FICTION

By Erin Jourdan

Ksjhe was trying to sleep but the smoke from the fires was every­where. He went to his com­put­er and tried to appease it by typing fire, fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire into the box. I see you. I see you fire. I smell you fire. I will keep you away by calling your name. You do not need to come any closer because I know who you are. In the box, he typed mercy mercy mercy mercy mercy mercy. Aksue coughed and turned in their shared bed. There was the mechan­i­cal sound of pro­pellers. Chop­ping at the air, trying to confuse the air, keep the air whipped up. Mas­sag­ing the air and pushing it to where they wanted it to be. Cre­at­ing holes for the air to move towards. The copters. They have bright lights that shine like beacons. They point the lights where they want the smoke to go. They massage the smoke. Ksjhe held Aksue, straight­en­ing the child’s mask that had been coughed off her face. 

The world is the caul­dron of witches, and we are caught in its stew. We are in the spell. Reed mat­tress. Cotton cloak. Baby slip­pers. Ksjhe anoints himself with a ground up fly. Keep the wind as my friend he says. The gen­er­a­tor will blow if it gets much hotter. He must put the spell into the white box as soon as pos­si­ble. The only way to save himself is to type a prayer that the algo­rithm can under­stand. How do you speak to the divine?  Simply simply. The divine doesn’t need flour­ish­es in a sit­u­a­tion such as this. Simply simply. 

The white box is hungry for letters. Why must we always hope that things are better for us than for others? Ksjhe thinks of the beings without letters, without the ability to type in the white box. How sad to be a crea­ture unable to com­mu­ni­cate with the divine. The smoke is so thick. What could it pos­si­bly want to hear to be con­vinced to change its path? Ksjhe rubs his fingers togeth­er and types west west west west west west west west west hoping to change the path of the fire. It does not help to imagine another person west of their home, typing east east east east east east east east east.

It is for the algo­rithm to decide. The white box seems to blink. Or is it Ksjhe? 

They have been granted another day. Outside smoke and mist combine to form a thick smog, rivulets of white smoke still rise from the stubble of the field. A fox wanders close to the house, maybe looking for any sort of comfort. The senses are deranged. An eye for an ear. A mouth for a hand. A nose for a foot. It is not a fox, it is Aksue in a rust colored smock. She is looking for burnt seeds. She learned that some species have seeds that must burn in order to grow. But no dear child, you are not such a seed. You can not with­stand the flame. Yet. Someday maybe. But not now. 

What to do on this given day? How to imagine a recipe for a future you never know will be given, or taken away? They have made their word offer­ing to the white box. Today they want for nothing. Boxes fall from the sky, white like our white box. Inside each is a set of marbles. Each color has some­thing dif­fer­ent in it when you crack it open. Coconut water. Dry crack­ers, an oily paste, some paper writing. Aksue explains that the marble inte­ri­or is coated in edible sugar. She licks little shards and her hands turn gooey purple-pink. We could be sad about the fire, but then we would have to be sad about all the fires. We would then be sad all the time. It is best to just keep the horizon of the day. When the sun goes down we sleep. During the day we enjoy the gift of the day. We are not to touch or open the screen to the white box. The algo­rithm is working with other people, else­where. Popular wisdom is to not use the white box when you are not des­per­ate. Oth­er­wise you may be sending out signals for it to come to you, bring­ing its chaos magic. 

That is how Ksjhe believes he lost Rose. She loved to use the box and although he tried to explain it was a sacred vessel she felt called to type in the box. She would type — wheat bread, pizza, coffee.  Why do cats purr? Why do dogs eat grass? Who does autop­sies? Who does oedipus blame for his fate? Who is the oldest person alive? Who is the richest person in the world? Oh Rose, why could you not stop? Must we tie your hands? There were no easy answers and yet you kept search­ing. Even he must confess that he typed why why why in the box. 

