47: The Dance

The air was warm. The evening of Swan’s death ceremony had arrived.

The green boat floated freely in the middle of the sound. Old Yann brought out a petrified reed into which he’d drilled several finger holes. In one end, he inserted a mouthpiece and in the other a bell made of foil. Maxim’s accordion keys were tinted orange by the sun’s low rays. The fact that his drum set was a collection of pots and pans made Roland no less of an expert.

Despite the distance and decades that had elapsed since the division of their tribes, Ottala’s and these men’s, their histories had been probed and partially explained over these last few days on the boat. Of the movements, the divisions and subdivisions of their people, old Yann knew the most. There had been a feud, he said, a schism, major discord, a brawl over the meaning of The Law as well as a profound disagreement about whether to reveal themselves to the Giants. All of these arguments had taken place when Yann was a boy, when the world was a different place, when there were still lots of living plants and animals as well as fervent opinions and Fairies had, on occasion, made their homes in cities, and some were said to have lived in attics and hidden inside the walls and crannies of Giant homes.

Besides these revelations, Ottala’s heart had become a revelation in itself. From the time she boarded the green boat, she’d experienced a whirlwind of emotions. It turned out that Gut Wedding, with its deprivations and dangers, had not been for nothing. Her work had led to a never-before imagined discovery—another Fairy tribe!—and new ways of thinking as well. The men in the boat were affectionate towards her and receptive to her ideas. They listened to Ottala with appreciation. They were artists themselves, all very fine musicians!

She found out about the flood of course. She learned that the water on which they sailed was not the sea. She understood too, that Swan must have been fleeing for his life when he took shelter beneath the overpass, and he may even have been injured in some way.

Ottala talked often of Swan’s terrible end, about how he slipped into a coma and how he died so suddenly. If she’d only made more of an effort sooner, she might have been able to awaken him and keep him from dying.

The captain,Yann, asked her, “Are you sure he was really dead?”

“Of course he’s dead! Do you think I can’t tell when a spirit leaves a body!” She turned her back to him and scowled.

After that, the men were careful to listen respectfully whenever she talked about the young Giant she called her husband. They didn’t tell her they thought marrying a Giant was as absurd as marrying a hippopotamus. Still, they were more and more fascinated by Ottala and her strange ideas. None of the girls in their own town were remotely like her. None were as outspoken. None were as athletic or beautiful. Their voyage, which originally had been a voyage of exploration in the aftermath of the flood, had turned into an exploration of this new and alluring person whom they’d accidentally discovered on the shoreline.

They’d all fallen in love with her though none would say so out loud. Their inevitable metamorphosis from friends to secret rivals began the second she’d stepped on board, but, at this moment, these transformations were incomplete. They were like pirates who’d happened upon an inconvenient treasure, a treasure impossible to divvy up. Each man tried to play his cards carefully, not failing to notice the greedy desire that beamed from his companion’s eyes.

On the evening of the fourth day on the boat, Ottala stood with Yann in the cockpit talking about Swan again.

“I loved him,” she said.

He scoffed. “I can’t imagine—”

“There’s more than one way to love,” she said. “With affection for sure. But also with pity…”

“A pitiful love?”

“It wasn’t pitiful!” she snapped. “It was compassionate. It was a love between people who trusted each other. Swan was a great person. And in spite of everything, he was almost too kind. His life had been miserable and he needed my love.”

“Misery is relative.” 

“I know, but it was really bad. His parents disappeared when he was little, and he carried all the hurt from that. He grew up alone. He was raised by images rather than people. He’d never had a lover or a friend and he didn’t understand really basic things. It made me want to help him, and if he’d lived I would have done it.”

“I can tell you cared for him,” Yann said.

“Giants are human beings just like us. It’s only the issue of scale that divides us.”

Yann tapped the wheel softly with his knuckles. It was clear he didn’t agree on this point, but finally he said, “We can do a ceremony for him if you want.”

Ottala’s heart burst forth. “Could we?!” she cried as she embraced the captain. “I wanted to ask you but I didn’t know how!”

So it came to pass that four Fairies in a boat called out to Swan’s departed spirit at the same time his living, dreaming, body was trudging toward the mountains atop the elevated causeway less than half a mile away.

Yann stood in the cockpit while the others sat together in the stern.

“Today we take a moment to speak of Ottala’s departed husband who was named Swan,” Yann intoned. “Swan, may your spirit come near. Please join us, Swan.”

“I feel his presence!” Ottala said. “He’s here, nearby.”

Yann cleared his throat as he lashed the boat’s wheel in place with a length of rope. Then he turned toward the others and held up his hands as if holding an invisible window that allowed him to see into the spirit world.

