cate | TQR: Total Quality Reading

CYRIL AND THE EGG

by Elizabeth Wing

We built temples but the sea people still came. They came in the summer, when we were grooving and drunk on mastic wine. Our god had said he would protect us. We built more temples Ten, fifteen, twenty: how many temples did one hillside need? The sea people still came. They ripped our curtains and bit our geese’s necks with their bare teeth. They carted off our tiny bronze deer, our jars of honey and oil, our third (but only third) daughters. Wars came and went, and our god did not protect us. So, we built barracks and hangars and meeting-rooms. We did not build them out of stone, like the temples, but rather out of light steel, and when the wars were over, we melted down the steel to repay the larger and richer islands who had helped us.

Somewhere in those years the sea people stopped coming. They hauled their ships to shore where they squatted around tar-smoldered fires. They sold salt fish, they sold scrap metal. They spoke the local tongues, the women covered their breasts, and learned to cook their meat. Some became fishermen. Some opened shops. Most of them observed the alcohol ban. But they say that if you lie next to a sea-person you will still hear the gush of the ocean in their veins, pouring out, as they fall asleep.

And our temples still stood in the hills, because they were made of stone for a god who had said he would protect us forever. The goats piss off the roofs. Wild mustard and anemones push through the flagstones. Sometimes, in private we still snuck in and offered fear on the altars of our minds, kissed the old icons, lit the incense, and snuffed it out.

Cyril was in one of the temples the day in June when the sea people came again. He did not kneel. He walked around the sanctuary, enjoying the cool. He clutched his acceptance letter to the Archipelago’s naval academy. He had wanted to go forever. He needed money. One of the lamps was full of rancid oil, it took three matches to catch. The glimmer lifted a corner of darkness over a fresco of a saint. Our Lady of No Fucks Given. She stares out across time at him.

I want to go so much, he says. I want to see everything. This moment’s so small, she replies. Think of a bit of boiled-down dandelion stuck to the bottom of a pot. Can you see it? See the stem of the dandelion. Now see the matrix within it. See the cytoplasm. See inside that. See the chloroplast. See inside that. There’s a Ribosome. See that?

Cyril shook his head. I don’t know what you’re talking about.

I’m talking about you. Then she muttered a name at him in a language he did not know, and he could not tell if it was an insult or an endearment.

Here, she said, blow out the lantern and let me rest again. I have many things to un-do.

And so Cyril blew out the candle and left, but he left clutching the letter differently, not looser, but with a more relaxed wrist.

Walking down the hill to the harbor he saw a new boat. It cut deeper in the water than the other fishing boats. Its hull lepered rust. Instead of a motor it had two yellowed canvas sails luffing in the wind: headstay, sidestay, he remembered from his naval academy entrance exam. Bits of wire jingled aloft. It was boats like these that the sea people had once scoured the shores in. He swallowed down his aversion. The sea people were reformed now. Mostly.

When he came home his mother sat at the kitchen table across from a woman he had never seen before. Steam rose from their cups of tea. He had caught them mid-laugh. His mother scooted her chair back across the flagstone and reached up to him with a warmth he had not felt from her in a long time.

Meet Ionna, she said. Old friend.

Ionna smiled at him, and her eyes smiled too. Her face was lined and darkened with sun. She wore her hair coiled in a black braid, and a men’s work shirt. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought her breasts were unbound underneath it.

Your mother says you need money? She said, I need a deckhand this summer.

Three days later Cyril was out of sight of land.

Cyril knew the Nereid was headed for a port on the Isle of Angea. The hold was full of unmarked crates. At first, he did not ask what cargo they carried because he had so many other things to do: oakum to be smeared between planks, thick, foul-smelling paint to be swirled over the flaking surfaces, endless rigging, furling and releasing, knots to learn and forget and learn again, onions to chop and pots to scour.

And then he did not ask what the cargo was because he had a bad feeling about it. He had a bad feeling about the way conversations switched into a foreign tongue when he was around, and how the boatswain obsessed over his flintlock, swabbing and re-swabbing it with a bit of cotton. And it was hard, because at the same time, the crew gave him a good feeling. He liked the pancakes they ate every morning, thin eggy things slathered in plum jam. He liked the way he could work for hours alongside everyone without feeling anything needed saying, and yet they would sing for hours at night, swinging, hearty songs about places perhaps real or perhaps imagined.

