Coffins Have No Place in Paradise

by WilliamJJackson

To every tribe from Arapaho to Xhosa, worldwide, much love to every one of you.

Hopefully I do you justice here in borrowed words, imagination and adventure.

Peace and love.

-W.J. Jackson

I.

The Tale...

Achgeket, the Mother we all walk upon, cycles life and death. We live, breathing in her breast milk air, gratefully eating the blessings of game and crops. But we must all die. Every one of the People is pulled out of the womb by her right hand and rocked into the final sleep by her left. Each of the Tribes in Rokoana, the Land, handles their dead in their own way. The Heneyanesh along the coast bury them, only to pull them out within two summers to scrape the bones clean and preserve them in the mounds of those who came before. This is the same with the Abiak to the north, who fight the Heneyanesh, but they first raise the body on a platform for up to two seasons. The Barikka on the isles of the Rokoana Sea carry the dead into the jungles, and lower them into bright blue lagoons, where the bottoms are filled with the bones of elders.

There are many ways the dead are cared for in Rokoana. I have wandered the world and witnessed them all, for I, waabijiiyaa kiááyo, the Gray Bear, had eyes set to see all and to know how things in the world were. I saw the Tribes, Great Grandfather Sun and Grandmother Pearl Sun who holds his hand across the sky, the hundred galleons on fire plummet into the sea with their many strange peoples and talking beasts who ruled over them. I saw these and many treacherous things.

But I had never seen a coffin, until that one day.

"A warrior of your caliber has never seen a coffin, Grey Bear?" my old friend in black asked me. He said he now had another title to go with the others, 'undertaker'. I believed him, for there was no reason not to.

"No, Cloudfire, I have not," I told him, one of my rugged hands, thick fingers ran down his five-sided box of death. "Why the trouble?"

He stood up from a polished desk, for the Favored loved their polish and shine and people working always for the little coins they threw at them in purses or from banks. Chomlis the Fire Eared, undertaker, rose to a head above me, not as tall as Mehunwey, the giants who molded the first of us from Mother's hide. He belonged to the Favored, overlords who fell from the sky. They told me after the Fall that they lost a war while searching for the Last Gift. I know of no such thing, but Chomlis called me that day for he thought I could help him to find it.

"Trouble? Well, we can't just shove bodies in pits or burn them. We need them preserved for the day when we find the Gift, my old associate. I cannot endure this ragamuffin world of yours much longer, I do declare! The density of the forests, their pollen, plays havoc on my sinuses! Havoc!" Chomlis spoke through his small mouth and thin nostrils, so it sounded like a man when he speaks into a conch shell, real but hollow at the same time. This said much of Chomlis. So real with his fire amber skin and two pairs of curved horns around a mane of white hair. Words often spoken, eloquent, and most of them for display or cunning falsehoods.

"The world has been travelled, Cloudfire, by me. Some of it by you. But I have seen all, except the isle farthest to the south. Barikka lands. I have never seen such a place."

Chomlis moved towards me. He wriggled long fingers, making the ugly rings of gold click and chirp like birds in the nest. The floor of aged wooden beams creaked, and I could watch the dirt from them fall into the calm sea below."The isle of Barikken, yes. I have collected stories of the place. Untarnished beauty. Almost spotless, and the Barikka fled there after, well..."

"You and your tentacled soldiers killed them. Forced them onto your endless farms to die." I spoke this with the sand grit of irritation between my teeth and eyes cut. We must always bring to the Favored, the Cloudfires, attention to their wrongs. We must do this whenever they speak from under their tongues, evading the truth, letting their words drift off as a sleeping old man. Even if a thousand of their incomprehensible years should pass by, may my descendants speak truth to their lies.

If Mehunwey does not rise up and devour us first. And this will occur. For they told us, just as they warned the tall ones would fall from the sky and make us tremble.

