The Backbone of the World

By Cecily Winter

art "El Salto de Rolando" by Juan José Clemente 

IN THE BEGINNING loomed the gray above our heads sometimes obscured by mists of rain and snow, while across the ice steppe lapped cold saltwater from which we speared fish small and large

FOR SURVIVAL we wore leathern skins and fish scales strung with sinew even in our snowdomes where we huddled close and moaned the wind music of this land

WHEN WITHERING DEATH ASSAILED US we sharpened long bones to capture an ice floe and launched it bearing the corpse, its eyes staring into the height flecked with shadows and the emblems of our forgetting

WE WELCOMED BACK NONE, not even the spirit of our seer who foretold disaster in the sky skeleton, while we sang dirges around our dung fires and, come sunrise, we climbed the mountain

TO GAZE WITH US UPON THE SKY’S BONY WHITE SPINE and stamp our sealskin-wrapped feet, chafe our hands, and keen for the fate of our children when those brittle bones should crack the ceiling of our world

HIDDEN FROM OUR NEW SEER who augured colors seeping into the grayness—the iridescent scales of fish before we landed them, the blueness of the sea monsters whose beached and pallid flesh made fat around our bones, the green algae rotted black before we scraped it from a monster’s hard, feathery teeth, but her vision made us shiver and children cling tight

AS WE AWAITED OUR FORETOLD DOOM under a veil of downy feathers softer than an infant’s cheek, she rallied our courage for change, and we sewed down into the skins worn beneath our scaled robes and stuffed it inside our mouse-skin footwraps

WHEN A SEA-CHANGE CAME UPON US in the comfort of this unexpected warmth, and the communal melody of our hearts thrummed, for the backbone was a prize

IN THE GRAY HEIGHT gifting us with plumes long and short that dazzled our eyes with hues we knew not how to name and, awed, we wove feather capes that retained our heat and twisted quills into coracles to paddle into the deeps where we angled with bloodred lures for sparkling fishes

REAPING LIFE FROM BLESSED BONES for which we offered thanks in wordless prayer to the charitable skeleton that brought joy to all and grief to none

WHILE THE CLIMATE REMAINED FRIGID the sheltering feathers pierced our flesh and pulsed with our blood as they grew obedient to the muscles on our arms and legs. We understood the mechanics of flight and the nature of change

WHICH URGED US TO FLOCK over the saltwater, marveling at the myriad colors of the ever-warm continents

AND FEAST ON NECTAR AND BLOSSOMS that we carried home in seed to sprout in bright corners of our snowdomes until greenness flourished in every stem and leaf, and the colors of petals and fruits had already painted our faces and eyes

WHEN I ROSE TO THE RANK OF SEER my immediate task was to assess the foretold threat posed by the backbone in the gray height, examine it for signs of fracture, and speak with it if I might, about the old seer’s vision

ON THE MOUNTAIN PEAK I launched myself into my aerial mission, my neighbors’ voices singing my purpose to those mysterious bones

VOUCHSAFING ME no answer. Closer I drew, and closer. Meeting with no sorcery or resistance, I drifted through the spine seemingly molded from the frozen fog of our ancient exhalations, but the fog caught on the barbs of my feathers and the grayness dragged after me in

CELESTIAL FLIGHT, when far surpassing the measure of my understanding I supplanted the gray with a cloth of blue dyed by the yellow sun of our heartfelt dreams.

#

ONE HAD BEEN LOCKED UP inside the hut and strained against the knives spinning inside her belly, dismayed by blood threading between her legs, but worse the noise outside—the snuffling of blind pigs and the squawk of legless hunting birds

WHILE THUNDER GROWLED torrential rain battered her prison until the rotted planks gave way, and she crawled into the tail end of the storm, surprised by the size of her belly and the slenderness of her wrists

AND HER ROTTING BONDS SLIPPED AWAY while she raced through the fat, drumming drops into the silvered forest of slaughtered trees where the sky bones sacrificed their plumes to cloak her nakedness. Despite the predators in pursuit, she was forced to lie down before the devastations of log-cutting and churned soil

AS THE KNIVES INSIDE HER sought to cut a route through her flesh. She screamed and, in sympathy, the feathers of legend long-withheld fell to shelter her from her enemies but

DELIVERED PAIN in the form of a squalling thing that moved between her legs. Its toothless mouth yawned open and its tongue vibrated to its cries. Downy feathers cloaked this newly living thing in warmth and hid it from the jealous night and flies

