The Harpooner at the Bottom of the World
Originally published by Spectra Pulse Magazine, Summer 2008
In a certain remote archipelago where a species of pygmy narwhal is compelled by some morbid instinct to beach itself in droves every winter when the edges of the great calderas freeze over, there is a tale which may only be told by gravid women. The young mother will begin when she has conceived and her stomach is flat, carefully, with a brush of narwhal-sinew and a cup of narwhal-ink, to trace out the story in a long, winding spiral onto her skin. As her belly grows, and bare flesh appears again, she continues it, until she is large enough to bear it all -- though never quite, for the last lines are painted onto the infant's own tiny stomach, in a ring around the navel, and washed away with its first bath.
The story is the peculiar property of the expectant, and the painting of it a solemn practice which may not be viewed by her husband or family -- if she is caught at her task, hers will be an unlucky child. It is deeply believed that a tale left incomplete will result in deformity or miscarriage, and the tales of the stillborn are finished in the weedy earth of their graves, so that they will not be left forever alone between the isles of the dead.
Because of the extreme ritualization of the telling, personal variations are not common. It is said that the tale may be carefully altered if twins are desired, or if the mother is ill, or in cases in which the child, were it to possess a certain hair color, might make trouble for its mother in the village. There are still further accounts of women who did not wish to give birth fleeing onto the beaches to scrawl bitter, truncated versions of it onto their unhappy skin. Local midwives tell of a woman who refused to write the tale, and went bare-skinned for nine months, proudly displaying her blank stomach. The child, they say, was born faceless, without finger or toenails, and swam away into the sea with a muffled hiss when it was three weeks old. They warn also of a singular case when a father attempted to paint himself with the story, and swelled up so terribly that he begged to be cut open, at which point the midwives removed a bloody mass with eyelids and a single balled fist from his stomach.
In addition, it is strictly prohibited for mothers to tell their children this story in any form. It may not be spoken aloud at all. A woman discovers what her mother wrote for her only when she bears her own children. The secrecy surrounding it is profound. A child, it has been reported, once cajoled her mother into telling her the tale, and was possessed immediately by a terrible thirst and the desire to swim among the narwhals in the coldest of the many seas. She was found drowned in their ruined fins within weeks. Children now know better than to ask.
None of these circumstances have been verified by any external authority.
The tale is so definitively forbidden to any but the expectant that it was not recorded or collected in any index until an Ottawa anthropologist (Anna S. Lapplann, 1919) of singular ambition seduced one of the local horn-carvers and became pregnant. (Dr. Lapplann subsequently returned to the mainland with her newborn daughter, and provided her department with the text that follows. There is no reason to suppose that any causality exists between this action and the curious developmental disorder and various antisocial behaviors that led to the institutionalization of the child at an early age, or the untimely death of Dr. Lapplann herself, who fell from a trans-Atlantic cargo vessel and drowned at the age of forty-three.)
The erstwhile anthropologist found herself therefore under the tutelage of three midwives, who walked with her on the silver beaches to draw blood for ink from the wretched flotsam, to cut the horns for the posts of her birth-bed, and to slice the fatty meat of their flanks into long strips, for a growing child of that country can bear no other meal. They kept the horn-carver away from her and hid her during the long nights of those islands so that she could work in peace. On her stomach month by month they taught her to write the following tale in a sharp, angular calligraphy:
First Month
At the bottom of the world, there is an archipelago like this one, save that the islands are upside-down, with their toes in the sky and their hair in the water. There, the dead and the unborn dance together in the blue and black shadows, hand in hand.
Second Month
Once a Harpooner who had known both of the sorrows which are deepest dove down into the heart of the great cold caldera and found at its bottom a hole just big enough to wriggle through. In this way she entered the kingdom of the upside-down islands, where the stars hang on long vines from the underside of the sky to light her way through the dark.
Third Month
It is very quiet at the bottom of the world, and for a long time all she heard was the sound of her snowshoes slushing through ashes. At last, the Harpooner came to the first nation of the upside-down islands, the Country of the Racing Dead, who paddled their kayaks through a sea of lichen and liquor. Their faces were streaked with waxy tallow, and the palms of their hands were blue and black.
"Who among you will feed a stranger from the right-side-up islands? I have swum far below the lid of the world, and the upside-down moon has led me astray," said the Harpooner.
Fourth Month
"We will feed you," answered the kayakers altogether, "for the food of the right-side-up is neither rich nor sweet, and the dead are the servants of the living."
The Harpooner protested that she kept no servants, but the Racing Dead answered: "We come when memory bids; we go when forgetfulness banishes. We feed you always on the fruits that grow out from our bones; you are sheltered in huts we built with our own hands. We are your humble and your devoted."
From the depths of their kayaks they pulled up all manner of wonderful things to eat which were blue and black: blueberries and roe and ice, and she was fed.
