice had come into view and was pointing at Stockade Hill. “That’s you asking about old photos of the hill from the historical society,” I pointed out.

“It can’t be,” Brice protested, “the machine was gone then.”

I pointed to the machine. “Switch it on again, Brice.”

“What, why?”

“Because I think I know what happened.” I looked back to Brice. “This field we have to watch out for, how far does it extend?”

“Only a few centimetres, and that’s only for the spilt second the machine is disappearing, why?”

“Just want to make sure I’ll be safe.” Brice set up the display then switched on the machine. The two LEDs came on, then five seconds later the machine disappeared.

While he was setting the machine off again I had broken off a long twig from a bush. I stripped its leaves off and went back to the table. I carefully prodded the area where the machine had been. It proved what I thought had happened. I looked back to Brice who was watching me as if I was about to perform a miracle.

“Sorry, Brice,” I said.

“Sorry, why?”

“Your machine didn’t work. Well not as a time machine.”

“But it’s not there.” Brice pointed towards the empty table top that I was leaning over. “It’s gone.”

“No it hasn’t.” I tapped the thin air where the machine had last been seen with the end of the twig producing a tapping sound. “It’s still here. However look on the bright side. You have managed to produce the world’s first invisibility machine.”

We looked at each other for a while, then I said, “Who do we know in the military because they are going to love this?”

Brice looked at me for a long minute, then replied, “I don’t know about the military, but I do know a few people who are criminals. Still want five percent?”

Root doctors think they appoint my rounds. Sure, I serve when the root doctor calls—why not if his purpose and mine alike be vengeance—why then should he not breathe me and I come? Sometime I get loose from a root doctor, run my own way for sheer mischief.

When I do get aloose, my fate is this wandering way I got used to. Made of the peat bogs, waters of the dark emptying to sea, still cursed at birth that I may not cross the blue water. Because Gullah know, all bad things come when you cross big blue water. The slavers come with their collars by blue water. The ocean itself so blue and free, but not the Africans brought over it to Carolina, to Daufuskie. The Plat-eye cannot be free either.

Heed the Gullah-Geechee, for if not, the Plat-eye—that is me—may come for you. Heed the root man, too, or he send the Boohag to ride you nights so you get no rest and have nightmares til dawn.

Not having the life of a man, the Plat-eye can never die. So I know many memories from many men’s full lifetimes. Sometimes I assume the likeness of a creature—fox, night hound, poison toad, and yes, a man. But any shape I take, I get one eye only. You might could find me as a man walking with a bloody socket, a eyepatch, a glass eye like a marble in my head. But with my one eye I see all I need to, over many a man’s life. Root doctor dies, but not the Plat-eye. I keep seeing.

I will tell you what I know of William Yeldell Cosper and how he come to his uneasy grave. His fate was sealed long before the year Bill was born, 1800 and 44. Curse begun way back with his daddy’s daddy, ‘most a hundred years before. I saw it all with my one eye and tell you the truth.

Old Bill granddaddy come by way of Charleston to be a Low Country preacherman. Bill grandmama from the same county over near Sea Island, where the indigo grows, where the Gullah land leach its sorrows to the blue ocean. She a Carolina Yeldell that give Bill his middle name, but Bill’s own mama a old Creole name. A Creole woman ought honor the ways of the Gullah if any white woman could, but she married the grandaddy preacherman’s son— he a preacherman, too—and take on all his pure white ways.

Bill one of 13 children born to the Creole woman and preacherman James Berry Cosper. This I have told you is the line of Cosper genrations. Now I will tell you how the curse was laid and played down till it settle on Bill.

The first preacherman, granddaddy to Bill, come from over Charleston way to scoff at the Gullah-Geechee, and that how Boohag and I come to know finally William Yeldell Cosper, called out like it was by name down the genrations by the root doctor. This root doctor the seventh son, born with the caul. Everybody know when a root doctor born the seventh son, with a caul wrapped round his neck, his curse nearly unbreakable down the genrations.

When the first preacherman come, name of Jacob Cosper, it was with a swagger and the voice of thunder in the marshes. Preacherman Jacob Cosper tell everbody he bring Christ the light of the world to Daufuskie. He say he the son of a preacherman from across the water and ordained by the Bishop Francis Asbury over there—he and his brother George Henry Cosper both. He awful puffed up bout a Bishop there singlin them out and placin his seal on the Cosper brothers. The slaves was given to know that “Revrun Cosper” was powerful important. He said so hisself and all the masters did too. He and his brother planters theyselfs.

