Ch 8 - Children of Tegalupa

A Place in the Clouds

It is night now. The clouds briefly part. The North Star shines brightly to my right. She gives me a bearing for the direction of the growing winds. Elbows on railing, I lean out and watch the sky. Other stars reveal themselves, but the viewing is short lived. The veil that covers this night once again completes itself. The world plunges into a sea of ink.

When sight disappears, the imagination to take over. The wind is a great mimic. She plays many roles. She first imitates sea birds begging for scraps. Their falling calls are selfish and sad. The wind shifts again to a soft cooing mother. She comforts the small child that finds everything so frightening. The air curves again. It forms a high shrill scream. The sound is disturbing. It touches something deep within. I swear that I hear children in terror. Which itself is quite scary. And impossible. There are no children this far out to sea.

Something goes thud far below where I stand. The heavy sound I feel as it vibrates through my toes. Weight will shift. Sometimes cartons will fall. After a hard day at sea, the hold below could be a mess. I wait for a moment to see if others on the deck have stirred. Not my concern. Not as exhausted as I am. Leave it for the morning crews to earn their keep.

At the edge of a bulkhead there is a crack of light. Like a coal miner climbing, I make my way towards. Within an overhang, there are lights along the eves. The palm sized covers have been painted in black. Halos of light shine along their edges. Three dim circles sketch out the surroundings. The first thing I notice is the strangeness of my hands.

The day's events have been quite dramatic. Men have died for their ship. I look at my hands balled up in wrappings, comical things like the hands of a cartoon. The fire that has consumed them seems to have receded. Blessings are sometimes disguised, the torment of hands has kept me distracted and unaware of my leg, face, and skull. The Gregorio's Promise is what I have started to call my difficult situation. We might bathe ourselves in selfish thoughts or seize what we have and overcome. Men on boats who don't pull their weight sometimes wake up in schools of fish wishing for gills and fins. How deep is your will to survive? How well do you swim?

The drain of the day has taken almost everything. I stumble to a corner of the deck to a nest of coiled ropes. The air is quite cold and the ropes are now dry. Another blessing, a quite place to rest. Squatting down, I sit but mostly fall. The seat is quite comfortable, a most wonderful place to rest. I gather my heavy coat close and lay my head back. The warm darkness quickly swallows.

I used to have such vivid dreams. Some good things I still remember as a child, a mother with her smile, and a dog that we once had. Then the world became a much more moribund place. Memories started to die.

The Old Man has told me that, "Memory is a liar." Every time we want to remember, our mind does not pull out something whole. Instead it cobbles together the bits and pieces that we need from different hiding spots within our head. Within this process there are gaps. Our mind is a skilled liar, she fills the holes with random things that sound good. The fish is always bigger. We always seem a bit more clever. The woman that we remember meeting is much harder to forget.

What else did The Old Man say? "There is balance in life." Balance? Where is the balance in this day? We lost many when there was no need. I close my eyes tight and wonder if there was another way.

If memory is the liar, then maybe dreams are the hand of a healer? Things are in play. Things I don't understand. Perhaps the dream of the bird is waiting, high in the sky and fully in command.

Worlds shift and perception is a dream. Hardly do we ever recognize passing through a door. Wind is the first thing. It whistles in the air, cools the skin, and forces tears from my eyes. The wind plays once again mimicking birds in the sky. Eyes open and the perspective has shifted. Clouds surround me, big fluffy things, full and white and all around. Nothing but clouds, clouds, and more clouds. They build and climb and tower high above.

Something reflexive runs straight down my back. Muscle flex along shoulders and lats. Wind fills the space between shoulders and chest. Earth's breath fills two sails. The resistance is certain. There is muscle memory that is not quite my own. I am a bird with two wings.

The arrangement here is strange. I am myself, and yet I'm not. The bird is the pilot. In that way I am just along for the ride. I can figure and question. But in a curious way, I am a creature of two minds.

There is practice here and still there is the unknown, a bit like taking a stranger out on a date. The bird is often quiet. Sometimes the bird has much to say. The environment changes. The reflexes of the bird take control. Struggling only leads to trouble. Experience and practice of the bird take hold.

The day is quite chilly. I find myself sinking fast. There is a jungle down beneath me. There is a farm up on a hill. The house is familiar, a place that I have been before. In the yard, I can see a dog and a boy. The smell wafts up of baking and bread. It's a good smell that welcomes. This draws me in. As I get closer my belly begins to rumble. There are ghosts in that house where men live. There are feelings of dread that belong.