Mehunwey knew things and held incredible power once, but this was before they ate flesh and bled their spirit out, became small heads on bloated bodies and ran away, monsters. The Favored and their Fallen too, know things, like metalworking, stitching, how to polish their pottery, make large buildings from stone as the long gone Rappashanno once did. But as Mehunwey, the Cloufires and their servants eat themselves up over moneys and time expenditures, whatever that may be. The humans, Fallen, who look like us but are not are wageslaves to the Favored, except the ones who escaped. I like them. But they do not like me. They hate their masters, but love their gold and fine items. To these things, I shrug.

"Ah...yes, Grey Bear. But, I have asked you to come to my new office, for the first time, might I add, to discuss our final peradventure. I am convinced that the Last Gift is on Barikken, and I intend to find it, and live forever."

I hurt my gut trying to hold in the laugh. I have great strength, and have spent much of my life in skirmishes to the death as well as wandering. Achgeket loved my stonework so much she made me as durable as the ancient hills, and I am old but potent. But that day, not laughing had to be the hardest fight in my life.

"Who will carry all the coffins to this place, and what is the Gift, Chomlis? The Cloudfires have not enough galleons yet to take them all, these coffins." I hefted hatchets of obsidian, my handiwork, for none were better at knapping than me. I liked them large, bigger than the slender ones favored by other Tribes, and flicking their edges brought me comfort. Stonework I knew more than a woman's touch.

Chomlis gave me his airy words, but they made me ponder. The hunger to wander came from deep down as wolves howling in the valley. But the Barikka...

"We shall cart off no coffin, only a coffer, to pay the struggling natives there. I intend to buy my way in. There is a waterfall there, its purity is unique. My privateers went near there, at great cost, you must understand. Pallista Nightfear lost her leg. My best woman! But they returned, and the tale was worth its weight in gold. They saw from the cliffs men enter into the waterfall as it parted! Parted open, at their insistence! Behind, Pallista viewed through her lens a gilded realm, full of immaculate beings in resplendence! The Barikka said to her the beings offered entrance to those who were worthy." He stomped a leg, and the office shook. The grandfather clock his people built missed a tick of its black hands.

I hated the clock and all clocks. Time can not be trapped inside a box of gears.

I hefted my shoulders up. "What of it?"

"So, who is more worthy than I? Have I not dredged up the sea floor to recover what was sunken in the Fall? Did I not talk the Trauwanee out of killing us, going back to the bottom of the sea where they creep and trading with us? I am the most successful profiteer in Rokoana Fortress. Surely this is what they mean. Will you accompany me? I cannot fathom a holiday without my most ardent companion."

Bragging and a seed of truth. The Chomlis I knew. Why did I go back to him over and over? He lied, cheated, and had more enemies than the Sisters Who Eat Sick Hearts. But on all of my travels, no one was there for me more than this horned Cloudfire. I never understood his ways, but I loved his curved horn friendship.Even when I spent fifty nine of the Cloudfires' 'years' with the Nunnehi, never aging while there, it was Chomlis the Fire Eared who greeted me first and hugged me upon my return.

"Because you ask, I say yes. Also, this is the one place I have never seen, so I cannot die without going there first."

"So says the Mother, eh?" Chomlis had worms in his speech. They called it sarcasm.

"She said nothing. She gives it in signs, and you read them, or you do not. I read my lifespan with the Nunnehi. Every dream I had in their village was my death, on a land I know not."

"Please do not share your negativity with my crew, Bear. It will make them anxious, and superstition is their middle name." Chomlis opened a closet door. In this closet were carpetbags, many of them in different colors. He claimed once each had a certain trick to them, so in a way, Chomlis had the influence of Coyote on him. Or he was heyoka, contrary. But by this time I assumed all of the Favored were heyoka.

"Red will do for this venture, I believe! Shall we?"

"Now?"

"Yes, now. My galleon, A Most Pleasant Pasturage, is docked at the end of the pier. We should depart before the winds die down, and you change your mind."

"I do not change my mind, Chomlis."

"Oh? The winter of our ninth year, when you said you would bring us turkeys to eat, but brought fish. I hate fish."

"The turkey were lean that season."

"And when we faced the wandering giant--"

"Mehunwey. Which one? We fought many."

"Let me think, Bear! Ah, the flaming one with the coal for eyes. Yes. I distinctly remember you saying, 'go left, Cloudfire,' when we were set to defend the encampment against it. But you went left, so we were both left, it was summarily not outflanked and..."

