authorjeffbaker

When He Reached The Town-O

By Jeff Baker

There was no moon, just a starry sky. Dark, the way the Fox liked it. He smiled to himself; with any luck there would be rabbit or egg or fowl for his den tonight as he raced across the field towards the edge of the town. There was a farm near the town where they did not always guard their stock, and that made it a fox’s larder. He heard and smelled a young mouse run across his path. Carless! It would become a mouse-morsel except the Fox could see the dark bulk of the barn and farmhouse ahead. He stopped and sniffed the air and listened.

The soft rustle and murmur of nesting hens. Distant sounds from the town. No other noises other than the rustle of leaves and grass. The Fox quickly squeezed under the wire fence around the small yard around the chicken coop. It would have to be quick; find a hen, a sharp, quick bite, the quick removal of the hen amid the noise and a quick run into the dark with his meal for the night.

The Fox was stealthily approaching the dark of the henhouse when there was a stirring and fluttering in the air in front of him. In the dark he could make out a form slightly larger than a hen; birdlike, with a beak, spread wings that glinted with color and a long tail that swished back and forth like a snake.

“I am Echeveriagallinapotel,” it said. Not in the tongue of the hens or the foxes, but understood plainly nonetheless. “I am the Protector-Lord of this flock. Who dares approach to feast of their flesh?”

“I, the Fox,” he said. “I seek what is mine, by the law of the land. I ask only a meal to fill my belly.”

“The laws of your land are not the laws of mine,” the bird-snake thing said “My brethren and I felt the blood of sacrifices spill on the land. It is consecrated to us. When those who worshipped us moved north, we moved with them. Who are you to claim the land?”

“My ancestors roamed here when yours were confined to the lands near the Equator,” the Fox said. “We know the grasses and the winds here. Our name is spoken in hushed whispers in this land’s nests and burrows. We are a part of its smells; the flash of our tails in the dusk is a sight well-known here. The taste of hens and mice is part our being. We claim the right to eat, as any creature does.”

“You seek what is under my protection,” the bird-snake thing said. “This I cannot allow.”

“I do not recognize your authority,” the Fox said, carefully eying the bird-snake thing’s beak. It was curved and sharp. “And I claim a hen as tribute.”

“You have not earned tribute,” Echeveriagallinapotel said, clicking his beak and fluttering his wings.

“I have earned it by raising my kits and providing for them. And by being a part of the non-human community here. We were here before humans, we will be here after,” the Fox said.

The bird-snake thing flapped its wings and clicked its beak. The Fox glared and barred his teeth.

The bird-snake thing began to swell and grow before the Fox’s eyes. The beak clicked menacingly, the Fox noticed, for the first time, a sharp spike at the end of the serpent tail.

“Hear me, intruder!” Echeveriagallinapotel said, voice booming. “I defend those in my protectorate! I will tear your flesh and strew it along the ground! You will become food for other flocks! Mine are sacred and eat of the grains, not the lesser animals!”

There are times to fight, the Fox thought, and times to retreat. This was the latter. The Fox quickly fled the way he came and was soon skirting the houses near the edge of town. There would be a rabbit or a mouse or some unwary bird. And they would not have protectors. He would not go hungry.

The Fox sniffed the air.

—end—

Wanderer’s Bay

By Jeff Baker

We’d traded our sloop in on something with an engine and had spent about a day fishing in the open sea. I guess that was my Stepdad’s idea of “bonding,” and it largely worked. Then the fog rolled in and our engine cut out. After about ten minutes of trying, my Stepdad gave up on starting it and swore under his breath. I had just turned fifteen and hadn’t started driving, let alone working on engines. We tried the radio but all we got was static. This was a few decades before cellphones, but I have a feeling those wouldn’t have worked either.

My stepdad smiled and suggested we break out the oars. We had oars, but I could tell he was worried. I was fishing around in my pockets for my compass when we heard someone call out “Hullo!”

We looked there and saw another ship sitting there in the fog. There was a name on the bow. I couldn’t read it; it was in some foreign script, like maybe Russian.

“Can you help us?” my stepdad asked. “Our engine won’t start, and we’re stuck out here.”

“Don’t know much about engines, but maybe we can pull you back to shore,” The man in the other boat was tall and sunburned, with dark curly hair. “We’re the Swift Traveler by the way.

“We’re the In Doubt,” my stepdad told him.

The man on the Swift Traveler nodded and turned to his crew.

“Autolycus, get the rope over there. Ancaeus, prepare to get this ship back to port.”

A young man pulled off his shirt and shoes and jumped into the water and quickly swam the distance between the two ships, rope between his teeth which he tied to the In Doubt. He then swam back as if he’d been born to the water. When he climbed back aboard the Swift Traveler, the man gave a few orders and their ship started moving, pulling us along with it. In a few minutes we saw the rocky outcropping that marked the entrance to Wanderer’s Bay. We hadn’t been far. The Swift Traveler pulled us back and once we were safely docked, the crew of the Swift Traveler waved and the ship began to head out to sea. My stepdad and I waved.

“Thanks! I’m Ed, this is Sean,” my stepdad called out.

“Jason,” the man in the other ship called out.

We watched them go, their engines as silent as any I’d ever heard.

Gus, the man who ran the shop on the dock listened to our story and said we were lucky someone showed up to pull us in.

“I wouldn’t want to be stuck out there,” he said. “The sea around Wanderer’s Bay is supposed to be haunted. From time to time, old ships and sailors have been seen in the area. Some from long ago.”

I didn’t believe any of that, but one night decades later I looked up some of the names I remembered and what came up was “See; Argonauts.”

—end—