Feast of Confusion


Grace sat glumly on a piece of driftwood. The tide was ebbing, and out in the bay the ship was turning at anchor, and the lewd calls of sailors came clearly over the still water.

The beach was empty, but for a group of three animals–two cats and a raccoon–off in the distance, and the Fey boy Yee-Ha, who approached her tentatively.

The rest of the villagers, the newly arrived sailors, and the Fey delegation had repaired to the village hall where Captain Stone, Athis and Grace’s father were meeting. Sir Hyphen-Dash had made it clear to his daughter she wasn’t wanted or needed, although Captain Stone had spoken up for her, having quickly understood how little grasp her father had on what passed for reality in these parts. Even Marlowe and Grace’s half-sister were gone, taking the strangely land-sick sailor with them.

“alone my Grace sits ~ contemplating empty bay ~ like you company?” Yee-Ha asked.

“Why do you talk like that?” she replied.

“It is our duty ~ to speak the world’s rhythms ~ with every breath,” Yee-Ha explained.

Grace shook her head. “That doesn’t tell me anything. Why is it your duty?”

“How could it not be? ~ Do not the sacred words say…” then he paused. “It is just our way.”

Grace had perked up at the mention of the scared words, but now returned her attention to the grey ocean. A sailor was swinging from the rigging, waving… everything… at her, although from the way he was grasping at his trousers perhaps it wasn’t quite intentional. Even from this distance she could tell her doubts about the verisimilitude of the clams were justified. She wrinkled her nose and turned her attention back to Yee-Ha. “Have you ever tried talking like us? You speak our language. Why not?”

Yee-Ha’s eyes grew wide as he contemplated the enormity of this suggestion. “It is forbidden! ~ So dangerous and quite wrong! ~ But I will try.” He stopped, his mouth tightly closed, his face turning red. The silence stretched interminably until at least he burst out, “Soon!”

Grace laughed at Yee-Ha’s obvious discomfiture as he shamefacedly admitted, “Perhaps there is more ~ to free-speaking in your way ~ than meets the Fey eye.”

Before she could reply she noticed that Christopher Marlowe’s cat, Cat, was coming down the beach toward them, followed by the ship’s cat Daphne and a talkative raccoon.

“Perhaps I’ll become a cat when I retire,” Skeezicks the raccoon was saying.

“I didn’t know raccoons could retire,” Cat said. He kept stealing glances at Daphne, who ignored him.

“Of course they can!” said Skeezicks. “At least I think so.”

Daphne came up to Grace and rubbed her head against the girl’s knee. “Meow?” she asked, and then said, “Can I haz feesh?”

“Err… no, I don’t has fish,” Grace replied uncertainly.

“At least she’s speaking English now,” Cat said to Grace as Daphne the ship’s cat continued to ignore him. “When she game ashore it was nothing but some dreadful kind of foreign.”"

“I didn’t know cats could speak foreign,” Grace said.

“We only speak cat,” said Cat. “You just listen in English.”

“Maybe you were listening in foreign, then?” asked Grace.

“Don’t be ridiculous! I’m an English cat!”

“And a very handsome one,” said Skeezicks the raccoon.

Cat rolled his eyes and ignored her. “Come, Daphne! We hunted the warfs together as kits!”

Daphne peered at Cat from her perch on Grace’s lap. “I’m sure I would remember zee purple!”

While Grace was talking to his cat, Christopher Marlowe was talking to himself:

Now what malignant fate does haunt my days,
come stalking cold across the Ocean sea
like some great pale and vicious cachalot
bent on sick vengeance? O, to yet be free
of dark entanglements! Drunais my love!
How simple would our life together be:
the two of us, like shepherd, shepherdess,
far from the madding crowd, we two can flee
from all that ails this fractious flagrant world!
I’ll go to you, go down on bended knee
and beg forgiveness. Now!”

“Christopher! Yoo hoo!” came a shout from behind him and he moaned, “Behold my life.”

Lady Belinda Hyphen-Dash-Throtestalking bustled up behind Marlowe, leaning slightly on the land-sick sailor, Donald Vagoe. “O Christopher!” she called again. “What was that strange apparition that rose so hideously from the sea?” she asked, recollecting her own impression of Drunais’ appearance.

He turned to face her. “She is… my love!”