The night before they pulled into harbor his lips touched the warmth of liquor for the first time. He understood what the old men were talking about when their eyes glazed and they spoke of the wild nights before the ban. It was a bottle of Ouzo, cloudy with cardamom and fennel. Cyril asked where it came from, and the crew pointed to the hold. So that was their cargo, then? Yes. And that was why they would be approaching the harbor in the dark, sails taut and silent, lights off. That was why someone had arranged for the Port master to have tickets to the cabaret that night, and arranged a pimpled and slow-witted teenager as his deputy. That was why the longshoremen would be waiting in their waxed canvas coats, silent, eager for their cut of the cargo as they heaved and quickened it off into their rattling truck.

The next day the crew grew listless. Their minds were already in port. They promised to show Cyril around: they spoke of dance halls and secret cellars where women in beaded dresses poured glasses of golden liquor, a beach full of green glass, and an aquarium. The lightbulb in the galley broke, and instead of replacing it, Cyril went out onto the deck to roll out pie crusts. Gulls swirled above. He felt fevered with anticipation. When the sun sank into the sea he strained his ears, hoping to hear it sizzle. Night fell; the Nereid drew closer. Cyril paced and paced.

The sea people had a god too once. They used to burn seal-fat to her, and ink the sigils of her protection into their son’s chests. But the crew of the Nereid had eaten all the fat on their meat that night, and their chests were unmarred. It probably made no difference. Probably.

A longshoreman who had lost a bet and was feeling bitter had tipped off harbormaster, and now a vessel of the Archipelago’s navy was waiting for the Nereid. It rocked low and barge-like in the choppy cove, but when they drew near a pair of yellow spotlights blared on, and its engine surged to life. A nasal voice demanded their registration number over the loudspeaker.

Ionna grabbed the old brass speaking trumpet that hung over the galley and leaped onto the deck. The crew followed her. She shouted a string of digits. As she waited for a response her gaze drifted over the faces of her crew. Cyril could not name her expression. When her stare fell on him it reminded him of the saint in the fresco, and then he knew they were screwed.

Routine Cargo Inspection! Announced the naval vessel. Stand by and prepare to be boarded. They began to cut across the water toward the Nereid.

Ioanna began to bark commands. Haul Taunt! Man the Tack and Sheet - Ready About.

(Ready, Ready)

Out the Mizzen Course!

The Nereid tried to swing out from the harbor, but the wind was too light, and thesails luffed. The naval vessel gained on them, ground into their side, and a gangplank ame crashing down over the railing.

Suddenly Cyril found himself at the rail, clenching the rolling-pin from his afternoon of pie-making, pushing at the Gangplank. Men in green rubber suits and round goggles, wide stepping like big frogs surged onto the deck. The boatswain cocked his flintlock. The crew grabbed their truncheons. Cyril locked arms with one of the sailors and wrestled him against the rail. His face was pressed against the powdered rubber, and it smelled exactly like he’d always expected it to smell. The man was older and bigger than him. Cyril took a swing at his gut with the rolling-pin. He heard the air leave the sailor’s belly, then another sailor knocked the rolling-pin from his hand. They fell onto the gangplank together, grappling, and then, as the two ships drifted apart, the gangplank unhinged beneath them. Cyril and the sailor fell into the water.

They stayed locked for a few moments, each trying to scratch up to the surface by pushing off the other’s mass. The shore had not looked far from the Nereid, but it was impossibly far now. Cyril tangled into the froggy sailor, and they briefly loved each other, the way anyone loves a life-raft, even a living, uncooperative one. Then they swam apart.

He had wanted to see everything but now everything was the sea.

He cursed himself for not having learned to swim better. He had lived so close to the water all those years, but he had never splashed out more than a few hundred yards. As he crawled through the brine the brine began to crawl through him, in bitter cold bursts that made him shudder and take in acrid mouthfuls of froth. The mouthfuls of air came further and further apart. When he reached the sand he decided--that for now at least--he had seen enough.

