The Wilds West of Athens
Flash Fiction written for Iron Age Magazine's "The Chrysalis" prompt
Image pulled from the prompt, which can be found here.
The chrysalis sat in the dry riverbed, its red scales like the shale lining the valley. Medicine man Jim had nothing to say. He stamped his foot with impatience and worry. The archeologist Dr. Wester was enraptured by what seemed to be a pattern on the face of the thing, which appeared almost like a Greek bust. Its surface was dotted like stucco, yet veins like inverted canyons spanned it.
“You have ideas. What’s your idea?” Jim asked.
“It’s an egg,” Webster said.
“Truly you are wise,” Jim said. “No one can state the obvious so astutely as you.”
“You didn’t quite grasp what I meant. It’s an egg twelve feet in height and the width of two fat men. What would hatch from something like this?” Wester asked.
“Redheaded giants,” Jim said.
“When was the last time you saw one of those?” Wester asked.
“I’m looking at one now. Your people haven’t been here long enough to know,” Jim said.
“Well, I hope to make up for that,” Wester said. “But giants don’t hatch from eggs.”
“You believe in giants?” Jim asked.
Wester began taking precise measurements of the chrysalis egg. He couldn’t decide whether it would hatch into some arthropod or reptile, though he was certain it wouldn’t bring forth man or fruit. One thing came to mind: the thunderbird.
These regions of Arizona abounded in strange tales. As strange as the stench of cactus juice, the things whispered around campfires stark against those cool nights were yet stranger. Giants, cannibals, raiders from the north, shapeshifters, and flying monsters populated the Arizonan imagination, White and Red. Jim was full of stories and imagination, hence Wester’s keeping him around.
The medicine man kept his multitude of stories close to his heart. Few were even from his own tribe, he hadn’t the time to get to know them. But he loved the way words knit together to illuminate truth. In a way, all truth was story. He was not so much different from Wester who read the world and the words therein. To keep the other sane traveling the fringes of all things, well aware that anything went, they journeyed together. They were wrong, however, in assuming they knew just how strange things out here could get.
The chrysalis egg was beyond both of them. No stories were told of it, in word or substance. Wester paused his measuring when it seemed one side of the egg looked different than it had even moments before. He retook the measurement and compared it. It was off two inches. He retook the measurement and then it was five inches off the second measurement. Even when nothing looked different, the ruler would give a new result.
All they could tell was it was alive. If it were alive, it was bound to hatch, and what would emerge no man could ever say.
“Should we move on?” Jim asked. Dusk descended rapidly onto the desert, bringing with it its cold breath that gushed over the canyon walls. “I don’t want to get stuck out here with whatever hatches from that thing.”
“Are you mad? What does science mean?” Wester said.
“It’s a magical word signifying nothing but the intention of the one saying it,” Jim said.
“How astute. If you knew anything, you’d know Latin, and you’d know it meant knowledge,” Wester said.
“It meant knowledge,” Jim said. “Now it means something different.”
“Am I not taking measurements to gain knowledge?” Wester asked.
“You’re taking measurements and finding nothing. What knowledge is available?” Jim asked.
“What hatches from it?” Wester said.
“There’s the rub. Will the hatchling be any different?” Jim asked.
The egg decided to answer the question, shivering amidst cracking that sounded like bullets through the valley. What indeed would hatch?
“What is it?” Wester asked, peering through the moonlight.
“That’s a toady frog,” Jim said. “A big one.”
It was not a toady frog, Wester was certain. That could be nothing other than a juvenile Thunderbird, wet yet from hatching though its wings were already of considerable length: long enough, perhaps, to fly. It chirped.
“See it’s a thunderbird,” Wester said. “It just chirped.”
“Are you deaf? It sounds like any other toady frog, just one that’s incubated a bit too long.”
Wester bent down to start a fire. Jim stood scratching his head as the thing continued to call, sounding shriller by the minute. Wester was well aware it called for something he may not want to encounter so close, but he could not bear to leave the thing’s identity to uncertainty.
The light of the fire showed Wester what he wanted to see.
“It’s just what I said it was,” Wester said.
“I can say the same,” Jim said.
“You don’t think,” Wester said, “whatever’s hatched is just as uncertain as its egg?”
“I don’t think so, but it appears so.” Jim checked the waterskins. No cactus juice.
They were no longer alone. Some form of incredible size swooped down to perch upon the canyon wall, its wings and belly glowing in the light of the fire, buffeted by rising smoke. Jim and Wester backed away and found hiding spots among the rocks. The things began to converse with each other.
“What the hell are they saying?” Jim asked.
“They’re chirping at each other,” Wester said. “You hear them speaking?”
“It’s like if a frog could speak Cherokee,” Jim said. He reproduced the sounds to the best of his ability, trying not to cough afterward.
“How in God’s name do you hear two giant frogs speaking Cherokee to each other in Arizona? Its mother has brought some food is what he’s saying. All I hear and see’s thunderbirds having at it,” Wester said.
“Perhaps the truth is somewhere in the middle. Flying frogs?” Jim asked.
“Do you think they are projecting forms to us?” Wester asked.
“Meaning they know we’re here?” Jim asked.
Wester nodded, half his face darkened and the other lit. “What if they are communicating with us, putting on a show?”
“Telling a story?”
“Will anyone believe us?”
“It’s doubtful, even a lie would be easier to believe.”
The things stepped nearer. Jim muttered some more Cherokee.
“Are you still hungry, my child?” Wester translated. The two men looked at each other then bolted. The things gave chase. Neither man had the slightest idea what to do but run until their legs gave out or they were overtaken. It took just one night, but now neither man allegedly wise could lay claim to knowledge again. But it did not bother them so much as escaping the grasp of whatever these things were.
The end of the canyon was in sight, and the desert sprawled before them. Wester wished for the first time in his life something would have a supernatural cause and these things be bound to some metaphysically special site in the valley, otherwise there would be no escaping a thunderbird on the plain. Jim wished he had a cannon to blast the cursed frogs to pieces.
To their rescue came a massive reptile known only by its fossils recently found in England. It charged between them as Jim and Wester splayed across the plain, and it did battle with the thunderbird frog.
“Are you seeing this?” Wester asked.
“A giant, scaly monster fighting a giant frog?” Jim asked.
“More or less. We have common ground again,” Wester said.
“To what end?” Jim said.
The things did battle, and in time the reptile drove the other thing back into the valley, their awful sounds dying into the night. Jim and Wester were left trembling as they continued to flee.
By the end of the night, they returned to Phoenix and found their room at the inn. When they woke at midday, they meditated on the events of the previous night, coming to no conclusions at all. Jim sat at the table swatting a fly while Wester tried to make sense of any of his data.
“These gadflies are awful,” Jim said.
“Gadfly? That’s just a regular—” Wester said, dropping his record book.
Jim stopped swatting it. It landed in his hair and cleaned its hands. Jim looked about to faint.
Wester said, “Leave us alone. We don’t know what you are or why you seek to bother us. We are utterly clueless.”
The gadfly buzzed.
Before he fainted, Jim muttered, “We know nothing.”
The gadfly was satisfied at having broken the men, taught them their lesson, and carried on the tradition they’d lost. A young boy and his mother passed down the road outside the inn window, and the gadfly flew out to begin all over again, all in the name of knowledge.