Congratulations to all the winners of Macabre Monday’s Wicked Writing Contest. Here was my submission to throw into the mix.
Le Coucou au Fond des Bois – Saint-Saëns
Two eagles settled into their precarious aerie. Though it had already been twenty-three days, they cared for their eggs as if they had been newly laid. The eagle parents shifted slightly, safeguarding their two eggs from exposure to the cooling air of evening. With each movement of their nurturing feathers, sticks fell from the cliff-face nest and landed silently on the treetops of the Forest of Panog. At forest’s edge, a cliffside crypt hewn into rock slept. Mother of Night shone full circle, silver tendrils reaching for purchase on the forest floor and extending their reach into the sleeping tombs of the dead. She was coming for a visit tonight. She was coming for her protection payment. Without it, there would be no guarantee of summer’s harvest; and this year, of all years, they needed a good harvest.
Beyond the Forest of Panog stirred a small village of round huts skillfully erected of stone, wood, and adobe, with round thatched roofs. Tonight, five hundred men and their sons gathered around the augur’s fire. Hundreds of hand-woven dogbane fiber tunics reflected the augur’s fire, empty canvases waiting to be painted upon by the fingers of flame. The flames stretched into the sky like demon-dogs fleeing Hell yet held back by the clench of their choke collars.
The grey-bearded Master Augur danced with his staff of carved oak. He was not only reading the signs revealed in the fire; he was trying to change them. He called for the sacrifice of dance. Man after man joined in 7/8 time. One two three. One two, one two. From the aerie, the eagles could see the dance form a circle with the fire at its center, a mandala of motion, gentle and coaxing at first while the Master Augur drew the signs from the embers. As the night deepened to its nadir, the dancing became frenetic, even psychotic. The omen would not change, despite their pleadings. Mother of Night rose to her zenith, waiting quietly, smilingly, as if to say, “See how much you need me?”
“Extinguish the flames!” shrieked the Master Augur. His voice shook with fear. Fear of what more the flames would reveal. Fear of his Ancestors’ wrath or torment or hunger.
Twenty-three men carrying clay urns of ashes shattered their burdens over the fire. The ashes of their dead Ancestors smothered the fire and erupted in a plume of black smoke that blocked Mother of Night’s shining face. The portal to Hell was closed, and the remaining wisps of smoke diffused into the night. The Master Augur leaned heavily on his staff. The panting of breaths returned to their resting rate and gave way to his gruff voice: “Return to Your Graves.” The voices of five-hundred men and boys echoed: “Return to Your Graves.”
Mother of Night pushed her way through the plume of black ash. She walked among the five hundred men, silver fingers examining the quality of her livestock. She smiled, knowing they would come back for her protection no matter what.
“The price has gone up,” explained the Master Augur. “It does happen. It is not unheard of in our history. There are more mouths to feed than ever before, and Mother of Night requires payment to ensure that her favor rests with us, and not with any other creatures that might compete with us.”
“What is the price?” a young man asked, eager to get to the point.
The Master Augur did not take the bait, for he knew that, especially with bad omens, his own life was held in the balance. “You must brave the wild woods and bring back the pearl of the forest. If we don’t pay tonight, our Mother’s protection will pull back and our Ancestors will return after a century of hunger.”
“Hungry ghosts,” murmured the men in the crowd.
The Master Augur succeeded in distracting them, for they feared hungry ghosts more than they feared the beasts in the Forest of Panog. It was not the price he had augured from the fire, but they would never know that he was willing to sacrifice them all to save his own life. Only the Ancestors would know, and when he joined them, buried deep in the cliffside crypt, he would have no regrets.
Mother of Night drew close to the Master Augur, enveloping him in her silver gaze, as one cherishes a prized steed. She leaned on him and whispered in his ear: “You always were my favorite. No one compares to you.”
The Master Augur struck his oak staff on a firepit stone, disturbing the remaining ash. “How many men will dive into the forest to bring back the pearl?”