Revrun Cosper was brought by masters at the big houses who wanted the Gullah to pray like the white people do. He in their pay to throw over the African ways. “Savages,” he holler. “Necromance,” he shout. He thunder all about judges and a book called Samuel and rail on and on gainst the ways.

It chance one night the Revrun Cosper come up on the ring shout. In the ring shout the Africans dance to a fever when the spirit come and set them all trembling before they fall to the ground and writhe, sometime in a heap if that how they fall. The ring shout forbid by the masters, but the slaves guess it’s safe when no masters round. Revrun Cosper come up in the slave camp one night. Nobody know what business he on. After, everbody say a spy sold them out to the Revrun and master for a month of biscuits.

He got to thunderin about fornication and wickednest and savage brutes, the devil and hell and whatall until it look like the veins in his head and neck might pop out his head. He hollerin and preachin and prayin somethin fierce up on his fine silver horse.

“You, boy! You go tell your master the Reverend Cosper requires him ungently!”

The poor man froze, then bolt when Revrun Cosper flick his whip. The master and his overseer, a foul man called Sykes from over Abbeville way, rode down to the camp double-quick.

Revrun Cosper demand to know who call the ring shout. Nobody said nothin, cause everybody know the root doctor there. When nobody ever said somethin, Revrun Cosper single out the one he send to fetch the master. “That one! He defied me when I sent him to the house to stop this—this ungodly–orgy!”

And overseer Sykes whip him must of been 20 licks, til he cannot stand and Sykes’ sweat flyin with the blood. Then they start in on some others, random lashes, even on childrens. They look like they in their own ring shout frenzy, whips and foamin mouths, all eye and teeth like a wolf. The root doctor give Sykes the stinkeye when he raise the whip on him, and Sykes just drop from that horse like he been knock off. Broke his whippin wrist, too.

When there blood and terror enough that Revrun and master and overseer all satisfied, the root doctor step up to Revrun Cosper. He fix him right in the eye and tell him to leave his Bible open to Psalm 37 for three days, facing east.

“Sorcerer!” Revrun yelled. “Heretic! You do the devil’s work!”

“Unless you heed, your land will run hard. The son of your first-born son will have no rest even in his grave. You will not rest and your line will not prosper unless you do this. A wise man will paper his walls and paint his house against the spirits I commit on you. Do this, or weapons raised against your line will prosper.”

All the Africans know to paint your porch and windows blue because no haint can cross the blue. The root doctor told Revrun Cosper how to protect gainst the very curse he just laid on him. This make Revrun Cosper even madder—a Black man preachin at him, takin on such airs.

“Blasphemer! Sorcerer!” Revrun Cosper raise his whip, but his big silver horse throw him, and he break his whippin hand when he hit the ground, just like old Sykes. Hard to say whether there more fear or anger in his eye when he stand up.

You know well as I do Revrun Cosper had no thought in the world of listenin to a word the root doctor say. So the Boohag come and rode him nights, and I come as a one-eyed fox to run his cows and tear up his chickens. When Revrun was watchin, I come with a hollow eye and stand in his fields and scare him half to death with the looks of me. When he call out to me, I just vanish and come out the fields as a one-eye fox with a bloody socket and a bloody chicken foot in my mouth. Then he shoot at me and I turn into a cicada eatin at his rice crop. He got to where he didn’t care no more about the land grant his daddy got to come over the water and he could not make his crops with me standin over them, just starin with my one eye.

Revrun Cosper and his childrens all lived, but each season that come, he borrow and borrow gainst crops that don’t grow. He sell off the farm, bit by bit, till nothin left but where he sat, and the bank come for that to seize for crop debt. He saw it go on the auction block to one of the masters who slaves he suppose to bring to Jesus, on that same auction block where he bought some slave. Revrun Cosper parish fall apart, too. So they all went to Alabama after the govment clear out the Creek and Cherokee land for the whites. The whole clan—brother’s wife and childrens, too. Moved to the place in Alabama seem to me like it eat up with mystic history, Talladega County.

But you can’t be too clever with your business. You can’t outrun a curse. And if you think you can, Talladega County not the place to go.

Boohag and me lay low a long time cause Revrun Cosper and the brother built theyselves houses that a couple local slaves hired out for the build painted. Being sold from Carolina and knowing the old ways, they painted them porches and window sills the old haint blue, just nough indigo tinted with lye—keep off the skeeters and dragonfly but also the Boohag and Plat-eye. Both Revrun Cospers never even realize they have haint porches keeping Boohag and Plat-eye away! And if them slaves know the evil of that family and the curse laid on by the root man, a haint blue porch the last thing they do for the Revruns.