Down at this depth the air begins to warm. The current of rising air pushes me back up towards the towering clouds above. Fluffy and white, their mass continues to grow.

Clouds quickly change. That is what clouds are prone to do. They pile and waver then combine in new ways. Shapes mature that are familiar to me. They are jungle creatures that I have not seen for some time. There are monkeys and rodents. There are things I like to eat. There are tendrils rising from the soils grasping and surrounding great trees.

I miss the world of the jungle. My heart tells me that this world is not really mine. This sense of loss is a fleeting thing. The emotional flood is a curious. I don't really know why.

Clouds continue to roil. The jungle disappears. Something new draws the attention of the bird. It is the slightest of distractions, just a ripple on the surface of the fluffy white surface far below. The bird in me loves distraction. With a will that is not my own, the head tilts and the body drops. The bird circles as the clouds begin to dance.

Ripples form on the white floor below me like a strong wind ripples the surface of a lake. I wonder if there will be boats. Time passes, but the things of men never appear.

Instead the ripples dissolve. They shimmer in the air like tendrils of smoke. The smoke clears quickly revealing a long cut that is hard. Clouds are not hard. What can it be?

The cut slowly widens and a vibrant blue is revealed underneath. The cut widens and puckers. It looks like a giant eye. Behind the cut, more blue is revealed. The color deeper and brighter than the sky at my back.

The blue shines like metal and reflects the world like water. I can see myself flying and the clouds at my back bouncing off of the tight skin. There are no ripples in the blue. The surface is completely smooth.

The eye in the clouds surface opens wider. The blue begins to bulge. The eye opens until a circle is formed. The clouds that surround the opening are puffy, changing, and never the same, yet the circle is perfect. It has a distinct sharp edge. The blue begins to ungulate and ripple then bulge outward a little more.

There is resistance in the circle. The smooth blue and hard white seem distinctly at odds. The blue continues to push out like a butterfly from a cocoon.

Half way out, the bird gets excited. The blue thing emerging from the clouds appears to be an egg. Eggs are good things upon which all birds can rejoice. The bird in me ducks his head forcing barrel rolls. There is so much joy in flying. There is so much excitement in this form. Muscles bunch up, flex and release. Glee fills the heart of this beast.

We circle about and watch the rest of the process in play. The white gives way. The circle finally expands. Free from restraint, the blue quickly slides free. As the blue escapes into free air a light rain begins to fall.

There is liquid in the air like a soft sprinkling rain. A wet sheen covers the surface of the shiny blue. Sunlight bends in strange ways. Yellows, reds, and greens spill off the blue skin. In the soft rain, the colors also fill the air. It is a beautifully strange thing, this blue form bathed in rainbow colors. It takes a few moments for the initial impact to grow dull.

Eggs have weight, but this blue thing does not fall. Eggs make me happy. This thing does not. A shiver runs up my back and bowels release as I realize what the blue thing actually is. The form is something that most birds dread.

The wind picks up. The skin of the blue thing ripples. It rises high in the air. The bird inside of me curses, "Balloon!"

Balloons are not natural things. They are the creations of men. They defy everything birds find sacred. Balloons make no sense.
Birds understand that some gasses are lighter than other gasses. Warm air pushes wings up. We learn about this early in our lives. There is great joy when learning to ride thermal currents.

Birds understand that some things are man-made like rubber. The texture of rubber is like some of the tasty bits I fish out of the surf on good days. The taste of rubber is very bad and bitter. Passing the man-crap rubber is not much fun. To move the man-crap rubber I have to eat my weight of the green stuff from the ocean that isn't easy to find and tastes worse than the man-crap. Rubber is not our friend.

Birds know about the rubber. We know about gasses. But balloons don't know about any of this. They don't even have feathers. They don't have wings. How do balloons even get off the ground? There is a magic within these things that we don't yet understand. Birds have been been deliberating on this puzzle for a very long time.

Curious and wanting a better look, I fly along the lighted side of the balloon where the sun shines brightest. The skin is blue and metallically gleaming. There is a sheen on the surface that appears to be wet. The wet does not bead like water. It is even, and it clings. Drips fall from the bottom of the balloon. They are an oily brown.

Sunlight bends along the blue skin of the balloon. Multiple spiraling patterns appear. The spirals appear in random ways as the balloon catches the sunlight at different angles.