"Once. I changed my mind once." I huffed.

"There are other times, my dearest assocaite. But on to the quest!"

"Yes. I look forward to the Barikka vomiting on us like last time, and you getting out of your mind."

"I sense negativity!"

Snarl. I clapped my hatchets together. "Let us go."

II.

A Most Pleasant Pasturage is an odd name for a galleon. In truth, galleons were the best thing about the Favored. Large ships with a crew who relied on each other proved the Favored and Fallen were not without good hearts, only that those hearts were hidden. But for all the ones I sailed in, this one ship held the dumbest crew. It made sense. Chomlis kept more of his moneys using dumb wageslaves than he did with the smart ones.

"Are you fiddlin' with us?" a boy with blonde hair and freckles asked me. "You're over a hundred years old? You've but a single lock of gray hair, man! And you killed an alligator with hatchets? They're big enough to swallow a man whole an' shot from a blunderbuss barely tickles their hides, but you killed one by hand!"

"Yes," said I, irritated.

"Yes, he did," Chomlis said, bursting from the circular door that led down below deck. He changed into even more frivolous clothing than the somber undertaker's garb. This was a long frock coat of crimson, ruffled shirt, tight pants and black boots. He wore five swords across seven belts and a tricorner hat with three feathers. Ugly. "He did so and I was there to witness it. A spectacular feat of fortitude, if I do say so myself. And, swamp climate is not conducive to Ilumiculto cleanliness. My horns shed there, constantly."

He used the word the Cloudfires call themselves from before they fell out of the sky because whoever is up there hated them so much they burned them out. I suppose this was the Creator, but he never told me it was so in my many meditations. Maybe they tried to steal the money the Creator never had.

"Aye, me lord," the boy mumbled, and he scurried away.

Chomlis had a crew of thirty, men and women, differing in clothing and skin tones, aggressive, fearful, but all wageslaves. Those on ships had more of the thing than others in Rokoana Fortress, but they used it to act foolish for the most part, drinking to stupidity and cursing. I think the thing they had more of was called 'freedom', but how can one give out what is in the air?

Chomlis gave a golden coin to his captain, a woman of blonde hair, scarred face and daring named Rasha RedTempest. She killed many a man in her day. It showed in her blue eyes, the ferocity, the certainty. I liked her from the moment I boarded. Rasha took the coin, eyed Chomlis with hatred, me with suspicion.

"Much obliged, laird." Her accent sounded Feynish, for the Fallen once had distinct cultures, a dozen until the Favored captured them. I know little of them or the others, for they are all bonded by the Fall. But Rasha had the spirit of battle, if not one of wisdom, and this I admired in anyone.

"The sea is calm and the wind is with us, Bear. We can make Barriken in twelve days." Chomlis snorted the sea air, sighed, and then sneezed. Allergies, he called them. The Cloudfire body did not agree with our wonderful, clean air.

I wondered what the air must have been like where Chomlis came from.

"Yes, time to sleep," said I. "Captain Rasha, it is good to have a warrior onboard."

She gave me a volcanic stare. "I'm nae a captain, Tribesman." Then Rasha eyed my circles, tattoos across my bare chest. In each circle of charcoal dye were images of my wanderings. A Thunderbird. A great spider of the Heneyanesh. Skull with wings. A woman, my dead wife. Tattoos for commemoration. The Araposha are known for this as well.

"Not captain?" I glared at Chomlis. "Still stingy?"

"What? How could one ever accuse me of..." the usual Cloudfire speak, until Chomlis saw my cut eyes. "Oh, very well." he reached into his fuzzy purse and plucked out another gold coin. "Captain's wages from now on, RedTempest."

She smiled. I liked the smile very much.

"Thank ye, laird!"

"As you must know, this will demand more responsibility from you." And my old friend walked away.

Rasha gave me a nod of respect. Good. People must be treated well. Hearts should be satisfied, not broken. And, I like to keep Chomlis honest. No. I like to keep Chomlis as close to honest as I can make him be when he is within arm's reach.