“She is WHAT, my love?” Lady Belinda asked.

Marlowe shook his head and said slowly, “My love. That is what she is.”

“That? What?”

“The woman who walked out of the water is my love,” he tried again.

Lady Belinda looked at him strangely, “You are confused, Christopher. I didn’t walk out of the water! It was some undersea creature!”

Lady Belinda let go of Donald Vagoe’s arm and took hold of Marlowe’s. The sailor staggered and grabbed a nearby tree, turning his head to keep up with the rotation of the world.

“You took me quite unawares, being so unexpectedly alive,” Lady Belinda explained, “But now I can see… it was fated to be! My goodness, I made a rhyme! Perhaps I shall be a poet in this New World, like you, my love!”

Marlowe unavailing tried to gently pry her fingers loose. “It is more complicated than that, I fear.”

“Pish! Was ever the course of love more simple?”

Marlowe managed to free himself from her grip, but she immediately latched back on. “I wasn’t talking about love.”

“But Christopher…” Lady Belinda began before she was interrupted by the sound of an animal moving through the trees. Despite himself Marlowe pushed her behind him and faced the sound.

Donald Vagoe, who had been staggering from tree to tree behind them, found himself stumbling out in front. He picked up a branch from the ground and waved it in unsteady counter-point to his own uncertain relationship with the vertical.

“I shall defend you my Lady!” he cried, and then fell forward, catching himself at the last moment by using his makeshift weapon as a crutch.

Marlowe unsheathed his sword and pushed the sailor aside. “What are you going to do, fall down on them?”

The leaves at the side of the path stirred, and a familiar ursine face poked through.

Rothgar the sea-bear nodded to Marlowe while Lady Belinda brandished her parasol from behind him.

“Do not too quickly take the branch, or
Hope will find
the White Hart upon the white sand.
Glance ahead, not by chance, do not stand
old attachments. Let her rage.
‘Carefully think, but not too sage’,
Cock your ears
Where the path turns and where the path veers
Don’t fear to dare
Where the blue water meets the grey air
In Nature’s chapel, the ocean’s lair.”

With another nod, Rothgar trundled off, leaving only a few disturbed branches in her wake.

Marlowe puzzled over Rothgar’s characteristically oracular pronouncement as he strode on down the path, Lady Belinda stumbling along behind and peppering him with questions. The land-sick seaman staggered after them, calling, “Do not leave me in this dark wood! It is full of demons!”

He paused when he reached the point where the path forked off to the village in one direction and the point of the bay in the other, then impulsively took the branch toward the village, glancing down the other fork toward the water as he went. If he couldn’t escape Belinda he could at least see what was happening in the settlment.

He was interrupted by Lady Belinda raging behind him, now awkwardly supported by the green-tinged Donald Vagoe, “Christopher! I demand you stop at once!”

He turned to calm her, and in the momentary silence heard a sound like a splash from the water’s edge, but he dismissed it and tried to calm the angry woman, who seemed torn between clinging to him and striking him repeatedly over the head with her parasol.

Marlowe entered the meeting house to see Athis, Sir Hyphen-Dash and Captain Stone engaged in a three-way staring contest, which seemed to tax even the latter’s divisible attention. 

Finally Stone spoke, “I don’t believe it! You mean to tell me all of Drake’s tales are true?”

“Sir Francis was here,” Athis said, “Making promises of peace ~ and quiet for all.”

“And then he showed up?” Stone asked, nodding toward the still staring Hyphen-Dash.

Athis nodded eloquently, “One hopes arrival ~ will before the winter storms ~ precede departure.”

Stone, who had a hold full of provisions, from plows to cows, replied simply, “I have my orders.”

Marlowe sensed the tension and stepped in to the fray, saying, “Perhaps a feast of welcome and thanksgiving is in order before any rash decisions are taken?”

“A FEAST?” roared Sir Hyphen-Dash, but his incipient tirade was curtailed by his daughter’s interjection, “O yes, Daddy, let’s! I’ve been cooped up on that smelly old ship for so long with not the least opportunity to wear any of my new gowns!” 

Athis glanced around at the rest of the Fey delegation. Dagan looked offended, but that was how he always looked. Siduri nodded encouragingly. Slash shrugged. Bil said, “Better to eat than quarrel, I always say.”

