Little Black Book

I scaled a fence to fetch the peacock’s feather. Amid the dappled light of the jacaranda, I rolled the feather between my fingers. Satisfied, I left the cover of the purple blooms, hopped the fence, passed through an arch, and entered the palace courtyard. A row of potted palms mimicked the colonnade of the palace: a façade that both screened and revealed the space within. Snaking through the columns, I happened upon a black cat lying in the cool. I tickled its tummy with the feather.

The chapel bells tolled. The cat slinked through a golden gate. I wanted to chase it, but instead, I dallied in the shade and then sat to rest in the spot the cat had just vacated. The upper half of me caught the sun. It beat down hard, sizzling my skin and closing my eyes. I thought of the peacock that had shed its feather.

It was quiet in the palace gardens. The sun had silenced everything. Cloaked in the sun’s silence, I did not immediately comprehend the nasally, bright, buzzing sound announcing itself from a far-flung corner of the gardens, but the strange tone and timbre soon had me on my feet. I listened to my ears and followed them. I tracked the sound to the stone beam bridge that lay across the widest part of the dry stream. Stood upon the bridge was a merry hurdy-gurdy player playing a medieval folk song. Tied around his neck was a scarf made of panic button red. He cranked the wheel and deftly ran his fingers across the keyboard, all the while beckoning me over. I succumbed to his summoning and approached him. His giant fingers and hand slowed as he gestured with his foot to something beneath the bridge. A brown satchel posed on the pebbles. I leapt down into the dry bed of the stream and greedily fed my head and hands into the bag.

The music stopped. I looked up to meet with the man, but he was no longer where I left him. I pulled out the contents of the bag and placed them in a row. Four healthy wads of cash lay before me. It was enough money to make me forget about the hurdy-gurdy player. I played with the money for a bit, piled it up, knocked it down, packed it away, and sat with it for a while. There was $20, 000 in the bag. Who did it belong to? Me? The hurdy-gurdy player seemed to suggest so. Could I trust him? I left the bag as I had found it and marched myself out of the palace gardens.

My wandering mind kept me awake deep into the night. I sat at the foot of my bed and looked out just as a curtain of clouds slowly lifted to reveal the full moon stamped upon the purple sky. The music of the hurdy-gurdy player haunted me. His nimble fingers were not to be trusted. Nor that foot of his. I played with the shadows on my walls, occupied with thoughts of the satchel. My mind was a factory, a hub of industry, churning out illusions of everything I could do with the money. Of everything I could be.

I washed myself in the daylight, stared into the mirror and talked away my fatigue, desperate to unwind the weariness in the black blobs I called my eyes. Unable to free myself of the money, I decided that I would return to the palace gardens and take the satchel home with me.

I could hear the maniacal tones of the hurdy-gurdy from outside the palace garden walls. The playing stopped. I ran to the bridge to find a woman rifling through the satchel. I hid behind a tree and eyed the scene. She checked about herself, fingered through the bag, counted and played with the money, then carefully put it all back and hurriedly left the scene. I smirked.

I remained behind the tree and reassessed the situation. How many people had the hurdy-gurdy player attracted to the bag? I crept the paths, observing others, searching for clues in their strides, their smiles, their attire.

The morning quickly passed into noon. I found a bench from where I could view the satchel. The trees obscured the clock tower on the other side of the gardens. Only half of the clock face was visible. The hours from twelve till six were lost on me. I waited. I waited until the sun set.

I arrived at the palace gardens in the morning just as the gates were unlocked. I raced towards my bench. Sat upon it was the woman from the day before. I circled her from afar. She stared hard at the bridge and then withdrew a black notebook and began to furiously jot some things down. I walked off, somewhat defeated.

I followed a path to the orangery. Vanilla embalmed the air. Thousands of creamy, pinwheel flowers smothered a wall, like limpets on a rock. It was heady and thick inside the orangery. Paperflower scrambled over four-o’clock in a brilliant burst of pink, and a riotous jumble of aromatic climbers and ornamental vines licked the ceiling and windows. I dusted the leaves with the feather I was still carrying around with me. Outside, I found myself stood before a handsome sundial. Its spiderweb of date rings and hour-lines barely visible. Some ducks waddled towards me and I bent to charm them with the feather.

I stumbled upon the sleeping peacock at the foot of the swollen, prickly trunk of a silk floss tree, nestled amongst flowers. Its blue breast bulged.

I revisited the bridge. The satchel had gone. I sat on the bench and found the woman’s black notebook. I thought of the sun, of its dying heat and smoulder. Flickers of mass tickled my brain. I divorced the pages and read her story.

Puddles

“What is this toil?” asked the ladybird.