BITING as she did through the cord that bound to her the new thing, which was no bigger or heavier than a long-eared rabbit, just as she had been bound to her captors

HER CHOICE TO EAT IT OR KILL IT OR SAVE IT if she chose to protect it from the blistering sun, the cold-hearted silver moon, and men

IF MEN CAME AGAIN in their rumbling engines that frightened birds and mangled the forest with trails of gore. She’d been careful, but they caught her and imprisoned her in a windowless shack with her wrists bound

UNDER SORROWING MOONS WAXING AND WANING, too many to count before the men roared away on their brutal machines and left her alone to reclaim her world

YET MURKY WITH HER DISTEMPERED THOUGHTS, though a stray beam of moonshine gilded the new thing that squalled its displeasure in her arms. The eyes of spiders glowed in the night and the forest birds advised her that her kin had not survived

INDEED their voices had passed into whispering grasses and their touch forgotten even as she stroked the soft skin of the infant that had ripped savage cries from her throat and burst from her in a gush of blood and pain

COLORED IN SHADES OF GRIEF AND LOATHING AND LOVE she raced sure-footed along unfamiliar paths to the cave where she’d always dwelled. It smelled of guano, mouse, and, faintly, of herself. Her supplies remained where she’d left them, and she lay the feathered-clad infant on her dusty old rushes while she kindled fire in the hearthstone

ALL HUMMING WITH CRICKETS AND BRIGHTNESS that draped color and warmth over her when she picked up the infant, her breasts leaking a fluid whose smell made it kick its legs and wave its arms jointed like the wishbones of a legless hunting bird

WHILE it suckled from her chest like a wolf cub, and her breast lost the weight and pressure of her fear, and she knew it was part of her

ITS EYES LOCKED with hers in the familiarity of her cave where she held it close. Her hair dried and their heat passed one to the other until it unlatched

HEART BEATING AGAINST HEART, instructing her in the way of belonging. She lifted it to her shoulder and with the fingers of her free hand scooped a mush of fruit and grain into her mouth until her hunger was satisfied and they lay down to slumber on the dusty reeds

IN ANGUISHED JOY as precious as the smells welcoming her home.

#

TWO GREW UP with her ears ringing of One’s legend about feathers falling from the sky’s backbone to lift the ancients into flight and paint their drab existence with joy

KNOWING FULL WELL that the flying people some called angels were long extinct, their legacy the orange, red, and green vegetation that she and One ate, grown from seed or plucked from the secret forests of abundance

HER TOIL collecting the winter’s mulch feathers from the field to encourage the new-sprouted seeds

UNDER THE SPRING SUN that yearly demanded the uprooting of vetch and poppy despite their lovely flowers, and the clovers so beloved of long-eared rabbits, for she must thin the seedlings as One had revealed

ONE OF THE MANY SECRETS OF EXISTENCE including the presence of a weatherproof shack located a safe distance from the cave where One lay still and silent now for a finger-hand of dawns. Two crawled inside the shack and snatched up sacks in which to store the mulch feathers until winter squalled for capes and quilts and nests like those

OF BABY MICE squeaking in their blind pinkness, cozy in the feathers that had been tangled in Two’s hair, their skins her future footwear. She tiptoed out and reinforced the rotted planks against the entry of foxes and ravens

THOUGH HER IMMEDIATE TASK WAS FILLING THE SACKS, the sky’s backbone poking through its blue coat distracted her from duty. With her chin resting on the hoe handle, she wondered if those bones would fall to shatter the world

THOUGH THE BONES never stirred and One failed to emerge from the cave, and Two lay atop the half-stuffed sacks. She was unmoved by seedlings maturing and fruits and vegetables ripening and rotting where they grew while generations of mice raised families in the vastness of the feather-dusted forest

ENDURING through seasons of sun, rain, and snow while Two watched for their slippage, their loosening from their invisible sky moorings, but fate created havoc otherwise

AS WRITHING VINES that snaked through the loose weave of the sacking and into Two’s porous flesh—soft parts, mouth, nose, and eye sockets, and wrapped around her bones until they shattered leaving her spirit

IMPERVIOUS TO DESTRUCTION, content to flock with white birds crisscrossing the sky, from which she gazed from the height, satisfied by the reassembly of her backbone in the cold, ineffable grayness of her foretold doom

A LEGEND OF ORIGINS AND EXTINCTION, she regaled the birds with the wisdom of her kind whose courage had redeemed bleakness with the bravery of fragrance, warmth, and color.

The End.

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