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Sing to me, O Muse, of that man of many troubles.
Odysseus, skilled in all ways of contending,
The wanderer, harried for years on end,
After he plundered the stronghold
On the proud height of Troy.
Sing through me, and through me tell the story of his suffering
his trials and adventures, and his bloody homecoming.
“Wifies,” Parrot whines. “Wifies, Wifies, Wifies. Why’d you do that?”
Great caverns of breath under his human hands shudder and sigh; arms as sweet and wide as the sky loop around his shoulders and squeeze.
“I knew you wanted the secret,” Parrot’s favorite martyr says, softly. He smooths down Parrot’s hair with his thumb; tucks a stray brown curl back behind his ear. They’re home, finally, home at last; wrapped up on the slumping wheat-colored couch of their little whitewashed cave by the sea. The wind comes home from the waves salt-soaked; it doesn’t even bother to knock at the door. It brushes through and twirls around Parrot and ruffles his hair and smiles at him with black eyes that crinkle crowsfoot at the corners.
“Not more than you,” Parrot mumbles. He hides his face in Wifies’ shoulder. “I wanted you here more.”
Wifies looks down at him and smiles something small and indulgent—like he’ll let Parrot get away with the lie.
“Well,” he says, slowly. “I knew you’d get me out.”
Parrot sighs, and he tucks his head under Wifies’ chin and he wraps his wings around them both in one great shuddering curtain of color.
“I love it when you do that,” Wifies says, softly.
“When I do this?” Parrot asks. He squeezes his armful of Wifies, Solid, warm, returned at last Wifies. His feathers flutter.
“Yes,” his friend sighs, something blissful on his face. “I’d walk into a thousand chunkbans for this.”
“For this?”
“For you,” Wifies sighs. “You and your wing-hug things. And this cave."
Parrot looks around. He's cleaned it up since Wifies left. Cleaned it up is the wrong word, maybe. Memorialized it, is maybe better. Nothing that is Wifies’ has been touched; It's all still there—Wifies’ clothes collecting dust in the white-washed bureau, pale paint chipping at the edges and the moths eating at the cotton; books untouched in bookshelves, their colorful spines fading in the sunlight; his bed and its perfectly clean neat lines of lilac sheets. Parrot’s bed, right next to Wifies’, is unmade and unruly.
“This place?”
"This cave,” Wifies says, with that lovely and familiar smile. “You're so inquisitive today."
"I missed you.”
“I missed you too. Your wings are so pretty."
"Do you want a feather?" Parrot offers, before he can think better of it.
He can hear breath stutter in the dear lungs of his friend. “You’d give me one?”
Outside, the waves hush and crash against the dark rocky shore and the sun shines brightly. The curtains are white and fluttering. The air smells of salt. Parrot takes a long green-and-red feather from his wing and pulls it with a pinch. He places it in Wifies’ palm.
Wifies closes his hand delicately around it. When he looks at Parrot, his eyes are wide and the whites in them are silvery as a half-moon.
“Oh,” says his best friend. “Thank you.”
He always was a gentle man.
The next time Parrot sees him, Wifies has turned his feather into an earring. Red-and-green flashes bright against greyscale black-and-white best-friend.
“Does it suit me?” he asks, then.
“Yeah,” Parrot lies. “It’s perfect.”
Many cities of men he saw and learned their minds,
many pains he suffered, heartsick on the open sea,
fighting to save his life and bring his comrades home.
Once, Wifies woke him in the dead of night.
This was in the end civilization days. They lived in a room that looked a little like a dream and on their wall they had a painting called Tides. Wifies had brought it from their first seaside home. Sometimes Parrot would look at it when he felt sad. Then he would look out to the great sea of stars all-ringed by chunkban impossibilities and feel sad and safe both.
There was no day and there was no night in the End; only transcendent light pillars of purple-red-and-green that ribboned across the black starless sky. It was always bright like a midnight sun and it smelled desperately sweet all the time like flowers and rotting fruit.
So when Wifies woke it him he remembers it was bright as day although it was definitely night and it smelled exactly like hydrangeas all in the air, even as Wifies wept all slumped on his shoulder and shuddered like a bending beam.
Parrot doesn’t remember what he said—it must have been something sleepy and confused. He does remember what Wifies said.
“Parrot,” Wifies said. “Parrot, help me, please, I think I’m going to do something bad.”
“What?” he said.
“You gotta stop me. You gotta help me. I think—I think I’m losing my mind,” his dearest, best most wonderful friend choked, and Parrot leaned up and wrapped him up in his wings.
“What are you even on about, bro,” Parrot said.
“I’m gonna—I think I’m gonna do something bad. I’m a bad person and I’m going to do something bad and you have to stop me.”
It was unthinkable then and it’s unthinkable now.
“Something bad,” Parrot echoed. “What does that mean?”
Wifies just cried then. It was a little pathetic; like a baby bird or a blind kitten; helpless and constant. As if there was nothing else in the world he could do but cry.
In the morning he pretended it never happened and whenever Parrot asked he would laugh and say sorry and move on. Still, he remembered for a long time; so wrenching, so pitifully sad. His best friend cried like nobody and nothing in this world could save him.