The hunters stepped forward. They beat their chests in a war cry.
The Master Augur looked up at the semi-circle of men that had formed around the fire pit. His gaze lifted for a moment over their heads to the Forest of Panog. It was almost camouflaged with the night sky, dark yet drowning in an endless silver flow. His eyes returned to the villagers before him, specters under the moonlight. “For generations, Mother of Night has accepted our offerings and the rain has come every planting season. We have lost her favor—this year, of all years. We have hidden from her the prosperity of the past years, and we have not returned to her what we owe. We must bring Mother of Night a special offering. She demands it tonight: a bird that hides in the depth of the woods, that is so still and so silent that it cannot be distinguished from the branches and the bark of the oak trees. But when you are not looking, you will hear its cuckoo. It will call you deeper, deeper into the heart of the Forest of Panog. Once you have it, bring it out alive. Don’t forget your way back.”
One of the older men spoke, questioning, confronting: “Every year Mother of Night demands a blood sacrifice, one of our own, and you say the price has gone up? What is so special about one bird’s blood? Perhaps you misread the omen…Master.”
The Master Augur turned violently toward the old man, moonlight accentuating the shadows in furrowed skin. “Mother of Night demands what she demands. She doesn’t ask our opinion. Perhaps she is testing our loyalty. Have you ever heard of a Cuckoo being caught? Maybe you’d like to try. Only the most dedicated to the task will succeed.”
“You don’t sound convinced, Master. Maybe this is your way of avoiding what the fire really said. Maybe this is why you haven’t trained up a successor,” the old man continued, unabated.
“The man who brings me the Cuckoo will be my successor!” the Master Augur announced. More men stepped forward toward the firepit. To be the village augur was to have ultimate power, honor, and knowledge above all. Mother of Night laughed silently as she watched the races begin.
I ran toward the forest with the other hunters with my black hunter’s pall tied around my waist. We slipped beyond the eaves of the Forest of Panog, strategically spread out to extend the reach of our hearing. Koh followed close behind me. Better to have another set of eyes at my back. We often hunted together. We wore the bones of a wolf spine around our necks. He followed my lead. We passed the first circle of the forest. We entered the second circle. I held my breath, coaxing my muscles into stillness, pausing to listen. Poison oak quivered a feather’s width from my face, a glistening trifecta of leaves multiplied in infinite iterations, guardians of the forest. We needed to go deeper.
I weaved my body through the brush one light-footed step after another, lurching forward in slow, calculated movements like a praying mantis. Slivers of light dripped through the forest from above, and bioluminescent mushrooms glowed below, lighting our path. Then I heard it call. I turned to Koh, whose eyes blinked in confirmation that we had heard the cryptic Cuckoo. Koh pointed cliffward. We slunk through the woods toward the ghost of the sound. We entered the third circle.
“Tal,” Koh whispered, as we paused to listen. I lifted my hand to silence him. Did I hear it call? “Tal,” he said again, this time more forcefully. I broke my concentration and turned to him. He pointed to a vine of poison oak twisting above my head. I focused my eyes. Right above me, a single cicada skin-molt clung by its forelegs to the bottom of a leaf. A drop of black liquid landed on the top of the poison oak leaf, shaking the cicada underneath it. Rain? My eyes refocused. A hunter’s body lay face down tangled in the branches, mouth gaping wide, black drips falling from empty eye sockets. Dripping onto the poison oak.
“Only a hunter could kill another hunter,” Koh said, though with a low level of confidence. Koh pressed the wolf spine necklace to his mouth, a trained response to stifle his fear.
I ripped the cicada skin from the leaf and threw it to the ground. I crunched it with my heel. “We don’t have time for bad omens,” I said. I heard the bird call again from the heart of the forest. Mother of Night’s pearl. I started off in its direction, and Koh followed close behind.
“Have you ever caught one of these birds?” Koh asked.