“It is true that some of us never met you in life,” he said. “But, from our friend, we’ve learned what a good man you were, and we’re indebted…. We thank you for your strength and bravery. Without your strength, our friend could not have survived. Because of your bravery she is safe now.”

There was a pause. The boat made its usual creaking sounds, and it seemed Yann couldn’t think of anything more.

But a few seconds later, he went on. “Death is inseparable from divine nature,” he said. “Nature is our reality. Reality is nature. We know that death, which is invisible, and his sister, nature, which we can see is in peril and dying, will reconfigure itself in the limitless time. Our very dust will be transposed into some new form of life and everything will move on. That’s what Fairies believe. I do not know what Giants think about this. From their actions, I’d say they believe in some other… different ideas.” During the next gap in Yann’s eulogy, the ship rocked a bit, whether in agreement or disagreement with his statement it was hard to say. Ottala, who’d been sitting in the stern along with Roland and Maxim, wept silently.

“I only want to know,” said Yann as he gazed through his spirit window, “Where is your humility in the face of our shared catastrophe? Why won’t Giants ever admit to your crimes? Why do you prefer living in fantasies while the world degrades all around us? Why won’t you wake up and come to the aid of those last bits of life that cling to earth? That last speck of lichen, the last cowering bug?!”

Ottala raised her tear-streaked face. “Do we really need to talk about this? None of it’s his fault!”

Yann did not look at Ottala directly, but he sighed heavily before he continued in a less impassioned voice. “Death is a mirror that nature holds up to us, and we are here to help you pass beyond it. Even though you were a Giant, we believe you were an exceptional man. We wish you a sweet and easy way, Swan. To honor you, to smooth your voyage, we offer our music. We salute you. Go sweetly, and know your memory is cherished by all who are present today.”

Fairies everywhere had a common music. What can be said about it here? It was a naïve sort of music with some sophisticated aspects. Even the most melancholy tunes seemed infected with happiness. And the happy ones were tainted by wistful yearning. Some said Fairy music was waltz-like, though every expert of the waltz disagrees with this. Some call it, “oom pah pah music” though that’s quite misleading. “Cracked and imperfect,” a musicologist once wrote, “like a weird polka streaming from the windows of an asylum.” Whatever it was, it was naturally addicting. It quickened the body and entranced the mind. 

On the roof of the boat, on that tiny stage, Ottala, wearing her golden costume, danced. The sun was a minute or so from setting and she was bathed in a velvety pink light. The men observed her as they played their instruments all together in the stern. They played with abandon, urged on by Ottala’s lithe and hypnotic movements, and as they watched they fell more and more in love with her.

Out of the setting sun a hawk swooped down, skinny, sickly, with bald places on its chest and neck but, in spite of these blemishes, swift and silent. The sunlight dimmed a nanosecond before its talons closed on the girl. A wingtip thumped the planks as the three men sprang to their feet. The great hawk hoisted Ottala aloft and its shrill scream merged with hers, drowning out the last wheezing note of the accordion as she was borne away.

The bird made a long looping circle as it struggled to gain altitude, but finally it climbed high above them and flew back in the direction of the sun. The men stood frozen, still holding their instruments, except for Roland whose pots and pans lay at his feet. They craned their necks as they followed its path through the sky. Yann prayed fervently that the bird would drop her. Roland prayed to be given magic power to snatch Ottala out of the sky and he actually reached towards her impotently. Maxim prayed that the scene before him did not really exist, including Ottala and himself, and that the very reality they inhabited was a fiction generated by some warped and fevered mind. Their inability to believe the horror of what was happening made the event feel dreamlike. They stood silently, rotating their bodies as they followed the flight of the bird, while Ottala, flailing in its clutches, became smaller and smaller against the blue and pink striped sky. As she was carried off they heard her call to them—or at least they thought they did. They talked about it afterwards. They agreed it was not a cry of pain or suffering, although her body had surely been pierced by the raptor’s claws. “Brothers, I love you all!” is what Yann said he heard. “The journey has no beginning nor end,” were the words Maxim recalled. “This, too, is a part of the dance,” is what Roland said she cried.

From a point of view almost level with the water and a short distance away from the boat, we see the aftermath of the disaster. Three musicians are silently leaning, their bellies pressed hard against the gunwale. Their weight has made the green boat list dangerously to one side. None of them seem to notice this. The vessel rocks mournfully and precariously. Maxim suddenly curses and launches his accordion into the water where it splashes, and cheerfully floats in front of them, adding an air of ridicule to the cruel nature of Ottala’s end.