And just like the corbeaux, he watched death happen around him, peering down from branches all around the island as people killed people for money to buy boat tickets, as luxury yachts disappeared beyond the horizon, as planes left the airport to hide behind clouds, threading the skies to destinations unknown. For he was always in movement, always in flux. “Maco” - meaning someone who intentionally minds other people’s business an eavesdropperīut he would not drown, not like the others. You will drown when the waters swallow that tree! Watch and see!” Some people would spot him up a tree peeking down at them and shout, “You big maco, you just macoin everybody from up there. “Commesse” - meaning confusion, disarray, and gossip He heard someone say, “All this commesse! Everybody fighting for money! But the way things looking, we should be fighting for flights out of here before everything gone and all ah we dead!” He would look down from the branches of a mango tree and watch as the rich fought over yachts and people broke into banks to grab money as the water rushed in, swallowing the first floor, then the second.
He would go from tree to tree as the island dissolved over time, holding on with the power of a sloth or flying snake. He aimed for the tallest tree and held on for dear life. While the wave molested the city, people ran straight ahead past buildings and took off up the highway in their cars, but Tonie ran up toward the sky. “Allyuh” - meaning all of you you all everyone People ran through the streets like erratic ants scampering north, everyone shouting, “Allyuh, look, look, run!” And as the episode ran through his mind he wrote: He was but a child then, homeless and languishing, when a wave blanketed the sky like God’s robe on judgment day. Tonie walked around the mound of earth that surrounded the tree and wrote down any word that jumped out of scenes rooted in his memory, like the great tsunami. They were working to constitute a world that won’t lose its balance, so they seldom focused on language revival, leaving the humans to conduct any archiving of their linguistic past. The robots could only do so much, already occupied with rebuilding the new world through artificial intelligence. Each culture elected its own lexicographers to make tangible the specter of the past through words. After observing Tonie write down word after word, the corbeaux would give him the title “lexicographer.” It was a word that the bird had heard across the ocean, as people from all different cultures and lost countries were scrambling to document their dying languages. Adamant that the Gahara language should not be lost, he took note of each word that fell into his memory like ripe fruit. Tonie had a leather notebook of 1,000 pages and three pens.
The corbeaux fretted the treetop, then took rest on a branch next to Tonie and spread its black wings, billowing like a flag in the wind, drying itself off after scouring the seascape, bringing his friend fresh fish, which Tonie would cook under a fire as the sun went down. In the past, Tonie had watched the last moaning agouti tremble under the moonlight and disappear the next morning, only to find it tangled in seaweed by afternoon, tugged away into the sea like so many other things. It was the corbeaux that informed him that many of the birds, such as the kiskadee and the scarlet ibis, which was the former national bird, had migrated to New Conland. The Atlantic Ocean, the Caribbean Sea, the Gulf of Paria, and the Columbus Channel all coalesced into one vast expanse, taking with it the Caribbean island formerly known as Gahara, swallowing the coastline bit by bit, devouring the capital city, munching away at roadways, year after year taking fragments of Gahara out into the sea until one tree surrounded by a fertile mound and reef was left. He shared the tree with one corbeaux that would rattle across the sea every few days to bring back news and sometimes food.
Living earth flower mound full#
Tonie was perched on the largest branch, positioned at the highest angle, his full head of thick brown hair brushing the sky like cloud kissing cloud. It would only be the monoecious mango tree that would last, both male and female, one tall unit of green flourishing smack in the middle of blue waters. The sea was the lone ossuary, and as such, there lay no headstone or visible cemetery to draw forth constant mournfulness, just the big, beautiful blue and its new attendants. Imagine 2200, Fix’s climate fiction contest, recognizes stories that envision the next 180 years of equitable climate progress, imagining intersectional worlds of abundance, adaptation, reform, and hope.
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