Archive for the ‘Kat Beyer’ Category
Every One We Get
Monday, June 21st, 2010
It was the old, old story, he felt: handsome stranger comes to town, walks in on a feast complete with pretty (and pretty interested) girls, has a great time—and wakes up a night later about to be brutally sacrificed in order to save the village from a terrible drought.
“Seen it a thousand times,” he said aloud, trying to get more comfortable in his bonds.
“No you haven’t,” he answered himself. “Before this, you’d never walked more than three days from home.”
The priest came, carrying a horn. He sat down next to the stone.
“Sunrise soon,” he said, turning to look at the stranger.
“I’m aware of it,” agreed the stranger.
The priest lifted the horn. “We give the sacrifice a forgetting drink, if he wishes.”
“No, thank you,” said the stranger after a while.
The priest shrugged.
“I’ve had all night to wonder,” said the stranger. “What is the point? What is the point of killing a perfectly healthy young man who would be much more useful begetting strong children and fighting off wolves and catamounts?”
“Hopefully you’ve already done the first thing. Feast, remember?” Said the priest, raising the horn.
“Not much of it,” replied the stranger, smiling though he had begun to shake.
“Things are bad,” said the priest. “You saw.”
“I did,” said the stranger, remembering how thin the women had been, how easily tired.
“It’s how we’ve always done it,” began the priest. There was a sound like a gourd dropping. The priest sighed.
The sigh went on for too long; the priest folded over. A bony young woman stood over him, the butt of her hunting knife in her hand.
“Not anymore, not anymore,” she chanted while she cut the stranger’s bonds.
Two more women stepped from the edge of the grove. They looked at the priest, nodded at her.
“The sacrifice went well,” said one.
“No! Not a sacrifice!” snapped the young woman.
“Joke,” said the other, waving her hands.
“Time to go,” the young woman said, holding out his belt and kit.
He looked once over his shoulder, to see the two women gently lifting the priest; the woman tugged his hand over the hill. On the other side, the sun was rising.
“That is the most fine and beautiful sight I have ever seen,” he said to her.
She smiled at him. “Like every one we get,” she agreed.
The Ancient Power of String
Tuesday, June 8th, 2010
Every day I watch the people on the bus over the top of my math book. I’ve given them names. There’s Hate Boy, with his swastika earring, who moves his seat anytime anybody who looks slightly black or Jewish or Asian or gay or Hispanic or interesting sits near him. He doesn’t mind Talking Guy, though, who mutters and smells.
There’s Beautiful, who is. He’s in a band. He dressed up as Barbie for Halloween, and looked awesome. Hate Boy never sat near him again.
There’s Knitting Lady. Once Hate Boy asked her in his tough-tough voice, “Could you stop? The clicking is driving me nuts.” She said kindly, “No, dear.”
Hate Boy is running out of seats on the bus.
People always sit down next to Knitting Lady; she feels like that. When I read A Tale of Two Cities and got freaked out by Madame Defarge, Knitting Lady called me over and said, “Come sit by me. You don’t anymore. The needles bug you?”
Then she saw the book and smiled.
I sat down next to her again.
She said, “Those aren’t the only kinds of messages people knit, you know. It’s been used for lots of codes over the centuries.
“String is one of the most important human inventions. Fire was a big deal, sure. But string! New ways of carrying things—new weapons—even clothes for the first time. We began to knot it, knit it, weave it…messages, accounts, all manner of things.”
While she talked I thought the sunlight from the dirty window faded for a minute and fire lit her face.
“You can also use it to knit things together,” she added. She looked at Hate Boy when she said it.
A week later a white girl with long dredlocks and a diamond in her nose got on the bus.
Hate Boy made fun of Dred Girl’s hair, then her nose piercing. She just looked at him and shrugged.
I got the flu a month ago; when I came back Hate Boy wasn’t around. An old Asian lady hobbled onto the bus and the hot guy sitting next to Dred Girl gave up his seat for her.
“I always think of you as Math Girl,” he smiled down at me in a tough-tough voice. “Where ya been?”
His hair was grown out, his swastika was gone. Knitting Lady saw me staring and winked.