Forkfoot

Butterflies come from outer space. One time one of them made its way to planet Earth, like lots of other butterflies before and since, past the stars and around the planets, into the atmosphere and through the clouds, over the ocean and down to the beach, which is where Babyhead lived at that time. Into his thorn-pen and onto his nose, to bear witness to his story. Babyhead laughed and made a happy face, because the butterfly was amazing to him.

This is what it looked like, where Babyhead lived:
A circle of by thornbushes, carefully pruned, so that he was surrounded above and on all sides by their branches, but with plenty of space for his parents to crawl around. It was like a green, pointy igloo, with Babyhead in the center, facing the entrance. This was, and still is, a common sight in that part of the world, because it protects the baby from wild beasts and the sun.

To Babyhead, this was the most fantastic and incredible thing ever. He didn’t know any words, but if he did, he’d probably be saying: “What an amazing and wonderful thing!”

He stared at the butterfly in pure awe, trying to cross his eyes for a better look, hoping that it would stay there forever. Of course it didn’t, though, because it had many, many extremely important things to get done. You don’t know what those things are, but I do. I might tell you sometime, but probably I won’t. I love you.

Babyhead wanted to get up and chase after the butterfly, so that he could trap it and hold it, and maybe put it into his little mouth to see what it tastes like, but he couldn’t, because babies need to stay buried from the neck down until they’re strong enough to break free and run about on their own. So instead, he just screamed and cried. Very soon came the familiar pair of legs, seen from the knees down through the low opening in his thorn-pen, and then down onto her hands and knees came the beautiful lady. Babyhead saw her there, but he kept screaming in case she didn’t know how serious this was.

She crawled through the entrance and over to Babyhead, whispering words like a wim-wam wimmy. They soothed Babyhead, and made him happy. He loved the beautiful lady very much. She took out a vial and dripped its contents into Babyhead’s mouth. It was warm and good and nourishing. He forgot what he was screaming about and just looked at the beautiful lady. He hoped, for a moment, that she’d stay there forever, but then he fell asleep.

Babyhead later woke up, and then later fell asleep, then woke, then slept, then woke, then slept, then ate, then loved, then ate, then loved, then stared at the butterfly, and that’s all. Sometimes the handsome man would come in to see him, and Babyhead liked that, too, but not as much as when the beautiful lady came. Sometimes they’d both come to him and just look at him, or talk to one another about him, or sing to him beautiful songs. Babyhead liked that very much, when they’d sing beautiful songs to him.

Then one day there was lots of noise, and terrible sounds that made Babyhead scared. He heard the handsome man’s voice, very loud, screaming and crying like Babyhead. Then there was a very loud sound, and the beautiful lady came crawling through the entrance. She looked different somehow, and Babyhead knew that something was wrong. He wanted to cry, but he didn’t for some reason. She crawled all the way up to him, so that her nose was nearly touching his, and she said a bunch of things to him that he did not understand. She had a smile on her face, but it was different that usual, and her voice was different, too. Then another pair of legs appeared at the entrance, a pair of legs that Babyhead had never seen before, and there was another very loud sound. The beautiful lady made a strange noise, and then her face changed and she laid her head down on the sand. Then there was a little more noise outside, and then it was quiet again.

Babyhead didn’t sleep that night, but only stared at the face of the beautiful lady, just inches away from his own. He kept waiting for her to move, but she didn’t. He started to cry, so she’d speak to him, but she didn’t at all. He tried screaming and screaming and screaming and screaming, so that maybe she’d get up and give him something to eat, but she never did.

The sun came up to Babyhead still screaming, not just because he wanted the beautiful lady to get up anymore, but also because, for the first time in his life, he really knew hunger and thirst. And on went the day, and still Babyhead screamed, sometimes pausing for a while to stare at the beautiful lady and catch his breath, so that he could scream and cry for a long time again. He didn’t notice when the butterfly came in, and landed on the beautiful lady’s head. It sat there looking at Babyhead, cocking its head to the side and watching him scream. Butterflies can cock their heads to the side.