We circle in close to get a detailed view. The bird in my head gets louder. The voice says "Pop it!" The man in me says. "No." Like a child, the bird set into a rhythmic chant,"Pop it! Pop it! Pop it!" I finally give way.

With my two long claws, I pounce upon the blue skin of the thing. The surface is slippery and takes some effort to grab hold. Wings pump. Eyes close. I squeeze my claws and brace for an explosion. The skin is thick and pushes back as talons stab. There is no explosion. The bird lets go, and we find wings back in the open air.

"What does it mean?" I ask the bird in my head.

The bird responds, "Bad peace, bad stuff, no give."

The bird flies in closer to get a better peek. One wing distance to the side, we peer warily at the skin. The spiraling colors or yellow, red, and green are much stronger than they once were.

As we fly along the side of the balloon, clouds behind us cover the sun. The spirals disappear. The blue is now constant and dull. Bird eyes are good. They catch movement inside the balloon. We draw close enough that wing tips sometimes touch.

There is a translucence to this thing of blue. It is indistinct and strange. Like a jellyfish in the ocean, part of what is inside is visible but indistinct. We catch cloud movement through the the skin of the balloon. Those clouds are on the far side. We follow the roundness of the balloon. Tracking the distant clouds as we flap. Another discovery is made.

There are black shapes inside of the balloon. Many are big and mostly square. Boxes. Lots of boxes are piled on each other from the bottom to the top. Men are funny things. They live in such places. We have seen these places with all the boxes so close. So much metal-on-metal noise. So many funny smells.

Men call it "city." The man in me knows this much. When I say the word in bird speak. It comes out as a squak. It sounds very silly in my bird ears.

The hard square boxes are still shapes. There are other shadows that move. Bird eyes catch the movement. The bird reaction is chilling and scary. "Pop it! Pop it!" the bird suddenly screams. There is terror in the bird's call. I can feel the emotion more than I can understand.

We fly in close and grab the wet rubber once again. Talons grab several times and quickly slip away. Movement in the blackness seems to notice.

We scrabble again for purchase and hopelessly slip on the skin. Before claws can dig in deep enough one of the shadows grows close.

There is a desperate energy as the bird digs in again. There is a moment of elation as claws snag and dig deep. "Pop! Pop! Pop!" chants the bird as we brace and use all of our strength. The moment of realizations seems eminently close. Before we can take it everything changes. The dark thing inside hits the rubber skin. The impact is fierce. The blue skin bubbles out. The force sends us tail over talons spinning back into free air.

"Bad trick! Bad trick!" the bird screams in an angry way. "Pop it! Pop it!" we yell while swooping in for another grab. Before I can even get close, the thing in the shadows acts out once again. The rubbery skin pushes out and slaps us. We curse at the slippery blue balloon as we once again tumble away.

"Stupid balloon! Bad magic!" the bird screams as we tumble, roll, and fly.

The sun reappears. Transparency disappears. We are once again faced with a shiny skin of blue. Swirling colors are not there. The surface seems almost metallic. It is highly reflective. The urgency to destroy slowly disappears.

We grow near the thing and are faced by another bird. It is large, dark, and yellow eyed just like ourself. I dip and gain height then fly at the balloon. At the last minute I stall and easily find a perch. The bird is me. The man inside easily understands. The bird is perplexed. The bird uses his beak to tap at the reflection. The bird that faces us taps back.

The mirror that we look in begins to shift. The bird image begins to swirl. Other images resolve. Snakes appear then swirl and become children. Children become a series of strange creatures. Finally there is a cow with horns. The cow interests me in a way I don't understand. That image swirls and becomes a face. This face is a man.

The face is strong and full of dark features. My bird eye winks. The man face winks back. I show my bird tongue. The man face does the same. It takes a moment for the man inside to understand. The face that looks back is me. It is face I had before Gregarios crushed my skull.

I am still, but the mouth of the face speaks. One word is clear and very loud, "Broken."

With that word I fall.

The feathers are gone. I now possess hands. Strangely, I land on my feet.

There is a house before me on top of a hill. The front door is thirty three feet away. It is the one that smelled of cooking bread. There are devils in that place that should never be let out.

"Tell me about it." A voice seems to pierce me. The voice is not my own.

"Tell me about it." The voice is persistent. It wants me to open that front door.

"Tell me about it!" The world of men takes hold.