Then Cyril was in a room, his face exposed to air, his body still in water. The creamy morning light filtered through a sunroof. The room was narrow, lined with aluminum cabinets. A man stood at a sink a few feet away. Cyril watched the man dreamily for a few minutes, and then the man turned to face him. He was old, with little round glasses, and a great gray tuft of hair above each ear. He had wild and bushy eyebrows. He wore an unbuttoned shirt, and from his belly stretched a long, fleshy umbilical cord, thick as a toddler’s wrist. The cord extended to the ground and out of the room.

You’re just a boy, aren’t you, said the old man. I thought you might have been a seal-person who got stuck in boy-form at the wrong moment.

Cyril pushed himself up to a seated position. Why’d you think that?

I have some seal-people here, said the man with the umbilical cord. They have nice easy lives. They like it here. And they’re very popular.

Cyril looked around. He was sitting on what looked like a gurney, but it had warm saltwater piping in, and around him fish tanks gurgled. A set of scalpels and bottles marked in tiny, perfect handwriting sat on one counter, on another, a jar of periwinkle snails.

Is this the Aquarium?

Yes.

You’re the aquarium-keeper?

I’m the aquarium-keeper alright. You’re sure you’re not a seal-person? I have two here, both lovely young ladies. They’re dying for company.

Cyril shook his head, coughed up a mouthful of seawater. He felt irritated. I’m justa human like you, he said.

The old man’s expression softened. What were you doing out there, then? he asked.

Cyril corkscrewed his knuckles around his salt-crusted eyes. I was going to join the Archipelago’s Naval Academy. But I don’t think I can anymore.

And so Cyril came to work at the Angea Aquarium. He scrubbed the sea lion pit (they were not as talkative as the Aquarium keeper claimed, in fact he was not convinced they were seal-people at all), and the octopus cave and the many tanks. He haggled day-old sardines from the fishmonger and sold hard candy and postcards to the visitors. Sometimes he slept in a whitewashed room above the reception desk, and sometimes--when it was hot--he slept on the roof, but many nights he spread out his blankets beside the fish, and watched their lovely, language-less movements until he slept.

Why’d you want to join the Navy, anyway? asked the aquarium-keeper one day, as Cyril was shining the glass on the eel-tank.

Cyril pushed his sponge into the bucket of suds, squeezed it out, thought hard. I guess I wanted to see everything.

The Aquarium-keeper gnawed on a toothpick. Makes sense, he said. I’ve always wanted that to--not that I can--he gestured at the umbilical cord.

The umbilical cord, Cyril now knew, was three-hundred and thirty feet long. It anchored him to a freshwater spring that trickled down to the sea. The aquarium keeper had been found there as a baby nestled into a bed of watercress in the space that the spring had carved out of sandstone above the beach. The old women of the port took care of him until he could take care of himself. As a boy he had caught frogs from the spring and sold them, and when his cord grew long enough that he could reach the tideline, he caught fish. He had a knack at keeping them alive in jam-jars, and with luck and a chunk of money lent from the fathers of the town, he laid the groundwork for the aquarium. The cord grew with him until he was twelve or thirteen, and then it stopped growing. He had tried cutting it hundreds of times, tried digging it up, tried burning through it. Nothing worked. It uncoiled from his belly, lined with red welts and white scars, like a heavy pale snake.

Cyril sponged the glass. Do you still want to see everything? he asked.

The keeper stopped chewing his toothpick and thought. He stood in silence as Cyril worked across the surface of the eel-tank. Yes, he said, at last. Do you?

Of course.

I’ve heard of a way, said the aquarium-keeper. There is an egg that grows from the Cedar trees of Alepou-La, the forest of the fox-folk, deep in the center of the Island.

An egg from a tree?

An egg from a tree. It emerges from the resin in the heart of the tree and is pushed to the crown. The trees there are as old as the world, and they say that if you take the egg and crack it open, you can see everything the tree has seen: what the sun has carried to it, what the wind has heard, what the rain has felt.

High Priestess of No-Fucks-Given smiled on Cyril. He put down the sponge. How do we get it? he asked.

The aquarium keeper took Cyril into his office. He made him a thermos of hot soup and a few boiled eggs to keep in his pockets. Walk south on the shoreline. You’ll go over a footbridge, you’ll pass a lighthouse. I haven’t been this far but I’ve heard about it. You’ll go over a beach of green glass. Keep going. By evening you will find a Whale. His curse is like mine, and some people believe he is my brother. The whale will tell you what to do.