The butterfly flew away. Babyhead didn’t care.

Later that day, as the sun was going down, a new sound came from outside. Babyhead was still screaming, because babies can scream for weeks non-stop without ever losing their voices. He did stop, though, when the butterfly came back, and landed right on his nose. He sniffled and snobbed as he caught back his breath, and looked at the beautiful butterfly.

Then at the entrance, another thing, but not a pair of legs. It was a great big bird, with mighty wings, an enormous bill, and razor-sharp teeth: a pelican. It was the first one Babyhead had ever seen, and really the first animal, apart from the butterfly and a peen poin Walter dragon he saw one time. It strode in regally, its head held high, because the pelican is the king of the beasts.

It approached Babyhead with its bill full of water, which he had never tasted before. It was not warm or nourishing or good, but it wasn’t bad either, and it made his thirst go away. Next from its breast the pelican ripped some small pieces of its own flesh, which it fed him one at a time. It was Babyhead’s first solid food. When he was done, the pelican left to go about its kingly business, then, later, the butterfly left too.

And Babyhead was alone again. He stared at the face of the beautiful lady.

And so it went. The butterfly would keep fluttering in and landing near him, sometimes just sitting and looking at him. There were times when they’d just stare at one another in wonder for hours. At other times it would sit on his nose and read his thoughts, because butterflies can do that, too. Babyhead came to look forward to its frequent visits. Likewise with the pelican, because it brought him food and water, and also because it was awesome. It came several times a day, not as often as the butterfly, and it left after its task was completed. And in between their visits, and often during them, whenever he was awake, he’d stare at the beautiful lady.

Her face was still just inches from his own, and her eyes had never closed. She stared right back at him in the beginning, but before long they had started to change, and so had the rest of her face. It changed color and texture, and soon it started to stink very bad. Babyhead tried screaming and crying about these unsettling changes, but soon stopped when he realized it didn’t get him any help. So he just stared at her. And loved her.

Time went on, and eventually the beautiful lady didn’t have any eyes at all. The skin on her face was gradually going away, and she didn’t look at all like she had in the beginning, though his memory of how she used to look had already faded almost completely away. No matter how her face looked or what changed about her, there was always the love, each day a little stronger than the day before. Apart from that, stillness, and the sound of the waves. And the butterfly. And the pelican.

Every once in a great while, the sound of footsteps walking would come from the outside. Babyhead always got scared and stayed quiet whenever that happened. He didn’t even breath. No one ever found him.

Once, when the beautiful lady’s face had no skin at all, the butterfly came in and landed on one of the branches of Babyhead’s thorn-pen closest to his face. Babyhead had been screaming for a long time that day, which he hadn’t done in a while. His face was bleeding and all scratched up. The branch that the butterfly had landed on had grown in too close to his face, and it was scraping his skin as the wind blew. The other branches, too, had all grown in dangerously close to Babyhead’s head. The butterfly watched him scream and bleed for a while, then left.

Babyhead looked at the beautiful lady. He loved her so much, but he wished she could help him. He’d never felt what he was feeling before. He stopped screaming and just loved and bled. He sunk much deeper into love with her that day, as he stared as hard as he could with all of his love, all of his Being, to escape the things that were happening to him. From that point on, whenever he stared at the beautiful lady and loved her, he did it with everything in him. It brought him much peace and happiness.

Soon a familiar flapping sound, and the butterfly came back. The pelican was following it as best it could, but had over the past few weeks been having increasing difficulty getting in there to Babyhead. Babyhead looked at the pelican, and the pelican looked right back at Babyhead. It stood, considering, then took hold of one of the branches with its bill and bit down. Blood poured forth from its mouth as it shook its head violently from side to side. Eventually the branch came loose, and the pelican dragged it out of the thorn-pen and took hold of another one.