Years and years, we can’t get in the house, and blue bottle trees all at the four corners of the propety, set there in secret by the Gullah sold out from the Carolinas. And that farm so small the bottle trees meant to protect the slave houses keep us off the Revrun house. Even when they take out for church, a slave with the earth pouch in his coat keep me away. Boohag and me reduced to runnin the woods and scarin rabbits, maybe somebody chasin a runaway slave wandering Talladega and Randolph County woods. Lean times when you ain’t got nothin better to do than devil the bloodhound.

But I squat and watch. I go back and forth tween them two Revrun houses. I see a few Africans on hire come and go back to they own camps when they work done at both the Revruns’ farms. I just watch and wait. Soon enough the childrens grown and married, but not alls.

One of them walk through the Trembly Pines and set up a home in McFall/Eastaboga, a place for spirits in the woods if ever they was one. I terrored him to a run, but he shed his coat when he run and dang if he not wearin a blue shirt. By the time I recover myself from confusion, he long gone.

I not too broke up about it cause I figure living over Eastaboga way its own punishmet, it so chock-full of haints. I tell you how much the spirits runs that place—right bout a hundred years after I devil that particlar Cosper boy, ole Box Car Joe come up to the finest house of the richest man in town and took a axe to ever one of that family. Then when that house let out for rent years after, he come back and done the same thing to the folks livin there. I can’t take no credit for anything go on in McFall/Eastaboga. Evil spirits runs from the Trembly Pines all the way to the grandest house in Eastaboga. I don’t think it a root curse, though. Just spiritland that flesh should leave be. Anyhows, that one got away from me. I get angry and twitchy when one get away but it wasn’t too bad considerin.

It happen that in the year 1859, a cyclone come and took the roof off Revrun Jacob Cosper house and blow off all the bottle trees sealin his land. His barn left standin, and he and the missus in there with cows and horses waitin out the rain. That when I saw my chance with the Revrun Jacob Cosper. I come as a one-eye man drenched from the storm, brim of my hat tippin rain like a waterfall. They puzzle at first but don’t bar the door. When I take off my hat, the Revrun see my bloody socket. His eyes big Os, his mouth a bigger one.

He shrink up, try to slither up against a wall behind a horse, mumblin and ahollerin. The panic in his two eyes like nectar to the Plat-eye, his babblin like music. They both in terror at my bloody eye and my grin. I do grin when I happy, and my true work make me happy, not like just triflin mischief all over the woods scarin folks. I corner him and his wife just screamin and hollerin. I get right up in his ear and ask him how faithful was he to Psalm 37 and did he remember the days in Carolina, the ring shout, did he remember me? I see from the scare in his eyes he knows me complete.

Then I change to a bloody-eye fox and nip at his belly and butt while he all tucked up and blubberin in the corner. The lady shoot at me, but I cannot die so I just laugh and keep on and truth told, she could not hit a man at five paces with that shaky grip. I give her a grin and fix my fox eye on Jacob Cosper. He try to rise and that horse just kick out from behind and knock him straight in his head. Then I vanish and leave her crazy with fear and wonderment. And I think that the end of Revrun Jacob Cosper and maybe the Missus’ mind, too. I leave her for the Boohag. Boohag deserve a little fun too.

But I still got another genration to go, and it got two revruns in it, too. Revrun Jacob Cosper’s sons name James Berry and George Henry set up they own churches closer in to the villages springin up from all the settlers moving west. Folks call these revruns J.B. and Henry.

They preach them some hellfire, J.B. a Methodisk like he daddy but Henry split off and had a Babdisk church bout 10 mile up the road from J.B. church. You might say they hold the market on the white religion and was just offerin some variety to keep folks intrested. They houses set up by the slaves, and they got porches and sills haint blue, and bottles strung way in the trees where the Revruns never see them.

Alabama be good to Revruns J.B. and Henry with cotton, especially Revrun Henry, who also got him a plantation over in Georgia and had somebody run it for him half a year, and a whole nother church over in Walker County there. Revrun Henry better at runnin things, so when he riding circuit preachin over to Georgia, he build a house there and keep it one year. After one year he qualify to buy 400 acres over there. He smarter and greedier than brother J.B. although J.B. a rich enough man in Alabama.