The afternoon glowed hot and blue. Music faded from the dance halls of the port. Cyril paused on the footbridge to eat one egg and pinch the other into bits to feed to the brine-crabs. He walked barefoot, boots slung over his shoulder. The shore meandered around divots and peninsulas, the sandpit smooth and wide. He paused under the peppermint-striped lighthouse and thought about knocking on the door, asking to be let up, but soon enough he would be able to see everything, he would be able to see through a distance of time much longer than that haughty frescoed saint ever had. The lighthouse did not matter. By late afternoon the wind had picked up and he reached the beach of green sea glass. He could tell it was the polished wreckage of something--some massive whimsical folly--but he did not pause to fill his pockets. He drank his soup while he walked, and pressed on. Just as the sky was going dusty purple and the distance lost its detail, he saw a huge lump, which looked like a rock but was not.

It was the whale: lying perfectly on its belly, its back a barnacled dome. Two vultures perched in front of the whale’s mouth, pecking out the eye of a sunfish. When Cyril got close the vultures raised their feathered hackles.

Are you going to try and move him? they croaked.

Cyril shrugged. Not alone. But if I came back with ten of my cousins and some rope, we could.

You’re going to move him! shrieked the vultures, and they spread their straggled wings. The crinkled red skin bulged around their eyes, and they opened their beaks revealing serrated teeth. They beat the air above him and prepared to dive.

Then the whale’s mouth opened and it said, in a deep phlegmy voice: You must promise you won’t move me.

Cyril flinched, arms covering his face. Alright, Alright. I won’t move the whale. I promise I won’t move him.

Cyril turned to the whale. I told them I won’t move you.

The vultures settled back onto the sand, hunched their shoulders again, and

continued picking at the sunfish.

The whale opened its mouth wide. Come Inside, it said, and Cyril did.

Inside the Whale was dim, but a little light fell in from the blow-hole.

The aquarium-keeper sent me, Cyril said when his eyes adjusted.

Ah, said the whale. Its mouth thrummed around Cyril like Back’s cathedral, all resonance and vowel. The tongue ungulated spongy underfoot. My younger brother, I’ve heard him called. What errand are you on?

He says you know how to get at a sap-egg from the Cedars of Alepou-La.

I do, said the whale. Climb into my belly and take a piece of ambergris, the biggest you can find.

And so Cyril crawled down the whale’s throat. The flesh pressed in around him. He squirmed his way like a thing trying to be born, until the throat flared out into the dark cavern of the whale’s stomach. He felt his way along to where the bile ducts formed puckered orifices. There the ambergris bloomed in fetid chunks like beeswax, and he located the largest one. He tugged; it would not come loose. He rimmed his fingernails around it to break the seal, and yanked, but there was nothing to brace himself against in the slick of the whale’s stomach. He wondered if he was hurting the whale, but if so, it did not flinch. Instead, it talked on to him, its voice muffled in the stomach.

The egg knows everything the cedar knows, and those cedars are the oldest trees in the world. They know what the rain has heard, what the sun has seen, what the wind has felt, and every subtle thing in between. The Priestess of the Fox-folk keeps the eggs in a basket in the temple. But that’s ahead of the point. You’ll walk inland on the road that takes you North. Take the ambergris to the women who work at the bath-house behind the waterfall in Elateri, and they will have their cunning ways to get you into the stronghold of the fox-folk; who they know well.

Cyril pulled and pulled, and the ambergris came free. Sweating, he climbed out of the whale’s mouth. He turned to it and bowed. I feel like I should pay you, he said. He felt around in his pocket. Would you like an egg?

Debt is for people with short timelines, said the whale. Give your egg to the vultures if you want. I’ll be here long after you’ve come and gone to the fox-folk--whether they eat you or not. The whale sighed and closed its mouth, then settled lower into the sand.

Wait, said Cyril, the fox-folk eat people?

But the whale did not respond.