“We accept this feast ~ two peoples briefly meeting ~ before their parting,” Athis said.

Sir Hyphen-Dash seemed taken aback by the rapid change in tone, but Captain Stone said, “Very well. I’ll start the unloading. A feast it will be, and all but a skeleton crew will come. We’ve been at sea too long.”

“You have skeletons ~ standing watch on your great ship? ~ So much mystery,” Athis said bemusedly.

Grace arrived at the meeting house just as the gathering was breaking up. Yee-ha was summoned by a gesture from Athis, and he bowed apologetically to Grace and departed. The two cats, who had left Skeezicks the raccoon on the beach making retirement plans, found a quiet place to watch the comings and goings.

Captain Stone was striding off toward the beach with his men, leaving Donald Vagoe to unsteadily attend Lady Belinda, who was again remonstrating with a downtrodden Christopher Marlowe. Grace moved to join her sisters but was quickly caught up by the village women, who chivied the younger folk to help out with preparations for the feast.

The day devolved into a swirl of frantic activity, setting out long tables in the meeting house and sending the hunters out for an extra deer. Grace offered to help carry things up from the shore, where her awkward strength would be most useful, so she was the first of her sisters to find out what a cow really looked like.

“Moo?” Grace asked the cow tentatively. It was standing uneasily on the sand, held by two sailors. “Y’should stand back, miss,” said the younger. “She’s bin known to kick, like.”

“Are they always this big?” she asked and the sailor replied, “Not half, I seys, don’t I Clem?”

Clem nodded, watching the cow try to graze on a seaweed-covered stone.

“Get along there then!” said the first sailor, giving the cow a smack.

Philologists who study the lexicography of animal calls agree the call of the distressed bovine can best be approximated by, “MOOWAOAOWWOOOOOO!” Only louder.

Grace shrieked and jumped, and the two sailors led the cow away, the one saying, “Never a dull moment, then, is there, Clem? Isn’t that what I always seys?”

“Fat, slow-moving deer that go ‘moo’ my foot!” Grace said to herself.

With each load that came ashore more sailors arrived, until only a handful were left with the ship. The others were kept under the variously directed eyes of Captain Stone. The marine Major watched the red-coats, knowing how prone they were to dying in the place of some more significant character.

Despite these watchful eyes a few sailors took time from their busy day to pay Grace their respects, which became all the more respectful when they realized this wee chit of a girl was hauling heavier loads than they were along the path up to the village.

“That’s the lot, then,” Captain Stone said to Sir Hyphen-Dash as the afternoon shaded into dusk.

“Not a moment too soon! Spaniards lurking! Lurking I say! We must put it all within the stockade!”

Stone looked at the few paltry stretches of raised posts that constituted the “stockade” and replied, “They seem to be well protected already.”

“Humph! Of course they are! Best offense is a good pretense, I always say!”

“Not like that you silly… err…” Felicity trialed off. Now that she’d seen a cow they didn’t seem nearly so silly. It left her without an insult-of-choice.

Hope stopped her half-hearted chopping of this season’s deformed turnips. “Then how?” she asked.

“The right way!” Felicity told her, stepping in to take the knife. Marlowe had sharpened it in his capacity as the village’s tinker. She treated it with respect, and sliced the turnips into thin disks.

H: “I can’t see that’s any different than what I was doing!”        F: “Of course it is! I’m doing it!”

Hope moaned and took the knife back, looking daggers at her cousin in the process.

“Can I help?” asked Grace, ever the peace-maker.

“I’m sure there’s a bale that needs toted or a bundle that needs lifted,” Felicity told her snippily, then turned back to Hope, “NO! You’re doing it WRONG!”

Grace wandered away from the bustle and bickering toward the beach, and then along the widening stretch of sand. The long northern dusk was rising and a few stars could be seen over the mountains in the East. Turning the look back she could see smoke rising from the village cook-fires, and she shivered in the cool air, but she heard a kind of cough behind her and spun around to see Rothgar the sea-bear looking at her curiously.

“Hello,” she said, not questioning this time.

“Hello, Sassafras,” Rothgar said.

“Sassafras?” Grace asked.

“Or Saxifrage. Your name. Your true name,” Rothgar told her with a nod. “Stonebreaker.”