Oh they preach and preach about the devil and sin but mainly how greedy Yankees destroy the people way of life and tear up the states—all the thing rich white people care about and use to rile the little white farmer up on too. They rile the little farmer that want to grow his farm big enough to have his own slaves like they do, that want to be the planters like the Revruns is. They pray in they churches for war with the north.

They prayers answered, and straight from Carolina where they come from. The Africans, some of them just scared bout starving to death if the Yankee burn out all the South crops or the Confedruts take all the land have to give to feed they army. Most of them sensing jubilation day with no more lash and they own land to farm. Freedom. They sang freedom.

For the Plat-eye, war the perfect chance to part the Revruns sons from the charm bags they slaves carry when they ride them to town or they churches, take away the haint blue and bottle trees. My chance come first early in the war. Selma had one the iron depots in the whole Rebel land and they keep soldier there guardin it. They drill the Confedruts there before they go up Virginia way to fight and then they bring in whole new Confedruts to guard it.

Perren Cosper one of Revrun Henry Cosper grown sons. He pushin 40 years of age by time the war come out of Carolina. Perren still in the first muster camp for the 44th Alabama and got him the distentary, not even a full year into the war. They put him in that big building the Confedruts took from the freemasons for a hospital. Perren Cosper never see a battlefield at all, just the camp by the Alabama River and the four walls of that freemason hospital.

I just happen to be a Confedrut soldier, too, with one eye blowed out by grapeshot back outside Manassas, from the Fighting Alabama 15th,, sent back home cause a one-eye man can’t shoot straight no more. They put us right there longside each other on the floor there. I look at Perren Cosper and lay my hand on his leg. He howlin but no one hear him any more than any the other wounded and moanin Confedruts who was laying there havin arms sawed off.

Private George Robert Perren Cosper leg got horrible rotten and smell something foul, just oozing pus and purple blood. They finally drag him to a table where they go to cut off that whole leg where I touch it, when that man come in with watery bowels. They cut the whole leg off, but the rot in his whole blood.

I know he dyin. He know it too. I ask if he have word for any kin. He say his brother William Marion Cosper also a private in the 44th Alabama Infamtry and he over on the other side the Alabama River. I tell him I find him and go to him and tell him Perren gone. Then I show him my full bloody socket and stick a finger in it, grinning him to death. He did not die easy when he see the Plat-eye for real. That was June of 1800 and 62.

I went lookin for CSA Private William Marian Cosper. He not on the other side the Alabama River, but already marching north. It took me bout a year to hunt him down, but I found the 44th Alabama all the way up in Pennsylvania in the sweat of early July. He at a place call Gettyburg. I come up to that place with my eyepatch and my 15th Alabama gray homespun. I find Marian Cosper at the place they call Little Round Top, tell him Perren send me with a message. He fall to the ground like he prayin and plead with me for the message.

I pull off my patch and grin at him. “He say he miss you,” I say. Then I watch him twitch at my ugly socket but try to smile at news from Selma.

“Perren all right then!”

“Naw.” I say. “He dead.” I watch him crumple.

“But you say he miss me,” Marian Cosper say, in a confuse way.

“He don’t have to,” I say.

“What?” he say, confuse.

 “He dead.” I fix my bayonet into his eye till he fall back. “Now you dead too.”

I figure I done enough to the Revrun George Henry Cosper and his line, but I ain’t touched Revrun J.B. Cosper yet. I know I ain’t finish.

It quicker in wartime to roam as a fox. I come back down through Sharpburg, Manassas, down through the mountains and hollers. Such a long way, but I must make my appointed rounds. When finally my feet touch down on Alabama dirt, nothing as it was when I took out for Selma. It winter, and a harsh wind blowin through the Trembly Pines. All the rail torn up where fences was, and the earth just bare even for wintertime. I anxious to see the Boohag and tell her all I done.

Some slave walkin the road, scarecrow-skinny, some slave settin on porches, and not a master or overseer to be found. Talladega County just a field of crunchy frost even my fox-feet bruise. And no sign of Revrun J.B. Cosper.

I hear some slave from the old place wandering the road talk bout what happen to that family. They say they hear all kind a things—they over in Randolph County, they somewhere else in Talladega County, they in Coosa, they in St. Clair, they at Easonville, they all soldiers dead or in Yankee prisons. Lot of them married off and gone to Georgia, some in Russell County, some half dead, Missus dead at Easonville for sure earlier this year, some livin over with that Cosper son got away from me in the Trembly Pines. I hear it all bout where they might could of went, but everbody agree Missus J.B. Cosper dead of nervy exhaustion and dropsy. They say 50 Confedrut Cospers scatter in armies tween Alabama and Texas in 1800 and 63.