He wrapped the ambergris in some leaves of dry sea-lettuce and a shoelace, then split the egg in half and left it for the vultures, who descended onto it greedily. He turned inland and began to walk. He didn’t feel like sleeping. A gibbous moon dripped like a slice of muskmelon overhead and the night hummed with summer insects. He made his way through the low rolling dune-grass where the overturned row-boats lay, and up the hills, through fig and pomegranate orchards. The night throbbedwarm and humid. The goat paths through the red dirt braided together until he was on a road, and the road led higher. He Passed a cluster of farmhouses where he heard women’s laughter and music garbled by a radio, he stopped to dance in the square and buy some grilled meat from a man with one leg. Then he followed the road higher, and from a mile above, in the thorny chaparral, the town coalesced into a glowing sea anemone, its tentacles slowly blinking off in the night. The higher he climbed the rockier and thornier the landscape got, the junipers dwarfed and twisted. The graceful sage and ceanothus were replaced with yucca and bitter brush. It was not bad walking: the night was clear and warm enough, but he start to worry because he could not imagine finding a waterfall in a place like this.

Then, in the belly of the night, he reached a ridge top. He realized he had been coming up the south slope of the island, and the other side of the ridge tumbled into an anarchy of foliage. He could hear water rushing under the thick tangles of sweet-pea and nightshade. He spent the rest of the night fighting his way through overgrowth, following the water, and because he thought he heard a rushing that grew louder, and the rushing did grow louder. After an hour or so the stream fed into a river, and just before dawn he found the place where the river came crashing down over boulders and rock faces into falls.

He crossed the slippery rocks to the waterfall, clenching the ambergris to his chest. He paused for a moment when he got to the downpour, closed his eyes and inhaled, then plunged through. On the other side he found a cavern, floored with gravel, and in it, a ramshackle structure with steam rising from the center. He knocked at the front door and was greeted by the thinnest woman he had ever seen. She had long black hair and deep red lips and smelled like sulfur and wormwood. She sniffed at him, sniffed at the bundle in his arms and hurried him inside. In the center of the structure was a bath, where an old man with a beard as long as he was tall sat soaking, the steam of the bath rising to an opening in the roof.

Ambergris, sisters, the thin woman called. The boy’s brought the ambergris.

Two other women, both as thin as the first, rushed in. They carried the ambergris to a low table, tore off the shoelace, flung away the sea-lettuce, and began to eat. It had the color of earwax, the texture of fatty clay, the smell of the ocean’s gut. Dawn slowly filtered into the cavern. They ate ravenously yet with reverence, lifting fistfuls of the ambergris up towards the skylight and licking the residue off their hands. As they ate, the flesh returned to their bodies. They grew very plump and lovely, their hair shone, their linen aprons fit them, their lips cherried.

Who sent you to us? They asked when they were done.

Cyril told them about the Aquarium-keeper and the whale and the cedar egg, about how he had to get to the glen of the fox people in Alepou-la.

The women looked at each other and then they must have spoken with their eyes because they all laughed at once. It was a daring laugh, the laugh of people with a plan.

You’ll want some rest, they said. Because tomorrow’s your wedding day.

He had questions, but he knew he was close, close enough to seeing everything that it would be silly to ask now. The bath-attendants gave him a soft place to sleep, where he slept

hard.

After his rest they served him a bowl of bitter greens in goat’s milk and had him take a bath. They told him to scrub his hands and nail-beds and they gave him a blade to shave his body with. After the bath they brought him new shoes--women’s shoes--to wear and a long shirt. He folded up his clothes and tied them in a package with somestring, which he carried as he followed them out into the early afternoon.

The base of the waterfall fluted out a valley, stitched with footpaths. The sisters led him, darting across streams and under drooping boughs of Columbine, to a meadow. A girl about his age sat waiting in the tall grass, watching the dragonflies that hovered in the seed heads. She had white hair and an unusual face with low eyebrows and a long nose. She jumped up when she saw them and embraced the first sister.

Auntie! I knew you’d come!

Yes, my child, said the bath-attendant. And we’ve brought someone to take your place.

Cyril, catching on, handed the girl the parcel of his clothes. She took it and changed, quickly and bluntly, in front of them, then handed him her clothes: a white linen dress, a wide belt embroidered with red flowers, a beaded mantle trimmed with bells, and a matching veil. After Cyril dressed in them the girl rouged his cheeks and lips and dabbed him with drops of oil. Fir and tundra moss, she explained. The smell of Idrah-hur. While she worked the bath attendants gathered sweet peas, which they pinned to his mantle.