“What are you?” was all that Grace could think to reply, “And why does your nonsense always seem so… well, so sensible?”

“I am the hollow bear
Whispering of secrets
Waves without waving
Force without motion
My voice alone speaks
Deep the world’s singing

This is the living sea
This the green water
Here the wave’s portraits
Self-painted on sand
Are raised, they recede
Under the shining sun
I walk alone
Through evening dew and morning mist
Across the sand, across the stone

This is the vision
This healing balm of mystery
What cannot be riven
The past from our history

Between the act, and the fact
Between the fish, and the dish
Falls the Shadow
This is the way the world begins
This is the way the world begins
This is the way the world begins
Not with a Bang but a RARRH!”

Rothgar the sea-bear stood on her hind legs, nodded to Grace, and walked into the water, saying, “Be well, Saxifrage” over her shoulder.

While Grace was wandering perplexedly back toward the village her fey friend she called Yee-Ha was being scolded by his father, Dagan.

“Ea,” he said, pronouncing the name properly, “do not speak! ~ It is not seemly to ask ~ nor right to answer!”

“I just want to know ~ why hu’run are free to talk ~ however they please.”

“They are not like us.”

“I have noticed this father.”

“Now be a good boy ~ obedient to our laws ~ troublesome no more.”

“I can only try,” he said sullenly, annoyed with his father for finishing the cycle rather than passing it back to him. He was satisfied to hear the awkward response to his hanging opening: “Do or do not! There is no ~ Uh… no try… um… err…”

Athis: “Time has come to go.”

Bil (smiling): “Feasting, revelry and fun.”

Dagan (grimly): “Dealing with hu’run.”

Slash: “They are not so bad.”

Siduri:: “They’re better than bad: they’re good.”

Athis: “Optimistic view!”

Slash: “Realistic hope?”

Ea: “Uh… why do we talk like this?”

Dagan “Scandalous, I say!”

Siduri: “No scandal at all, to ask.”

Athis: “Problematic, though.”

Slash (nodding): “Shouldn’t need to ask.”

Dagan: “He’s too young to know the truth!”

Siduri: “Yet all who ask, know.”

Slash (sternly): “Tell him, or I will.”

Bil: “Yes do! I have never asked! ~ I’d like to know too!”

He grinned sheepishly at their bemused looks.

“But darling!” said Cat to Daphne the ship’s cat as she turned up her nose at the dead mouse he brought her. The woodpile rustled beneath them.

“But darling!” said Lady Belinda as Marlowe turned away from her up-turned face, which was waiting to be kissed. The village bustled around them.

“I am not the man you once knew,” Marlowe said.

“I am not the cat you once knew,” said Daphne.

“Then who ARE you?”

“Just a stranger in a strange land, curious and seeking new experiences.”

“But I am a new experience!”
                        ”Nonsense, I know you of old.”                        ”Adiós”

“Thank heavens you’re back! Where have you been! There’s still so much to do! Now get busy right away!” Felicity ordered Grace as she returned to the meeting house.

“Who died and put you in charge?” asked Grace, still wondering about Rothgar’s… declaration?

“Someone has to! Father is, well, you know, confused. And Hope is hopeless! Our sister Belinda is quite impractical, but everyone seems to expect her to take charge. You ran off. So that leaves it up to me!”

“What needs to be done?”

“Everything!”

“Then what needs to be done first?”

“Everything!”
                         ”I can see you’ve got Father’s knack for leadership.”

Grace looked around and saw the disordered heap of provisions piled in the center of the meeting house. Someone had clearly decided the cow should be invited to the feast, although as a guest rather than the main course.

“How does it feel to be a cow?” she asked, and was silently grateful when the only answer was a sloppy lick on the side of her head, imperfectly dodged. She untied the halter-rope and led the now docile bovine out into the open air. There was a half-finished hut that would do nicely for a barn.

Half an hour later she had most of the rest of the pile squared away in various buildings left empty by virtue of lack of anything to put in them. Poor harvest. Poor salmon run. Lots of clams, though.

She saw the land-sick sailor staggering toward the beach. He was muttering to himself, and she slipped close behind him and heard, “Dose, trays, cue at row, sinko, says…” She wondered if it was some new kind of poetry.