The slave all freed that year,I hear, so master have no one to work the land. Left the slave to starve and wish them luck. You free now like you wanted, good luck, y’all goan miss Revrun Cosper when he gone and you fendin for your own self without my hogs and chickens and cows, he say. The genruls took half everthing I had anyways, so good luck, he say when he leave the slaves free, high and dry.

I find the Boohag that night in the Trembly Pines after I hear this all. She bragging how she drive Jacob widow out her mind and she die in the summer. I brag I kill one Cosper preacher and two Confedrut privates was his sons.

The Boohag laugh and laugh. “You fool,” she say. “Revrun Henry Cosper outlive that horse kick. He die in his bed last year with me ridin him.”

I say she a liar. But the Boohag walk me to the grave in the Methodisk cemtery. There it was set in stone, 1862.

“Well,” I say to Boohag, “I still got two to your one.”

“No. I got two. I take Revrun Henry and the wife.”

“No,” I say. “I soften Henry for you and leave you Missus as a present. So you ain’t really got nothin.”

We argue this the whole night. Once the Boohag get sumpin in her head, it stay there until morning come when she got to fly or til she get distracted.

“Oh the hell with you,” I finally say.

“The hell with you,” she say back.

Well, I was bout as discouraged as could be. I already tell you how I get mad and twitchy when one get away. And here the whole damn bunch done got away. But I have time. Time one thing the Plat-eye have plenty of. I amuse myself with some hobo camps and some Confedrut deserters in the woods, then with Confedrut deserters turn night-riders, but it just not satisfying. I taunt and make mischief, taunt and make mischief, so ho-hum same. Like a cat that get weary of worryin the mouse after the mouse all wore out too. I went back to squattin with my eye on that cemtery by Revrun J.B. Cosper church.

All that squattin and watchin pay off when I see the somber sight. Here come the Revrun J.B. Cosper in a pine box drug by some mules, and must of been a hundred Cospers or churchfolk all drape in black, followin that dray. They put him in that cemtery and I watch with my own eye. The year 1800 and 79. Boohag got him like she say she would.

I look and I look at that family and finally I see one stare back at me while I lean on a big pin oak tree cleanin my fingernails with my pocket knife in tween cuttin off chunks of apple and chewin them slow and hard. He look to be bout 35, real slight and wiry, not a trace of Revrun J.B. Cosper jaw, flat and shape like a flat shovel. He got two gray eye and a hard stare, a thin, flat mouth. He stare at my eye patch.

“Show some respect, one-eye!” he yell, and chuck a rock at me.

Well, he done it now! Nobody chuck a rock at the Plat-eye and live to tell. Just as I ready to let all hell loose on him, one them Cospers pull out a blue hankerchief and start sobbin into it, and soon all the ladies cryin and moanin into blue hankerchiefs. Humankind so pathetic in they griefs, it make me a little twitchy. I could hear the Scripturin start as I took my fox form and run back all the way to the Trembly Pines. I still confused and a little wore out when I got there, so I just squat awhile.

That night I try to figure with Boohag which one it might be that chuck that rock. We went Cosper by Cosper, rulin out them I already kilt to see what boys be left. It come down to the youngest of J.B. son, George Washington Cosper, and William Yeldell Cosper, the 12th child. Boohag figure since he unlucky enough to chuck a rock at the Plat-eye, it must be the 13th child we lookin for. I say whichever have two gray eyes and a way of starin is how you know he the one.

We make our plan. First we have to find him. Boohag go to braggin how she better at trackin anything cause she got two eye and she gloat bout how long it take me to get from Gettyburg back to Talladega County. She make me so mad I say just fine then, you in charge of findin him so go on and find him and you tell me when you done with him, just so long’s you leave the last for me, like I left ol’ Missus George Henry for you. Did not, she say. Did too, I say. We argue bout that till dawn but agree Boohag can go out after him.

A long while pass in the Trembly Pines, and no word from the Boohag. I squat, scare some rabbits and deer to death. Drive some night-riders out the woods and half out they minds so they can’t think of nothing but the Plat-eye, fit for nothin but layin up in they houses all day if I let them live.