They’ll have customs you won’t know, said the girl. But don’t worry. Where I come from, in the fir-forests of Idrah-hur, our ways are different. She stuck her tongue out, tasting the air.

It’s still going to rain later? she asked the sisters.

The sisters nodded.

Is that important? asked Cyril.

Just wait a minute, said the girl. You’ll see. The wind had shifted, carrying a break in the clouds toward the sun. Everyone waited. When the gap in the clouds arrived, the sun shone through, casting crisp shadows on the grass. Although the girl’s body did not change, she had the shadow of a fox. The girl smiled and drew Cyril’s work shirt closer around her.

I think I’m going to go now, she said. Thank you so much for taking my place.

Where are you going to go? he asked.

Back to Idrah-Hur, she said. But I think I want to take the long way home. She pulled a map out of the pouch where she carried the rouge and the oil, and showed him places she wanted to go: a sea-cave where she had heard the ceiling glowed, a tower full of books.

Cyril borrowed a pencil and sketched in places he had been: the port city and the aquarium, the sea-glass beach, the whale, the inlets of his home island. He drew her his mother’s house with the olive tree and the crooked chimney, and drew her the temples on the hill that had not kept the sea people away.

The sisters and the girl left, and Cyril stood in the meadow, his hands empty. He had nothing to exchange except himself.

The fox-folk, unlike most of the people of the archipelago, had not forgotten their god. They spoke her name with the quiet craving that people hold for salt, or silence, or the closeness of skin to skin. They also kept a temple to her, an orb-thing built of sticks like a huge nest at the top of their tallest cedar. Inside there was an altar where the priestess performed her ceremonies, and a cushion where the priestess sat or dreamed, a row of censers that thickened the air with smoke, and a hanging basket where they kept their liturgies, instruments, and the ceder eggs. The priestess gathered the eggs from the places where the trees wept sap, one might emerge over three or seven or ten years. The eggs were round and leathery, large as oranges, but they cracked like bird’s-eggs and looked like bird’s-eggs inside, with a viscous white and membraned yolk. The fox-folk did not know what would happen if an egg hatched, but they held ancient taboo against letting such a thing happen, and so the eggs had to be eaten within a few months of their gathering. Long ago the priestess had sold the eggs to wandering sages and tribal chiefs, but the practice had been gradually outlawed, and even the chief of the fox-folk could not partake in them. So, the priestess and only the priestess ate the eggs. She ate them raw, crouched on her cushion, and after she ate one, she would not talk for weeks. Her people came to her for counsel, and she was always right, but never kind.

The procession of the fox-folk came in the late afternoon, when thick mist had settled over the meadow. They came in a winding line through the thistles, playing their flutes and drums.

The four brothers of the fox-prince carried a wooden platform that he rode upon, swaying to the beat of the drums. When they came to Cyril they lowered the platform and lifted Cyril on. The fox prince had the same tight, small frame as the girl had, and the same oval, snout like face. He wore a red tunic, and his eyes had no whites, so that Cyril could not tell where he was looking. He turned to face him and touched him lightly on the waist. Then the drummers beat faster, and the flutes whirled descants above the rhythm, and the procession snaked fast and loose through the meadow. On the far side of the meadow they leaped over a stream, crossing the threshold to Alepou-La. Rain twisted in the tops of the cedars, which grew taller the deeper they went, and the wind sang in the branches. Cyril rode on the platform, swaying back and forth to the dipping and swinging dance of the fox-prince’s brothers. The air held an unsettling humidity. The fox- folk wove through the trees, leaping over ferns and through dense, net-like spiderwebs, until they reached a glade deep in the trees. Here generations of thatched huts stood webbed together with bridges and ladders of rope, some on the ground, some on stilts, and some jutting off the trunks or perched in the crooks of the massive cedars. In the center of the glen a row of tables had been laid for a feast, where the procession stopped.