In the village there are many rumors about what the algo­rithm does, and where it came from. Some say it came from the Tower of Babel, in the Bible. People had so many ques­tions and we kept asking God over and over. Who are you? Why am I here? Why does this world work the way I think it should some­times, and not the other half of the time? Why are Jgdu’s cows so healthy, and mine so sickly, when they eat the same grass? God got bored of answer­ing ques­tions so he built the white box. There can be mil­lions of answers to the same ques­tion. And while the algo­rithm gives God more time away from the inces­sant curios­i­ty of people, it seems he has left us, allow­ing his cre­ation, a program of wind, to dole out the action. That is the way that Ksjhe thinks of the white box — a program of wind — all of the invis­i­ble things you can feel on your skin, what you see rustling the leaves of the trees. The invis­i­ble force that pushes waves and ripples the surface of a pond so that the light ripples. It is clear, but can carry sounds and smells. The wind is the shape­less force of air that can caress one moment and destroy the next. 

Although the box can be used for many things, Ksjhe uses it mostly to point the wind away from where he is with Aksue. He has heard the stories of people who look to summon and control the wind using the box. They are willing to risk much more than he. A quiet life, without riches, over­looked, would be fine by him. But for some, he under­stands, this is not enough. Some people are born with a huge hunger and try to manip­u­late the box. They would type more more more more more more more. And many more things Ksjhe doesn’t even want to envi­sion. Stop there. Stop in that path. Do not go further. Retreat. 

The box is the gate of God. The box is also your own reflec­tion. You find out who you are when you type in the box, if you listen to your own sup­pli­ca­tions the way you hope God will. From your heart, to your fingers, to the box. In a white space, no bigger than a wrapper for candy, you place your heart words. There are no other places for these prayers to go. Every­one has their own magic and Ksjhe pro­tects his with gen­tle­ness. He has seen others protect theirs with aggres­sion. Spells above the entry to their home. People who can not handle having one more thing taken away from them. But they can handle it, or they will die. Life is not about endurance, it is about sitting with what is. 

Today, like most days, is about Aksue. They sit outside and count the metal copters playing a game.  Each of the direc­tions of the sky have a place and Aksue has imag­ined where they go.

Path of the Beehive! Aksue says. They are going to visit the queen. 

Path of the Bullet! They are going to fight in a war. 

Path of the Spine! They are going to school to learn new ways.

Path of the Mast! They are going to the sea.

Path of the Seed! They are going to start a new garden. 

While naming the path­ways of the metal copters is Aksue’s favorite way to spend time, lis­ten­ing to the stories Aksue tells about the path­ways is Ksjhe’s favorite way to spend time. They are a perfect match, one likes to talk and the other to listen. Without Rose, there is such longing. It comes from the center of his body, travels into his lungs, up his throat and wets his eyes. He tries to blink the feel­ings back down. Ksjhe would like her back, and has been typing in the box at night. Rose rose rose rose rose rose rose rose. 

But when God heard the prayer he did not send Rose. Instead he sent a sunset like Ksjhe had never seen. Pinks he had no words for, the pigment in the sky left him in awe. There was no doubt she was there — in silken robes, in the peachy soft flesh of the sky, blush­ing a trop­i­cal pink where her dimple formed. To become a sunset is a beau­ti­ful thing. Perhaps things did happen for the best, Ksjhe thought. But of course, being Rose’s child, Aksue wanted to know. The day after the Rose sunset, Aksue men­tioned wanting to walk towards the colors, in the Path of the Spine, to find her mother. Ksjhe’s typing had brought this on. If he’d never typed Rose her sunset would not have hap­pened. Why with every wish there was a dark payment? His soul wanted nothing more than to see her and at the same time avoid payment for his wishes. It made him feel like a cold stone — wanting but also wishing to avoid his wants. So Ksjhe sits.

The next morning Aksue’s body is not next to his. She is on the floor, her face lit by the light of the screen. She passes the machine to her father, she has not pressed send. It says maman maman maman maman maman maman. Even chil­dren deserve prayers, and should have a right to their own sup­pli­ca­tions. But decid­ing whether to press send on the white box, Ksjhe under­stands that in this moment he is the God. He has to decide whether to  allow his daugh­ter to summon the spirits. Whether to take that chance or con­vince her to let go. 

Ksjhe does not want to tell Aksue that the Path of the Spine is not a real place, and that all we have is where we are. He has been outside the village but the wind always pushes him back. The further he ven­tures from their home, the more he feels the chaos magic — the way strangers speak bends his ears, the odd taste of the food so close to what he wanted and yet unpalat­able. Ksjhe heard the wind tell him to go home and he agreed.