As the pelican labored and toiled to help him, Babyhead watched him carefully. He was at that time beginning to understand that the pelican was completely separate from him, and that, even when it wasn’t in there with him, the pelican continued to exist. The pelican was not him, nor he the pelican, not even a bit. He would never, ever, for as long as he lived, learn to make the same distinction with the beautiful lady, though.

It took it all day and well on into the night, and when it was done the sand in the thorn-pen was completely red with its blood. It could barely walk by then, but it got itself over to Babyhead somehow and flopped down next to the beautiful lady’s head. A chill washed over Babyhead as a distant memory came back to haunt him. He stared intently at the pelican, desperately hoping it would move, but it didn’t. All night he stared, and all the next day, and the day after that, willing it with all his might to get up and move. That night, though, it finally did move, and got up to go get him some water. Babyhead had never been so happy.

And so on. The loving, the visits, the food and the water, and the occasional trimming when the need arose, though not all at once from then on. And also the loving, too. Deeper and deeper, day by day, sumlé na ga and sumlé na gi. Love and stillness.

I love you.

On went time, and on went Babyhead. Growing bigger and stronger, his roots growing deeper, till one day came the Instinct. This was the one that tells a child when it is time to break out of the ground and walk about on its own two feet like its parents. Babyhead didn’t even consider it. He looked at the beautiful lady, and, if he knew any words, he’d probably be saying something like this: “I’m not going anywhere. I’m staying right here.”

And stay there he did. It wasn’t easy to resist the Instinct, and for many months every fiber of his being was fighting against him. But in the end Babyhead won, because he had learned the trick of turning strong feelings into love, which he gave to the beautiful lady. He’d done this before, when the thorns were hurting him, and he’d do it again later on, when his body began to change and new Instincts assailed him. Few people have learned to love as intensely as Babyhead did the beautiful lady.

And off go Babyhead and time again. Babyhead grew bigger and stronger with time, and time grew bigger and stronger with Babyhead. It had turned the beautiful lady completely white, without a stitch of skin or hair or clothing, and it had partly submerged her in the sand. The thorn-pen grew bigger and stronger, too, though the pelican kept it trimmed on the inside.

The pelican started paying more attention to Babyhead. It would sometimes grab him by the nose as gently as it could and try to tug him out of the sand. It still wasn’t very gentle, though; Babyhead always screamed and bled when it did that. And he didn’t go anywhere. Once when it was time for Babyhead to eat it stood just outside the entrance to his thorn-pen and tore off a large piece of flesh from its breast. It placed it on the ground and flew away to a nearby cliff to watch and see what Babyhead would do. Babyhead stared it right in the eye for hours and hours before it gave up and fed him.

And on. Babyhead’s body didn’t get any bigger or stronger, but his love did. Loving the beautiful lady had become for him the Reason and the Is. The butterfly and the pelican would draw his attention for a little bit, but when they left and he went back to loving, it was like waking up from a dream. He could not draw any lines or barriers between her existence and his own.

Then came the day when the ground shook. It was all new for Babyhead, and he didn’t like it at all. His roots were rattled loose from their place, and he didn’t feel safe and snug in the ground anymore. Much worse than that, the beautiful lady had sunken deeper into the sand. This distressed him, so he started to scream and to cry. The ocean was making a different sound.

The pelican and the butterfly flew into his thorn-pen like they never had before. The pelican grabbed him by the head with its bill, not at all gently this time, and tried to pull Babyhead out of the ground, but Babyhead just resisted and bled and screamed and cried even louder. The butterfly just fluttered around his head. Eventually they stopped and flew up into the air.

The ocean sound had changed once again. This time it was deafening loud.

The water hit Babyhead mid-scream, so he didn’t have any air in his lungs. He lodged in the sand with all his might as the great surge tried to rip him free, but even with everything he had he couldn’t resist. He flew up out of the ground and straight into the low ceiling of the thorn-pen. And the water kept on coming.

