Beneath Ceaseless Skies #171 by Spencer Ellsworth & Thomas M. Waldroon

Author:Spencer Ellsworth & Thomas M. Waldroon [Ellsworth, Spencer]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: _Beneath Ceaseless Skies_ Online Magazine
Published: 2015-04-16T04:00:00+00:00

“My relatives wrote saying that they would have seen a hundred sea-serpents and never reported it, and a lady also wrote that she pitied any one that was related to any one who had seen the sea-serpent.”

I hope that within a few years, this fear of meeting with a sea-serpent will be no more heard of.

—Antoon Cornelius Oudemans

Shh! Hephyibee hissed. They’ll hear!

Dust motes as they drifted through the air crossed the slits of light that slanted through the vertical chinks in the siding of the empty smokehouse—it was parching summer, Fifth Month of his twelfth year—and, falling through, illuminated then winked out, shafts and sparks in the dimness. Hephyibee moved so that one bright stripe fell across her bare belly, where she’d hiked up her dress and pushed down her pantalets.

Down, slave! she commanded.

Stutley obediently bent over, his toes gripping the packed-earth floor.

She said, You have seen your mistress improper.

She whisked an old cobweb-chaser, its long bristles limp and broken, against his bare back. He flinched and whimpered, as she’d instructed at the beginning of the game.

Show me your shame, she demanded.

He stood up and dropped his trousers for her.

Ha ha ha, she said—not a real laugh, but as if reading aloud laughter as it would be spelled out in a book. She raised the broom again.

Samuel was standing next to the door, out of the slanted light, watching, blinking, silent. Samuel Turner, youngest boy in a freeman’s family that had joined the settlement from Philadelphia. His dark skin made him little more than an outline against the bright stripes. He’d consented to take off only his shirt. Stutley watched him watching them, Samuel’s mouth open a little, the lower lip moving as he breathed. A fugitive glisten. Stutley saw in his eyes something that must be only a version of himself.

Samuel pushed the door open—blinding glare—and ran away. The door thudded shut. A moment later, the door slammed open and shut again. Hephyibee.

As Stutley stood there, his trousers at his ankles, the smooth dirt cool against his soles, waiting for something, he didn’t know what but something huge and perilous and inexorable—like a theophany from heaven, Hail! Blessed One!— he felt nailed down, not by fear that what he was doing (what was he doing? he didn’t know, not for sure, but he did know it would direct the course of his life) was in any way sinful, for surely it was not, but a certainty that no one, no one, could see its beauty as he did: pure, fervid, glittering, a beauty so overpowering that he was trembling. It was like a long hallway, longer than any real hallway he’d ever seen, stretched out in front of him, lined its whole length with doors, and all he had to do, all he could do, was open one.

* * *

VII.

Northup holds his arm out over the gunwale like Moses preparing to part the waters.

Don’t let the mouth alarm you, he says. Takes some getting used to, I’ll readily admit.

The wake stops a few yards short of the boat, and the leading ripples plash quietly against the side.

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