The King in Black

My bike creaks to a halt under the ruddy pink window that belongs to Danica, an equally ruddy-faced and absolutely beautiful Czech woman who is making funny animal noises from inside the house to welcome me. I’ve stopped under her window to ask her the Czech word for butterfly. I’m at thirteen languages and counting but the rule is that I can only ask people for whom the language is their mother tongue, and it has to be in person. She is tickled by the request and bestows upon me motil. It’s markedly different from any I’ve collected thus far, it sticks out from the others. I like collecting the word butterfly because in different ways, the word in most languages is constructed to sound like fluttering. They roll off the tongue like wings, making a soft landing. Kelebek. Farfala. Peperutka. Liblikas. Motil.

Danica tells me she wants to record the conversations she hears under her window and splice them together into an art piece. I tell her that is my favorite kind of idea, thank her for her linguistic gift, and hop back on my bike. She’ll join for a swim later.

No wonder mariners worshiped the skies. One day clouds opened up and out fell a tiny island full of mystery, mischief, and darkness—where nothing ever happens. Nothing but beach glass, roses, roadkill, bones and stars. Apples and blood. Nothing can change the low tide smell of the harbor and the sound of the cuckoo. My uncle grumbles as I peel turnips—evidently, the wrong way. He’s prickly. And a good man—a great man—like a giant version of the hedgehogs who snuffle about his garden.

We stop to lay petals on the tiny dead mole curled in a pothole along the road to Pont des Chats. “They’re hemophiliacs,” my aunt says, a trickle of blood oozing from its pink nose. “An entire species, and evolution didn’t take care of that.”

Some people shove shards of glass down their tunnels, and evolution didn’t take care of that.

The price of mussels has doubled on the island; bones of the locals ache under the influx of tourists. The mystical has begun to retreat, protecting itself. There’s always been something inexplicable about the island—and about my time here, but for my part I really believe it’s just listening. It isn’t that the remarkable hasn’t felt remarkable. It’s that I believe those miracle happenings would be far more frequent if we all kept our eyes and ears open. I was lucky to be taught from an early age to see more than moss in the moss. But it’s never too late. I like to share my stories. I’ve always hoped they’re believable but it doesn’t matter because they’re real.

As a summer child of the island I spent my days falling into ponds and running into the sea. When I was really little I knew I had to be home for dinner when I started to hear the rooster crow—there was a confused rooster in the village who crowed at sundown rather than sunup. He was acquired as part of a feud. No one seems to remember why these particular neighbors were at odds, but they have been as long as anyone can recall. One of them was a drunk. The other neighbor got a rooster hoping it would torment the drunk’s hungover mornings. The rooster was defective and did not crow as the sun rose but rather through the night. The drunk slept soundly through the crowing anyway and instead the whole neighborhood suffered until one day, the rooster suddenly and mysteriously disappeared.

Anyway. I’m sixteen, I’ve just hiked the perimeter of the island—all thirty-three kilometers—give or take a few stretches of erosion. I have no idea how to get home. It’s misting in its usual gloomy, forgotten way. Following the coastal path is straightforward enough but I have to go inland. The island is a labyrinth. It’s getting dark and I have no sunset rooster to guide me. I surely will not see another soul, at least not human. This was a time on the island before tourism and cell service.

I have learned and unlearned and become disillusioned by and relearned the whole “leap and the net will appear” thing. I am not sure that is always true. Sometimes you leap and a pool of electric eels opens up. But I try to continue leaping, when I can.

In this case I didn’t really have a choice. I take off my shoes and start walking away from the sea. Feet cracked and bleeding on cracked earth, blanketed by the tiniest pink flowers, past fields of sheep and apple orchards, I finally come to a road. There is only one way to go.

At the first fork the sun hangs low in the sky. I am tired and feeling lost in more ways than one. I stand at the divergence. A black cat is in the middle of the path to the left, looking straight at me over her shoulder. How had I not seen her appear? She turns and walks down the road. Cats have always offered me solace and camaraderie in times of need. I follow.

I come to the next fork in the road. I’ve since lost the first cat. I look to my right and see another, smaller cat, all black, atop a stone wall. She jumps down upon seeing me and walks unmistakably down the trail to the right. It’s now dusk.

The road ends. I see a shadow dart onto a farm path, down a tunnel of trees overgrown. I hunch down and push past the vines. Waiting for me is the largest cat I’ve ever seen. A panther with bright green eyes. A specter in the twilight. I follow deeper into the twisting overgrowth.

It’s almost dark; I almost doubt. My head has been down to the ground at brush level so as not to lose sight of my guide. He turns back at me one last time, looks me dead in the eyes, framed by some large stalks of swamp grass, and walks calmly into the forest. I start to panic and try to follow. I raise my gaze and look up to find myself in my aunt’s backyard.

We are both wild. It is possible that all I need are fresh peaches, ocean air, and a bicycle. Bittersweetly muddling through life as it comes.

Emily Lautch is a queer writer and poet from Seattle. They now live in Brooklyn, where they’re working on their first book. Their poetry has been published in Stone of Madness Press. They love pinecones, string theory, and lexical gaps. You can find them online @emilylautch