Finally one night the Boohag come back and say she ride George Washington Cosper to death. She say she mean to leave some for me but George heart just not strong enough. I mad, I real mad, but the Boohag say, well, you can get one to make up for it, and you need to even up with two J.B. sons like you done Henry, so– . They bringin him over to Childerburg to be buried in the Methodisk Cemtery where his daddy laid, and they all be there, she say.

So I went down the funerl. I look at the box and know the 13th son in there, dyin unlucky as he lived. Then I look out to the people dressed in black. I leanin on that same tree while they start singin bout leanin’ on the everlastin’ arm, cleanin my nails with my pocket knife.

Then I see him. He pull open his coat to show it lined in blue cloth. He the same man I see back in 1879 when he dady laid out, just older. Both eye gray as ever was. Now it the year 1915.

I see the blue and take out from there.

In the Trembly Pines that night, I tell the Boohag she too stupid to breathe the air she take from they lungs when she rides them, she low as a jug of spit. She tell me I should of done it myself, how she to know what man chuck a rock when it was me that saw him? I say I told her to look for two gray eyes and she say George had two gray eyes and they was brothers number 12 and 13 so why shouldn’t they eye both be gray? I got that twitchy, bothersome feelin again.

I make the Boohag take me to George house, figurin some family still be there. I dress in a black suit and wear my eyepatch, waitin in the yard til somebody come out the house. It not long before a woman come out. I present myself as a friend of old cousins Robert Perren and William Marion from the 44th Alabama. Said I was right there with William when he fall at Gettyburg, which is true. Said I just come to pay respeck on the family name after I hear George pass on. Then I ask if William and Perrin cousin William Yeldell Cosper still about.

He not there no more, but that how I learn Bill Cosper with the two gray eye now over in Ouachita Parish, Louisiana. Now that name scare me a little, because it mean “silver water.” But Boohag and I set out for Ouachita Parish all the same.

It take the longest time to find him, but when we do, he settin on a porch painted green as ivy, and the sills too, just smokin on a pipe. I chuck a rock at him, but he can’t see where it come from in the dark. I chuck another. He throw my rock back and I send it back in the blink of a eye. Then he run and get a shotgun and start shootin in the dark while the Boohag just ahowlin and cacklin like to scare you out your pants. We start callin him by name.

I come so far, and now all that twitchiness been pent up so long it bust out with a fury of it own. I think of the root doctor curse and how long I been trackin. I thought how this man chuck rocks at me. And I conjure a lightning strike to William Yeldell Cosper right there on his porch. When he fall, a woman come tearin out the house with a newspaper in her hand that went flyin all over the yard. Boohag and me both distracted with trying to read it as it fly all over the yard. Meantime the woman drug him inside. I pretty sure I kill him with that lightnin strike.

Boohag and me go down the swamp to celebrate how we fill the curse at last. We get all the creature in the swamp riled and laugh how we get the hoodoo finish there in Louisiana. But Boohag not so sure. She start to taunt me how I thought old Revrun George Henry Cosper dead from that horse kick, too.

Well, sure nough she right, cause William Yeldell Cosper there in his bedroom, with blue curtains at the windows. He stay that way five, six month. Then one day he up, walkin around his bedroom. 75 year old and live through the Plat-eye lightnin strike. It just make me madder and madder, squattin out there in the yard.

Then one day when I good and mad in the summertime, I see the woman had took the curtains up. So I take my chance and send him more lightnin right through his bedroom window. I know I got him for real this time when I see two men carry him out the front door a little blackish-purple and limp and I see the tongue lollin. He dead awright.

They take him back to the Methodisk Cemtery at Childerburg where his daddy buried. I see all what left of the Alabama Revruns Cosper in the year 19 hundred and 19, and here another revrun named Cosper from Texas layin Bill down. I wonder how they keep makin all these revruns in this family. When this revrun start sayin the words over Bill, I chuck a rock at him and then run on fox feet, laughing all the way.