The fox prince led his bride to the head of the table. The meal began, and he was asked many questions about his journey, about how his dowry had been received in his home-village, and how his father’s folk fared in the cold forests of Idrah-hur. He answered the questions as simply as he could and ate. There were birds-eggs preserved in vinegar, and sponge cakes with mounds of red currants and cream. There were goblets of sour greenish wine and sweet mead, honeyed walnuts and roasted songbirds, and a bowl of something being passed around that Cyril saw, and was sure he had not seen, and then he saw it again and shuddered: a pile of human fingers swimming in brine.

Someone passed a platter of roast hare to Cyril, and as he took a slice, he paused with the carving knife. It balanced beautifully in his hand, forged from pale metal that he had never seen before.

Fox-steel, said the prince. It cuts through what binds.

Then a song started up, and the prince jumped up to clap. In the distraction, Cyril slipped the knife into a fold of his bridal dress.

After the meal a very old man took the prince and his bride and led them a little way into the forest, to the tallest cedar. A bell hung from the lowest branch, and the old man rang three times. A moment passed; someone threw down a rope ladder out of a hatch-door. The old man bowed and faded back into the trees. Cyril followed the prince up the ladder. At the top, the priestess crouched waiting for them, making loud, dry popping noises with her tongue.

The air hung thick with incense. The priestess’s eyes rolled back, fluttered, then snapped forward and fixed on Cyril.

Come to the altar, she said. Her voice sounded like the saint on the fresco-walls, but flatter, more scoured. Knowledge like acid rain had rubbed the affectation from her speech. At the altar she took one of Cyril’s hands and one of the prince’s. She knelt down, and with a canine tooth sharpened to a point, she sliced a cut into each of their palms, then pushed their hands together. Their mingled blood dripped down onto the pale stone. The priestess muttered an incantation, swung the censer above their heads, then made the popping sound with her tongue again, three times.

Joined now, she said, you both stay here tonight. Then she crawled out the hatch-door and scampered off along a branch.

Night had fallen. The newlyweds licked their cuts clean.

I need a breath of air, said Cyril. He opened the hatch door.

The fox-prince settled uneasily on the priestess’s cushion. He was young, Cyril realized, maybe even younger than himself, and he didn’t know what to do. They had both drunk a lot of sour wine, and Cyril hoped that if he waited long enough the prince might fall asleep, and he could disappear into the night with one of the eggs.

Outside, Cyril sat on a branch. The moon hung above, gauzy through the drizzle, just a little riper than the night before. He waited for a long time, then re-entered gingerly. In the dark, he heard the prince stir.

Come here, said the prince

Cyril tiptoed to the hanging basket. He felt around, through bundles of incense and vials of oils, until he found an egg. He lifted it silently and held it to his chest.

I want to see you, said the prince.

Just a minute, said Cyril. I’m undressing. He placed the egg against his stomach and tightened the belt to hold it in place.

Cyril heard the fox-prince rustling with something and saw a flicker. Candlelight jumped and danced around the walls of the nest. Cyril froze. The fox-prince inhaled in horror--not at his bride’s wide shoulders or flat chest--but at the human form Cyril’s shadow cast upon the wall.

The prince sprung on him and wrestled him to the ground. He bared his teeth, canine and sharp.

You’re not my bride! You’re just a human boy! You shouldn’t be here!

Cyril drew the knife and held it to the prince’s throat. I won’t hurt you, he said. But please let me leave.

The prince let out a series of alarm barks, which rang out through the night. The night pulsed for a second, and then the folk of Alepou-la answered.

<In/ter/lop/er!> <In/ter/lop/er!> a call and response spread throughout the valley, scattered at first, then rhythmic.

Fox-folk emerged from their dwellings and loped towards the base of the temple-tree.

Cyril looked below: a fire had been lit in the center of the glen, and two children came out carrying a huge pot. Others of the fox-folk emerged from their dwellings and loped toward the tree. The fox prince reached for the rope ladder to throw it down. Cyril fought him for it, slashing the ropes and throwing the loose ladder down while the prince dug his teeth in his back.

I’m sorry, said Cyril, I just really don’t want to be eaten today.

He scrambled out the hatch door and out onto the cedar branches. He climbed along the length of it until he found a place to cross to another treetop, and in this way he left the cedars of Alepou-La. When he was nearly at the edge of the trees, he felt a prickling at the back of his neck and whirled around to find the priestess watching him. She perched in a treetop, a body-length above him, a magpie in her mouth.