Fifth Month
Next the Harpooner came to the Kingdom of the Narwhals, who leapt up with shrill cries to pierce the hoop of the moon with their horns. They swam around her; she did not put her spear into them. They were enormous, each greater in size than three sharks together.
"Who among you will comfort a stranger from the right-side-up islands?" said the Harpooner. "It is dark at the bottom of the world, and the upside-down wind has taken my breath."
The Narwhal wheeled around her.
"We will comfort you," said the Narwhals altogether, "for the love of the right-side-up is neither constant nor true, and whales alone know all the deeps where a heart may become lost."
Sixth Month
The Harpooner protested that her heart was not lost, but the Narwhals answered: "What is it that you believe sunk a hole just big enough to wiggle through in the bottom of the great cold caldera? It was your heart, falling out of your belly."
"It is true that I have known both the sorrows that are deepest," said the Harpooner, "but I thought to keep my heart within me a little longer yet. Is there no place the whales know where a heart may be found, where it may be sewn with sinew back into a woman?"
They made no answer, but the many upside-down Narwhals drew her down among their fins, so cold and blue and black. They made of their horns a roof over her head, and she was comforted.
Seventh Month
Next the Harpooner came to the Land of the Not-Yet, deep in the forests of the toes of the islands. They were strange and small and the bare light of the bottom of the world showed through their little bodies. She could have strung a hundred of them on her spear. They crowded around the Harpooner and held out their hands to her.
"Who among you will lead home a stranger from the right-side-up islands? I cannot find the hole my heart has made, nor the heart that made it."
"None among us will," said the Not-Yet altogether, "for the hearts of the right-side-up are heavy and dark, and they sink further than the bottom of the world, to the very wrinkled feet of the ocean, which we know nothing about."
"And who are you who will not lead a stranger home?" asked the lost Harpooner.
Eighth Month
The Not-Yet laughed as one creature.
"We are the children who have not yet learned to stand right-side-up," they cried. "We wait on the toenails of the upside-down isles to be born." They smiled, all of them, a single identical smile. "This one is yours, and this one, and this, and still a fourth!"
And from the depths of their number they drew forth wonderful things which were black and blue: three daughters and a son the Harpooner had not yet borne, each with a small harpoon of their own clutched in their hands. The Harpooner knelt and took her children into her arms, small and thin as they were.
"If you will show me the way back to the hole my heart has made in the ceiling of the ocean, I will take you with me, my little ones, and we shall eat fox-ears together around my fire."
But the Not-Yet shook their heads.
"The woman who is heartless," said the oldest of the daughters the Harpooner did not yet have, "who is comforted by fins which are cold and blue and black, who eats the food of the Racing Dead, this is a woman who has forgotten how to stand right-side-up, and no one may wriggle twice through the same hole."
The Harpooner let her head fall. "It is true that I have known both the sorrows that are deepest," she said, "but I had hoped there was a kayak yet to bear me home.""We are now no longer the Not-Yet, but the Never-Now, for we will never sleep inside your body, or drink your milk," said the son the Harpooner could not bear.
Ninth Month
The Harpooner in her need went to the Kingdom of the Clams, who at the bottom of the world keep their shells on the inside, huddled in their soft flesh, so that no one may break it, but they shrunk back from her and their hard shell-hearts shuddered.
The Harpooner in her need went to the Land of the Seals, who at the bottom of the world walk upright and wear long robes of kelp. But they pulled their cloaks up tight around their necks and turned from her.
The Harpooner in her need went to the Nation of Long Squid, who at the bottom of the world chase Inkfish from island to island, begging for their black spume. But they lashed their many arms at her and would not hear the pleas of the woman with the long spear.
The Harpooner went again and at last to the Kingdom of the Narwhal.
"Who among you," she cried, "will bear my children through the hole my heart has made, and carry them to the right-side-up islands where they will be comforted and fed and learn to govern well the dead?"
The Narwhal made no answer.
"Who among you will take my upside-down children on your backs, and show them the snow and the sun?"
Still yet, the Narwhal made no answer.
The Harpooner put her naked hands out to them. She let her spear sink down into the water, further than the bottom of the world.
"Who among you will comfort me?" she whispered. "It is dark at the bottom of the world, and the upside-down shadows have taken my heart."
The Narwhal surrounded the Harpooner, and put on her their fins, so cold and blue and black, and laid their horns at her feet, and murmured to her in the secret and loving languages of their kind.
"We will bear your children through the hole your heart has made," they said, "we will see that they are comforted, and fed, and that they learn to govern well the dead, though in the wriggling we will be squeezed small and strangled, for no living thing may pass through the caldera but that it perishes upon the shores of the opposite isles. Each year you will see us on your sands, spent with the effort of bearing them up. We will bear your children past the stars which hang on long vines and the toes of the upside-down islands, we will be swifter than the Racing Dead, we shall swim up into the ceiling of the great cold waters and past them, past the top of the world, into the air and the snow and the long silver beach."
Around the Navel
And so it was.