Tuc the Seal King didn’t like to be so far from home so late in the day, but the ocean had told him of Drunais’ distress and he swam in search of her. The ocean was unfortunately vague on the specifics of her location, one place being much the same as all others from its own perspective. But by paying close attention Tuc knew he was getting closer.

When he found her she was in deep black water. Her people were wonderful swimmers, but he knew she’d gone too deep. He bumped against her and felt the startled response. He bumped again, upward. Reluctantly she obeyed.

On the surface she was shivering, but he saw a gleam of determination in her eyes. He looked where she was looking, toward the distant hu’run ship.

“I don’t think…” he started to say, but she was already swimming away from him, toward the anchored vessel. “Always troubles,” he said as he set off in pursuit.

As Drunais swam toward the ship from one side, Donald Vagoe rowed toward it from the other, his track through the still water as irregular as his walk, although rarely going in complete circles. He continued to mutter to himself, “El capitán me… wants… abordo…”

The village fires burned behind him, their reflections making flickering paths across the twilight bay. “Ahoy!” he called but no answer came from the ship. The little boat bumped up against the side and he tied an awkward knot before scrambling up the rope ladder. No one was visible on deck and it slowly dawned on him that he was the only person aboard… the other sailors had all snuck ashore and only he, Donald Vagoe, had obeyed the Captain’s order to return.

What passed for a canny grin was spreading across his face when Drunais pulled herself over the far gunwale and flopped to the deck, exhausted and covered in seaweed. He screamed and fell backward into the sea.

The man who called himself Donald Vagoe spluttered to the surface. The freezing water felt like a vice around his ribs, squeezing the air out of him. Icy droplets flew off his hair and beard as he shook his head.

Looking up through the twilight he could see the apparition raise an axe over the anchor cable and bring it awkwardly down. It was incredible, he thought. From here the monster looks like a young girl. It must be some kind of shape-changing devil, sent to… what? Maroon them here?

A chill beyond mere cold shuddered through him, and he started swimming clumsily toward shore, barely able to keep his head above water. He felt his strength fading until a soft bump against his belly sent him streaking across the water in a windmill of flailing limbs.

Tuc’s crowned head surfaced behind him. “Glad to be of help.”

Behold the tempest-feast aswirling
with the mingling mix’d crew
of sailors done with ropes and furling
now come ashore for drink and stew
while villagers in consternation
watch the fae’s bright delegation.
Athis bows and Dagan sneers,
Siduri softly calms her fears–
as Bil and Slash smile nervously–
whispers, “what’s that ghastly thing?”
Bil thinks it has been hung by string
“a piece of meat I think it”, loudly
he replies, as silence spreads…
“Too, I could be wrong,” he says.
“Welcome!” cries Sir Hyphen-Dashing
to the fore in greeting bold
startling the fae whose Slashing
wit is frozen by the old
uniforms of rags and patches
where nothing fits and nothing matches
so bedraggled are the crew
already knocking back their stew.
“O they must begone” she speaks
and Athis crooks a quizzing brow
“so I have been saying now ~
talking to myself” he seeks
a way to gently urge them out
when suddenly there comes a shout…
Lady Belinda had cornered Marlowe by one of the big fires where the ship’s crew were warming themselves and trying to seduce the village women. “Christopher, we must talk about our future!”

“How can one speak of what does not exist?” He was distracted by Cat, who bumped up against his legs and circled as if trying to trip him into the flames in that cute and playful way cats have.

“Pshhww!” Lady Belinda replied. The sound drifted lazily upward, in search of a vowel.

Cat dug his claws in to Marlowe’s leg. “She wasn’t speaking Foreign! She was speaking Spanish!”

Marlowe looked down at Cat’s eyes, shining in the firelight. “She didn’t say ‘goodbye’! She said ‘adiós’! She’s a Spanish spy!”

“I…” Marlowe started to say, but was interrupted by the eruption of Donald Vagoe from the water, who ran up the beach and plunged barefoot into the fire, scattering the logs and dancing amongst the coals as steam rose from his soaked hair and clothing and he cried, “Me he calentado! Warm at last!”

There are strange things done
                                ’neath the eldrich sun
By the men who vie for glory;
The Ocean Stream has heard their screams
And seen their endings gory;

Those watchful eyes have parsed the lies
through fog and rain and night
but on that day in Arrival Bay
they saw one set alight!