He froze.

He knew he could not get away from her as he had got away from the prince. Fear brambled his brain. He searched for prayers and found he did not know any. Instead, he raised his gaze to meet her. She gazed back unblinking, and he realized that she did not care. She did not care about his deceit; she did not care about his theft or transgression, she had sensed its imminence when she first saw him, or maybe before. She looked at him without mercy or malice, without curiosity, held his gaze as she took another bite of the magpie. She chewed, spat out a thighbone, and spoke.

Do you want that? she asked

He knew what she meant. He felt the lump of the egg held against his abdomen by his belt. His hand gravitated to it; he cupped it. Without looking away, the Priestess plucked the feathers from the magpie’s head, bit it off, chewed. Cyril found himself removing the egg from his dress and palming it. A gust of wind crested through the branches, and he steadied himself to keep from falling.

Years later he would still be asking himself if he meant to drop the egg. Years later he would still not be sure. Sometimes he would convince himself that it was his choice, and the best choice of his life. Other times he would berate himself for cowardice, and other times he was sure it was the wind that had knocked it from his hand, sending it plummeting to the forest floor a hundred feet below.

The priestess watched the egg fall, and then, with the faintest smile, she turned and climbed away.

He journeyed back through the night and into the next day: through the valley to the waterfall, and from the waterfall up the steep bluffs, to the dry rocky ridge down to the town. He slept on a bench in the town square wearing the torn and muddied wedding dress, and in the morning, he walked the beach again. He bowed to the whale and waved to the vultures, went across the beach of green glass and under the shadow of the lighthouse, over the footbridge, and arrived at the aquarium.

He found the aquarium-keeper waiting for him by the sea-lion pit, his umbilical cord looped around his wrist. He sat on a bench with two bottles of milk and two paper straws. The sound of water lapping against concrete echoed through the room. He handed Cyril a bottle of milk. Cyril took a long drink. The sea lions napped like fat furred torpedoes on their plaster island. The torn hem of his dress swished against his ankles. He finished his milk and placed it on the bench, opening his empty hands.

I got it, he said. I got it but I dropped it.

The aquarium-keeper rose slowly. He clenched his fists. He took the milk bottle and flung it against the wall. You fool, he cried, You idiot child. I should have never sent you.

Cyril stared at the broken glass, slicked in milk, pale as eggshell. The aquarium keeper sank down to the bench and grew quiet. After a minute, Cyril realized he was crying. He reached out. The Aquarium-keeper softened into his embrace, and the smell of milk on him reminded Cyril of his mother. He thought of her at the table with Ionna and their steaming cups of tea, their laughter.

What had they been laughing about?

What private joke had she dug up from years ago?

Hell, how did his mother know the sea-woman in the first place?

He realized he knew nothing about his mother, not really. The seeking-feeling of his quest flooded back into him, but it felt closer somehow.

I want to try something, he said to the old man.

He took the Aquarium-keeper to the sick bay where he helped him into the salt-water gurney. Cyril gave him a soaked rag to squeeze, swabbed the base of the umbilical cord with antiseptic and then sterilized the fox-steel knife.

It cuts through what binds.

At the first incision he was surprised by how tough the cord was, but he worked quickly. The aquarium-keeper trembled, and Cyril sliced deeper. When the cord fell away he breathed a deep sigh and closed his eyes. Cyril powdered the stump with coagulant and bandaged it, then sat with the old man.

Later, he went down to the dunes and dragged up one of the old coracles. He spent the afternoon tarring the cracks and oiling the exterior while the aquarium-keeper rested. In the evening, he took the old man by the hand and led him to the coracle. They each took a paddle and pushed softly off the shore. The setting sun painted strawberry over the waves. They made their way around the harbor slowly. There was so much to see.

###

Elizabeth Wing is a writer and professional gardener in Portland, Oregon. Her work has appeared in venues including 7x7, Mudroom, The Rebis, Outlook Springs, Witness Magazine, and The Washington Square Review. She wrote "Cyril and the Egg" during a covid fever while quarantining in an attic in Reed College's old dorm block.