But what does the wind say to Aksue? Being a child, she wants the magic —  not the descrip­tion of how the trick is con­struct­ed. She wakes up in the middle of the night, star­tled. She tells her father that she dreamt she was a copter. She had one long metal arm that allowed her to fly. The next day she acts out her dream and twirls in circles until she falls over, dizzy and giggling.

Rose comes as a sunset again, and Ksjhe is grate­ful. It is the soft pink of coral and cock­a­too pink.  He holds Aksue’s hand and they sit watch­ing the sky.  Your mother is bathing you in her love, he tells Aksue. Aksue glows with a sleepy hap­pi­ness, her cheeks flushed from a day playing. You can not take a path away and expect it to lead back home, he says. She wrin­kles her brow, and he smoothes her hair. 

Aksue is still too young to under­stand that the wind had a dif­fer­ent plan for Rose. When she went outside the village, she had tail winds blowing her forward. When Rose spoke she drew people to her, and they fol­lowed her like a flock. She craved new spices and foreign food was tan­ta­liz­ing to her. Rose wasn’t afraid of the chaos magic of the wind and typed in the box, why do they cas­trate bulls? Where is your appen­dix? How much is minimum wage in Cal­i­for­nia? How do I get a pass­port? What style of music is popular in the Caribbean?

Perhaps Rose needed answers, but Ksjhe wonders what these ques­tions are really worth. If you do not own a bull, why ques­tion their cas­tra­tion? If you can’t see your own appen­dix, why ques­tion its sig­nif­i­cance? He could never under­stand why Rose asked ques­tions about things that had nothing to do with her own life. Each one seemed to lead her further from Ksjhe and Aksue, her mind so filled with answers that she could no longer see their shared life in front of her.

Ksjhe places the com­put­er on the high shelf. He feels that he is with­hold­ing the world from Aksue but he has decided it is not time yet for her to pray into the box. She is still small and her prayers are pure, why not let her speak them direct­ly into the wind as we did years ago? We knew nothing of the world then and could take plea­sure in our igno­rance. Now it seemed that the more ques­tions they asked the less they knew and the more violent the weather became. Ksjhe couldn’t discern if things really were easier then or if it was just his faulty memory. Were there always fires? 

The rains come and there are no sunsets. Just blue gray sky turning to burnt indigo. There is no sunrise or sunset, just brighter and darker blues. The new moon is a sliver of an almond hanging in the sky between gusts of wind and rain that does not seep into the earth, instead it flows on the surface of the land looking for the lowest point. Did the rain always lick hun­gri­ly at the door, desir­ing to be let in? 

Ksjhe piles sand­bags near the door. Aksue decides that the hill of bags is her fort. She builds a home within their home, a place for herself. She wants to sleep in the tiny new hut she has built with old cur­tains and even takes her pillow and blanket off their shared bed. She is also moving away, even if her heart lives inside him. 

The com­put­er remains on the high shelf. Aksue invents  answers to her own ques­tions and says that she under­stands now.  All of the paths are like arrows curving around a marble, and end up back here. She points to the ground. We take the paths with us, even if we move. Some­times we are here, some­times we are there.  Aksue motions towards the direc­tion she had named Path of the Mast. And maman…

Ksjhe wonders, how could the child under­stand some­thing that he himself is afraid to even ask? Maman wanted to be many people which is why she became a sunset. Being a sunset, maman got to see every­where her color spread, from the sea and moun­tains to the reflec­tion off the white stucco in town. She could see in windows and bathe her light on the backs of all children. 

Aksue’s answer is as good as any he had imag­ined and has a gen­tle­ness that makes it feel beau­ti­ful and true. He sits with it, calmly, and lets it sink in. Rose is still his wife, Aksue’s maman, and a sunset. In a moment of peace when the rain falls gently instead of pelting the ground like fists, Ksjhe is grate­ful the cistern will be full for the dry season.  When the sun returns, he imag­ines Rose will display in all her glory, showing off her fash­ions in the sky. There will be an alchemy of pinks that Aksue will need to invent new words to describe. He will not share these new words with the box, but keep them for himself in the unques­tion­ing place of his heart.

This story orig­i­nal­ly appeared in Stonecoast Review Issue 17.

Photo by Ray Fragapane