I let Bill grave settle awhile down in the Talladega County dirt. Five year to the day I first strike him with the lightnin, I come back and strike his marker so can’t no man read his name ever again. What left of the Talladega and Randolph Coster kin set nother stone in it place. I strike it again, till it in a dozen pieces, all blue with the heat of the lightnin till I can’t come by no more. But the kinfolk did not come by that headstone no more either, so the Plat-eye strike the name of William Yeldell Cosper for good. No man speak the name but as a oddity. Excep in the swamps and in the Trembly Pines and out where the indigo cry to the ocean, from Carolina to Alabama to Louisiana, where we speak the name for a warnin and a curse.­­

The Elpis is ready, ready for the birth of a new child. It doesn’t happen that often, and this one is special, perhaps more for the ship than for its people. They don’t know; just as they’re in the dark about the ship’s true nature, they’re in the dark about how well Gemma, the mother, understands the ship. She hadn’t invited nor anticipated this understanding. With her aristocratic blood, she had seen other destinies for herself than to be a lowly crewmember. After the rebellion though, demoted to machinist’s helper, how well, how naturally had she adapted to her new duties! Not like others, who kick their sleeping platforms when they get stuck folding out, or Frederic, one of the engineers, who constantly curses the generators when it is he who has not adjusted them properly.

Gemma’s first job: polishing the generator casings. Even the first time, she did it right. She understood why—because dust outside would eventually creep inside. She did it quickly; she did it thoroughly. Now, wherever she goes, she leaves contented materials behind her, and machinery that works, that wants to work. On Earth, there used to be animals called horses and legend has it that some people had a special way with them. Horse singers, they were called, or was it horse talkers? It’s hard to remember these stories exactly, without access to what little written information still exists. But that’s what Gemma is: a ship singer. What a shame there’s not a human onboard who knows!

Gemma does not truly understand how good she is for the ship and to it. Only The Elpis does. It will be a long time yet until the humans the ship carries are ready to grasp that it can do such a thing as understand, feel, bask in the loveliness of a ship singer.

But for now, The Elpis is ready. Ready to witness Gemma bring this child into the world.

The pain of birth is an honour. Training for this honour starts in a girl’s infancy when she sees and learns the unka-gat, the greeting given to a woman on her menses. Early on, she comes to understand unka’s various ascending levels: unka, kar-unka, kat-unka, pa-unka—pain during menses, great pain during menses, ovulation pain and finally, the pain of giving birth. She sees the special reverence towards women who have experienced kar-unka and kat-unka, a blessed way to prepare themselves once they reach the great and unusual honour of labour pain. Gemma has never had kar-unka or kat-unka but what is that in comparison with moving through the greatest honour of them all—giving birth?

Three midwives are with her as is customary, one born male, Alvay, one female, Shast, one of self-chosen gender, Nin. On Earth, people called priests used to hold similar positions but they were wasted on the irrational worship of gods—non-existent, make-believe entities. Fortunately, such nonsense hardly exists anymore. It is inconceivable that anything deserves worship but the creation of a person inside another and its triumphant birth at the end. Perhaps one day ships will be birthed like this as well, with the same glorious pain.

Gemma has been graced with three hours of labour now.

“Pa-unka! Pa-unka! Pa-unka!”

The midwives sway, and during the ebbing of the pain, their well-trained voices sound just below a whisper. Even at this quiet level, their pronunciation is clear and the melody fills the birthing room with a gentle hum.

Gemma’s eyes widen; her mouth opens, “Aaaah!” The pa-unka grows louder and Shast moves to hold the birthing woman’s right hand. She knows the sign; the next phase of the birth has begun. Soon a head will crown the opening of Gemma’s birth canal. It is time to ask the question:

“Do you have a name?”

“Solomon,” says Gemma, panting, a smile lighting up her face.

“What if it is not a boy?”

Gemma shakes her head.

She knows it is a boy. She just knows. The Captain of the generation after this one has to be a man, that is what is written in the Scrolls. Woman, man, self-determined, that is always the sequence. After the rebellion, they stripped away Gemma’s powers. Now Komen is the Captain, self-determined, who has chosen no gender at all. But in twenty, twenty-five years… a boy… Gemma will find a way for him. She will take her rightful place again, as the mother of the new Captain.

The hopeful thought mingles with yet another bulging wave inside of her, heightens the ecstasy of the exquisite sensations pulsing through her womb.

And the ship pulses with her. Hardly perceptible: in the tanks, the waters slosh ever so gently to one side, then the other. Voltage varies just slightly; no-one pays attention.

It is the midwives’ sacred duty to be so finely in tune with a birthing mother that they can sense her every contraction, no matter how mild or short. “Pa-unka, pa-unka,” they translate it for the Karuna, The Elpis’s Helm. “Pa-unka, pa-unka”—and the Karuna pulses the ship to the rhythm. A new child is coming!

Some Helms are more attuned to these rhythms, others less. For this birth, the harmony is perfect. With each contraction, the Helm directs an increase in gravity, with each release, the Helm returns it to the regular 9.8G.