I love you.

The butterfly and the pelican flew down and perched on the cliff as soon as it stopped being completely underwater. They stared at the place where the thorn-pen had been and waited for the water level to go down. It did, and there it was. Its roots were so deep and so strong that it hadn’t been ripped from the ground like all the other plants around it. The sand underneath it, though, had been swept clean away, leaving more than ten feet of root exposed. They stretched out from the ground to the tangled and mangled mass of thorns that used to be a home. The pelican and the butterfly could only look at it and blink, then back to one another, and blink again. They did this many times.

I love you. I love you.

The butterfly finally flew down over to it and hovered above it, looking for anything. It got nothing instead, so it landed on the thorns and started climbing down them. It had to know.

It leapt back and flew into the air just in time as a large, bloody hand at the end of a large, bloody forearm thrust up from the heart of the tangle of thorns. Flailing about, grasping them and bleeding some more, it was soon joined by another. The thorns thrashed about, bumbling and tumbling to and fro, and the two bloody hands tightened their grasp on the thorns. In one spectacular motion, the thorns ejaculated up and outward from their bowels an extremely bloody head, which was chased by an extremely bloody neck, an extremely bloody torso, and two extremely bloody arms. The disgusting mess flopped down on the ground face first. Wriggling and squirming, twisting and turning, it was soon complimented by an extremely bloody waist, two extremely bloody hips and legs, and an extremely bloody tail. The disgusting, bloody mess lied there, huffing and puffing and catching its breath. The butterfly flew back up to sit with the pelican and watch.

Suddenly the disgusting mess snapped its head up and raised itself up on its forearms, which immediately collapsed under its weight and its face went back in the sand. It flopped over on its back, the disgusting head frantically turning back and forth on the disgusting neck. It somehow began to move, slowly and awkwardly like a jellyfish, but with the utmost determination. Rolling its way around the thorns and slithering over to the place where the roots were sticking up out of the ground, then pawing all about in the sand, pawing and digging and making the most terrible noises. It did this for hours.

Finally, the disgusting, bloody mess gave up, rolled over on its back, and was still.

It was still breathing. The pelican and the butterfly didn’t dare approach it, but just stayed their distance on the cliff and watched. It stayed there all day, and all the next night, and well into the next as well. Staring up at the sky, blinking stupidly, facial expressions changing, making all sorts of noises. During the day, following the clouds with its eyes and squinting them at noontime, and during the night, following the stars and the moon and the dragons. The tide would rise and lap at its feet, and it would just lie there and allow it.

And then, on the next day, a really, really loud noise from the lungs, and then no noise at all.

Then up.

Hoisting, straining, forcing itself up into a sitting position, then propping itself up with its arms and staring at its feet. Wiggled its toes. Slowly the knee bent, and the foot pulled toward the body. Working on Instinct and barely-living memories, the rest of the parts reacted in due time. Onto the knees, and then, eventually, with more strength than it had ever needed to use in its entire lifetime all put together, up onto its feet.

And Babyhead looked around.

To the sea, and the waves, and the horizon. To the ground, with the seaweed, and the dead things, and the debris, and the thorns, and the blood. To the land, with the dunes, and the hills, and the mountains, and the trees, and the lines of smoke rising up in the distance. And the cliff. And the pelican. And the butterfly.

And the footpath.

And the footpath.

And the footpath.

He kept coming back to it. From all the new things, to where the pelican and the butterfly were sitting, and back again to the footpath. Finally stopped, and stood looking at the pelican. The pelican looked at the footpath. So did Babyhead.

One foot up, over, and down, followed by the next, very slowly and wobbly at first, but gradually a little better and better. Still extremely clumsy, though.

And off he shuffled. Nothing stood in his way. I love you.

The butterfly watched his back as it very, very slowly began to disappear. It looked to the pelican, then back to Babyhead, then back again to the pelican.

“He’ll be okay,” said the pelican.

Pelicans can talk.