Don Vagoe pranced in the flames that danced
cremating all disguises
burning through to the man that’s true
though full of hot surprises!

He gave a shout that threw all doubt
about his place of birth
up to the skies with all his lies
while the flames flared high with mirth.

“Don’t let him burn!” Belinda yearned
and Marlowe looked askance
but he grabbed the man as he began
to fall upon fire’s lance.

There are strange things seen
                                when you serve the Queen
in the far-off lands of Fae
but the strangest one is the deed that’s done
to stop your foe’s flambé!

Marlowe smothered the smouldering Spaniard in his elf-woven cape while Lady Belinda berated him. “Christopher, that’s two dreadful creatures that have come at us out of the sea! Does this sort of thing happen often? I really don’t think I approve of this place!”

“Never happened at all until you showed up,” Marlowe replied, helping “Donald Vagoe” to his feet.

“SPANIARD!” cried Sir Hyphen-Dash triumphantly, albeit singularly. He brandished his sword.

The man rose to his full if diminutive height and swayed proudly on the unsteady land. “Yes! I am Don Diego de la Vago, of His Most Catholic Majesty’s Secret Service!” He gave a sweeping bow, which would have ended with him face-down in the sand had not Marlowe kept a firm grip.

Further mayhem was interrupted by a scream from down by the water, where Grace stood pointing toward the ship, which was drifting into the darkness with Drunais standing defiantly at the bow.

Marlowe: “There is a tide that moves the ships of men
which taken at the ebb leads to disaster:
a hull upon the rocks… or derelict,
adrift, cut loose from cable’s hold secure
upon the anchor of life’s verities.”

He said to Sir Hyphen-Dash, who was still fulminating. “It was not the Spaniard.”

“If not them who! SPANIARDS! Can’t trust ‘em!” And there was much brandishing.

Marlowe turned to face Athis and the Fae delegation. “It was my love, Drunais.”

“What! One of THEM! I knew they were in league! You know what this means?”

Marlowe shook his head even as he spoke the answer. “War.”

“What is this thing, war?” Athis asked Marlowe as the English gathered together and the Fae stood in a scattered group by one of the big fires. Bilgames surreptitiously warmed his hands. “Is it when swords are fighting? ~ Will it find your ship?”

Before Marlowe could answer Athis continued, “Why would all Fae swords ~ fight against all of your swords? ~ Drunais’ foolishness!”

“But she is one of you, so we will fight all of you,” Marlowe said.

“Too, she’s made of meat ~ would you fight all meaty things? ~ This does not make sense!”

Sir Hyphen-Dash intruded. “I declare war! We shall meet on the Field of Glory upon the morrow!”

“Where is this new place? ~ It is not well-known to me. ~ And what is ‘glory’?”

“Dead men,” said Marlowe, loosing his grip on Don Deigo. “Lots of dead young men.”

Freed from Marlowe’s hold and seeing the English distracted, Don Diego de la Vago crept out of the firelight and whispered to the departing Fae, “Take me with you!”

Dagan wrinkled his nose but Siduri said, “Might he teach to us ~ who are so flummuxed by this ~ the strange art of ‘war’?”

“Yes, yes! Si! I can! I will! These English, they are my people’s enemies!”

Athis asked, “If a rock fell down ~ doing you harm as it fell ~ would you ‘war’ on Earth?”

The little group continued through the dark forest amidst an abundance of blank looks.

Back in the village Grace asked her father, “Shouldn’t we go in search of the ship?” and he replied, “Nonsense! We have a battle to prepare for!”

As the White Hart was pulled out of the bay by the ebbing tide Drunais collapsed upon the deck in a flood of tears. That would show the flaxen-haired harlot! Let her try to take Christopher away from her now! And as for that wanton poet, let him just see how much he liked being marooned here with his dim blonde companion!

It was a tribute to Marlowe’s influence over her that she found no contradiction between these feelings, although in her state of emotional exhaustion her people’s native consistency started to creep back into her thinking, and cutting the ship’s cable no longer seemed like quite such a good idea.

She was sure it had made sense at the time.

“Adrift in darkness ~ alone on the empty sea ~ what have I done now?”

A soft bump against the hull suggested she was less alone than she had thought.