“Shast,” Gemma pants, “tell Karuna what a great Helm she i–” and another contraction. They are coming one after the other now.

 Indeed, Karuna is a good Helm. But today there is more to the ship’s exquisitely consonant pulsing with Gemma’s body. And the only human who could ever hope to know why is convulsing in agonized ecstasy.

Just Alvay and Nin sing the pa-unka now. Shast squats behind Gemma, her powerful arms and legs a perfect birthing chair for Gemma. Years of training allow her to stay in this position for hours on end. She is naked, just like Gemma, two bodies entwined, making the kind of love that brings forth a life, not nine months later, but here and now. Shast’s almost-white skin has been rubbed with a special salve that prevents the two women’s bodies from becoming too slippery with sweat. They are beautiful to behold together, Gemma’s ebony skin against Shast’s white.

“Push!” The woman-like-a-chair half chants, half shouts.

“Pa-unka, pa-unka, pa-unka…” the ship throbs, heaping gravity onto every “un”.

Karuna beams. “I love how effortlessly I can direct the ship. My first birth! I had no idea how easy this would be!”

The Elpis throbs on. Pa-unka, pa-unka.

Somewhere in the recesses of her mind, Gemma knows that her bloodstream is flooded to bursting with endorphins and oxytocin, her glands feverishly producing these hormones to aid in childbirth and to turn suffering into… no, pleasure is not the right word. Deep, satisfying, ecstatic joy. And from somewhere inside, her soul passes the joy and love, in a tireless relay, onto the son making his journey from womb to world. Pa-unka, Solomon, pa-unka, Solomon, pa-unka, Solomon…

Her cup runneth over. The water has long burst but there are still trickles here and there to make the passage safe and slick for the little human destined for great glory.

The water is caught by the soft nest of cloth underneath the birthing mother. But not all of it. Drops escape here and there, form a little puddle, and from it a trickle seeps away. No one pays attention to it.

The Elpis laps it up. Pa-unka, pa-unka. Just as Gemma lovingly protected and nourished the tiny being inside her, the ship lovingly collects and saves each drop of Gemma’s mother-water. There will come a time, it hopes in a vague fashion, when this precious essence can also mingle to create more…

And another contraction.

“Push!”

“Pa-unka, pa-unka, pa-unka, pa-unka!”

“Solom-o-o-n!” With a passionate, delirious scream, Gemma pushes again, and the boy’s head crowns.

Sweat drips into her eyes. Alvay comes over and wipes it off. His gesture, soft, careful, reverent, sparks another outpour of oxytocin into the mother’s bloodstream. She is consumed by fire; love the fuel, pain the flame, and everything turns into fuel and flame as she pushes again. Nin crouches before her now, softly mumbling “pa-u, pa-u, pa-u” as they gently palpate the child’s head to make sure it is in the right position.

Shast kisses Gemma’s ear and whispers, “One or two more pushes, my sweet, and your child will be born. Your triumph, darling, your honour, my queen, my precious.”

A birthing mother is always a queen, be she Captain or machinist’s helper.

Gemma’s heart beats heavy with the pa-unka. The Elpis feels it. The ship wonders, longs to know what goes on in Gemma’s mind. Oh, it knows what longing is, although it cannot express it, not now, maybe never. With the trickle of the mother-water and the pa-unka, though, it is as close as it has ever come to pulsing life, right there where flesh is born of flesh. But the ship also knows it can never truly understand. “I know that I don’t know,” one of the Earth’s wise men is said to have told his students. The ship remembers the first time it heard those words, how it perceived somewhere deep in its aluminum cells that those were words of wisdom.

And a scream, ship-shuddering, a scream of victory: “Aaaargh!” followed immediately by another voice, “Caw, caw waaaaaaw”—a boy is born, with healthy lungs.

Alvay receives the child. He checks the umbilical cord. It’s long, so he can lay the infant into Gemma’s arms right away without having to cut the cord this instant.

The three midwives murmur on, “pa-unka, pa-unka, pa-unka,” as Gemma’s womb works to expel the placenta. The child caws.

As is custom, the Helm manipulates the ship so that the two last pulses are so strong, they can be seen and felt a long way through the universe, for other ships to notice. Karuna is proud of how clean and strong she manages the pulses. What an omen!

The ship imagines a smile. Even if it wanted to, it would not interfere with Karuna’s pride. It doesn’t matter. “Pa-unka, pa-unka,” The Elpis hums. A child is born!