I nodded back in kind.

Rasha studied me. I liked it. I had not exchanged glances witha woman since my wife who long ago died, and I found it pleasing.

"You're diferent, Tribesman. Lots of scars. Bare chest." She looked over the horizon, of teal seas, the white teeth that show for seconds on the wavetops, the sky a verdant orange. "Are ye Abiak? They're men are strapping like ye."

"Araposha. Stone and ink. From the Fifteen Arrows, where all the rivers join. I am different, yes, even from them. I like to see new things. I like to fight."

She blushed, then gripped the wheel of the ship. "So do I."

I walked up to her as the wind shifted and gulls hovereed over the aft deck. "Then one day, we should fight."

"Sooner rather than later, ye?"

III.

Twelve Days Past...

Stone is my life, as is struggle. I was born in a longhouse on an island in the midst of the Seventh Arrow River, surrounded by a loving family, four generations, with great stone cliffs all around us. When I was a boy of thirteen, I walked with my father to the land of the Shovonaxl, who wear masks and move like serpents. They dance with snakes, and sleep in cliff houses with the giant vipers and constrictors. Every night we were in their lands, in the desert with three-headed cacti and the unseen stalkers, I had vicious nightmares. A Shovonaxl shaman, head covered in a buffalo skull would fall from the moon. His toes would grow into the beige sands, scattering the scorpions, the dung beetles and trapdoor spiders. As he did this mysterious thing, he sang to me:

"I am like a tree

My leaves might change color,

But my roots are the same."

Then, his roots reached me, and devoured my body, and I wandered as a skeleton.

I woke up in a cold sweat on those hot evenings, my father telling me, "Little One, do not disturb the night. Screams will make the stars fall."

I never understood in those days.

But as we laid our eyes on the umbral undergrowth of Barikken, with the moon high, the sky black and stars few, I began to understand the nightmare. I began to comprehend my father's warning.

Bad things will break out into the night if you do not move with care.

We did not. Or rather, our youngest mates, Ishmael and Aqib, who rowed ashore earlier to spot trails in the Wild did not. Anywhere one goes in the Wild, there are trails left by the People. But they are narrow footpaths, barely discernible in the thick forests of vines and trees who speak. We do not disturb the Wild, for it feeds us. It feeds the animals, who also feed us. You cannot cut into Achgeket too much before she bleeds. Her blood, once spilled, cannot be washed off.

But these trails are narrow, so hard to find. Ishamel and Aqib were eager to find it, being stowed in the bottom of the galleon for a long time scrubbing floors, killing rats. They were so eager they forgot to take weapons. They were so excited, they forgot the Night listens, especially to loud voices.

"We didn't know, lord!" Ishmael, rowing the boat frantic, eyes wide, screeched. "We made the trail, to the southwest by the red cliff! But, they heard us! The shadows have white eyes!" The crew got frantic over the report and a commotion arose.

I groaned as Chomlis slammed the deck door open, a brass lantern in one hand, cutlass in the other. He wore a red silk robe and a pointed nightcap. His eyes were two beryl firepits.

"What is all of this ruckus, Captain RedTempest?"

No hardened warrior of the sea should have to see their master in a nightcap.

"Land ho, laird! Young lads found the trail but woke the jungle janglers," captain yelled back, for her eyes were alert for canoes, a war party.

"Barikka," I corrected her, but no one listened. "We must go to them now. If we wait, they will turn hostile."

"Are ye mad, Grey Bear?" Rasha fumed. "Walk to them in the pitch of night? Let them skewer us with those wee poisoned needles or drop into their pitfalls! Not me! Too smart for me own good and yours as well, thank ye very much!"

"Bear is aggressive," said Chomlis, "but right on in matters of the People. The Barikka hate our galleons and see them as an act of war. Past encounters have not made them, er, accessible, to our preferred methods of negotiation. It is much more civil, from their stanpoint, to caress their acrimony on their home ground."

"But, laird--"

"In order to give them a feeling of ownership. Over the island. No doubt they believe we have come to claim it," Chomlis responded. "Like the others." The final part he whispered next to