“Nothing but being loyal,” replied the butterfly.

“But to who?”

“Need you ask?”

The ladybird shook her head. “I suppose not.”

“How do I look?” asked the butterfly.

“Quite fine. As always. And me?”

The butterfly reached out a leg and brushed a besmirching particle of something from the forewing of the ladybird. “Same, ladybird.”

The pair shadowed the falling sun and drove the sea to recession. To the Island they advanced. The wind told them to retreat. Only giants dare play in this bay.

The butterfly told her story. “'Are you content with your sight?' the bee asked me. I pondered for a short while and replied, “I have viewed a universe, and still I am unsatisfied. I can continue to observe the cycles and become ever more stagnant with each turn. I can breed illusions to harvest joy and only fill my belly with sweet rottenness. I can be content. I can be anything. But I have yet to be me. ‘You will always be you, butterfly,’ the bee said. ‘It isn’t worth your life. It’s just a glimpse, a glimmer, only, there will be no time to collect your thoughts. There will be no story to tell. It will be the end of you.’

The bee’s pleas did nothing to deter me, so I gave him what he wanted and presented a gift of pollen and he spoke no more. He fashioned a map of the Island and turned his back on me.

‘It will be my beginning,’ I declared, and he scoffed. He had lost somebody, but they had found themselves.”

“Who is this bee?” asked the ladybird.

“He is the only one to have returned from the Island. The bee and the dragonfly had made a pact, just as you and I have, but when the bee saw the end that the dragonfly came to, he cowardly fled. Now he lives in the Tree that is settled on the Mount from where the Four Rivers flow, and each day he spins a different yarn to those who will listen, but only his ears hear. I wanted to tempt him away from the Tree, to join us, but thought better than to protrude the matter; him being stung by his previous encounter.”

The ladybird nodded.

The pair pushed onwards, wings furious. The cry of the wind was ignored. The clouds were strewn across the sky, reflecting long, scattered rays of sun, forging a land above, aglow with majestic pinks and corrupted whites. Quite soon, the finer details of the Island gathered before them.

“We will see ourselves.” beamed the butterfly. “My identity will no longer base itself upon the stray tongues of another, dazed by uncertainty. We are stifled creatures: our portraits incomplete. To know oneself is a necessity; even if this feverish chase will bring us to an end.”

“Do you then not trust my descriptive of you?” asked the ladybird.

“I do not. I trust that you depict an image, just as I reveal one to you, but they are deficient. You ought to see yourself.”

“We are gifts for the eyes of others,” said the ladybird.

“We are no such thing,” protested the butterfly, but the ladybird continued.

“Should your form not lend itself to another? I see I when I see you. All your glories and villainies; your beauty and repugnancy; every dream you birth, and every nightmare that terrorizes you, I share them too. Every facet of each other we grasp and make our own. We are reflections of each other. You need not journey to the Island to see yourself. I am here before you.”

“Then why do you seek a sighting?” asked the butterfly.

“I need not proof, only faith,” replied the ladybird. “There is nothing that can be revealed to me that I have not seen before. But I am tired of seeing, you see?”

The butterfly knowingly nodded.

The winged creatures of symmetry made contact with the Island, employing all energies to surmount the wind, clinging to rocks and blades of grass to rest their fragilities for a moment at a time. Not once did they turn to face the mainland. The pair wandered the Island, navigating close to the ground. They hovered above the edge of a cliff and stared down toward the rocks that jutted from the sea, like alters, casually strewn by giants. The ladybird and the butterfly found themselves a beach that was sheltered from the wind, and sat on the sand, stretching their wings and resting their bodies, soaking the last of the goodness from the rays.

“We must hurry before the light is lost,” pressed the butterfly.

“Who will go first?” asked the ladybird.

“I thought that perhaps we could do it together,” said the butterfly. “I would like to share my reflection with you.”

The ladybird gazed upon the scales of her friend’s wings. How beautiful the flying flower.

The pair thanked and wished the other well. To the mirror they flew. Wedged in the cliff face, it was no bigger than the head of a daisy. A plane-faced rock jutted out beneath the mirror. The pair stood on it, gazing up toward the looking glass. The mirror was sized for one and not two. The creatures stared into one another, searching for an answer, before the butterfly decided for them both and bid farewell. The butterfly rose to meet the mirror and grew into a smile.

“I have found a truth,” exclaimed the butterfly, and with that, the butterfly’s form turned to water and then burst, forming tiny puddles on the rock. The ladybird stood amid the puddles, amid the remains of her friend. The puddles were eaten by the sun. One became one became one.

I popped the peacock’s feather in the notebook and set it down beneath the bridge, humming the medieval folk song that hurdy-gurdy player was so fond of.