“They are very secretive. Almost impossible to locate. But once you locate them, they are not hard to catch,” I said as we moved swiftly through the arboreal labyrinth. We stopped again to listen for its call.
Leaves began rustling, chains of silver moonlight tugging at her anchors on the forest floor. One by one, cicadas appeared from among the detritus, exoskeletons emerging from their graves. Mother of Night shone her dappled grey face upon the woods, fooling the cicadas into their daytime song. They began playing their tymbals, like the low rattle of a rain stick. I held my breath again, listening through the crescendo of screaming insects, the sounds swirling around me, disorienting me.
The Cuckoo awoke us from our stupor. It was close. We pushed through the brush in tandem, keeping step, keeping rhythm, as if we were part of this symphony of kettledrums. There it was again—the Cuckoo in the depth of the woods—and it had revealed itself in the silver light, swooping to catch a flying cicada in its beak. Koh and I exchanged hand signals silently, so as not to alert the Cuckoo to our presence. It was our good fortune that it was distracted with catching cicadas.
I unwrapped the black hunter’s pall from around my waist. It was weighted with small stones around the edges to act as a net when I threw it. I would wait for another swoop, and fling the pall, catching the bird in midflight. The fabric was breathable enough to prevent suffocation as we traveled back to present the offering alive. We mouthed our prayer of without speaking it: “Return to Your Graves.”
Mother of Night sent her light, perfectly intersecting the path of the flying bird. She was granting me this victory. I flung the hunter’s pall. It swallowed the Cuckoo and trapped it as it fell. I caught it before it reached the ground. We had to rush back before daylight. Before Mother of Night disappeared without her payment. The sound of our footsteps aligned so perfectly in our race back to the Master Augur, that I could no longer distinguish between mine and his. A soft raindrop fell on my cheek. Rain? I took a moment to glance back at Koh.
“Koh?” I could not hear my voice over the rattle of cicadas.
I paused. Maybe I had been running too quickly. I counted twenty-three agonizing breaths. He was never that far behind. A raindrop fell on my forehead. I looked up. The lifeless bodies of three hunters hung in the branches. As if they had been climbing not to hunt, but to escape.
I must keep going. The village is depending on me. Back in the second circle. The first circle. The eaves of the forest. I stumbled out of the forest and ran to the Master Augur. “Am I the only one who has returned yet?”
“Yes,” he replied gravely.
“Here, Master. The offering. Alive.” He took the black pall and slowly unwrapped it, layer by layer.
The Cuckoo quivered beneath the final layer, a sign of live quarry. The Master Augur opened the pall carefully, so as not to let the Cuckoo fly free. He pulled away the cloth to reveal the head of the Cuckoo, whose eyes had been eaten out. It opened its beak. Cicadas emerged from within its body. The Master Augur threw the pall to the ground. We watched as the Cuckoo was fully consumed.
Raindrops began to fall from the sky. I reached up to brush my black hair out of my eyes, but something clung to my hair.
Why is the sound of the rain stick in my ear?
The kettledrum sounds from within.
I feel myself burrowing into the earth with my Ancestors. To emerge again.
“Payment accepted,” Mother of Night smiles, as she fades into the dawn. On the horizon, beneath the gathering rainclouds, sunlight blooms from the darkness, warming the eggs in the aerie. The eagles are gone, having abandoned their eggs to the Ancestors.
Perfect choice from Saint-Saens' Carnival. The Aquarium is the part of that score everyone knows, but after listening to The Cuckoo on repeat while reading this, I think it's the part that will now be associated with horror in my head. It immediately complements the piece: tiptoeing piano footsteps through woods under moonlight, punctuated by the clarinet cuckoo call. Grim, dark, atmospheric.
Also, knowing what kind of bird the cuckoo is, and with that first paragraph mentioning the eagles' eggs, my immediate thought was: "Oh no..." Poor eagles (and poor hunters too!)