He was precious then and so so dear especially when he cried because the water would well in his black eyes and make them look bottomless. Lightless, which Parrot craved on these bright safe days that smelled like rotten fruit. His eyes looked like void glass and his porcelain-slate expression broke wonderfully into tragedy. Parrot tucked his best friend’s head beneath his chin and this friend of his fell apart on his shoulder and it was lovely lovely lovely.
He loved him then. He loved him then. He loved him then.
But he could not save them from disaster.
The recklessness of their own ways destroyed them all.
“Don’t be upset, Parrot,” Wifies said, somewhere, very distantly. Parrot wasn’t listening, because he was upset, but he remembers it all very very well. “Please, Parrot.”
“How could I not—“ he started, and then gave up. There was a mutilated twist of black metal to his left and there was no way to get to the Farlands anymore.
“Parrot,” Wifies said. He dropped down to his knees and balled his fists in Parrot’s jeans and dropped his forehead against Parrot’s knee. “Parrot, please. Please don’t be upset. I’ll do anything.”
He was heavy.
“Let go of me.”
“You’re my best friend.” Wifies-on-the-floor said. It was muffled.
“No, I’m not,” said Parrot.
“I love you,” said Wifies.
“No, you don’t,” said Parrot, and then he laid a hand on Wifies’ wavy black head. His friend looked up with lightless glass eyes. Parrot braced the heel of his palm against his friend’s forehead and pushed; bucked his knee and stepped back as Wifies hit the ground. The sound of it was little like somebody smacking the flat hollow face of a drum.
He looked so pathetic there, on the ground; a crumpled bit of black-and-silver and a pop of purple. He pushed himself up, pawing at his face. His palm came away red, right in the center. It smeared across his forehead bright on paper white skin.
“Oh,” said his best friend. He stared at the red on his hands as his nose bled.
“You killed Dean.”
“I didn’t—“
“You killed Dean,” he repeats. “You never liked him. So you killed him. And now—how am I supposed to get to the Farlands now?”
“Parrot,” Wifies said, blankly. His voice was the same, if not a little more nasally because Parrot had broken his nose. “Please.”
“You never change.”
“I just want what’s best for us,” said Wifies. It was a little gargled at the end because the blood fell into his mouth. “Don’t be mad at me. I can’t handle when you’re mad at me.”
“I hate you,” said Parrot, instead. He memorized the way Wifies looked then; the smear of red across his face and the blood on his hands and the gasping way he cried. Memorized it and recalled it all over and over again when Wifies died and he could make no grave.
Blind fools, they devoured the cattle of the Sun
and the Sun god blotted out the day of their return.
“It’s our garden,” he said.
He said it but it wasn’t Wifies saying it it was the Director saying it, being distinct from his best friend by death and a number of other things but mostly by death. Wifies had these dark and endless eyes like a voidpit and this man who is not Wifies but instead the Director has shallow black matte slates in his head.
Still he watched even as the hands that weren’t his friend’s reached into the soil and took a handful. His pale fingers were then black with dirt and he lifted it to show Parrot.
“You always wanted a garden,” said the Director. “To plant daisies and dahlias. Did you know you can eat dahlias? The tuber is edible. It tastes a little like radishes. Or so I’ve heard. But there’s a lot of inulin in them so you can’t eat too much. What color of dahlias should we plant? Parrot?”
There was no wind blowing anywhere. He could hear the sea in his ears. There was a sparrow in the cherry trees. Inside he felt like a doll.
“Parrot?” the Director asked, again. He put his hand on Parrot’s shoulder and his nailbeds were dark with soil. “It’s a garden. It’s our garden. I don’t know why you’re so upset. It’s only you and me and the garden.”
In the garden there were metal fences with sharp cut points that gleamed silver.
“Don’t cry,” said the Director. “Don’t cry, don’t, don’t. I didn’t want to make you cry. I wanted to make you happy. Are you happy? Please be happy. Come on, Parrot, please be happy. It’s only the garden and you and me. Let’s be good and happy. Let’s be good. Like we were, like when we were good, like we used to be. I would do anything for you. Anything and everything I would do it for you.”
It was six o’clock in the afternoon and the sun was setting.
“Let me hug you,” said the Director. “Isn’t that better? Don’t you feel better? I would do anything for you. It’s only me and you and the garden.”
Six o’clock no sun metal silver sharp. A bird no wind the sound of the sea.
“You don’t need to be afraid,” said the Director. “Please, Parrot. Don’t be afraid.”
Launch out on his story, Muse, daughter of Zeus,
start from where you will—sing for our time, too.
Great caverns of air; pale beige-and-yellow wings spread wide and golden against the sun.
The sky is so wide here.
“I bet you can’t hit that weather vane,” says Theo. He points at the wiry metal silhouette of a sparrow a hundred blocks across the city.
Parrot’s wings are green-and-red. Theo’s are white-and-gold. They are lounging on the tiled roof of their potion shop. Parrot lifts his hand up to block the sun and his fingers glimmer with glowstone dust.
“I bet I can, too,” says Parrot.
“No, dude,” laughs his friend. “No way.”
So he lifts up his bow and draws the string way back. When he lets go the string snaps and resounds and sounds like someone hitting the flat hollow face of a drum. The arrow sails high and smacks into the metal so hard it spins.
“Damn,” Theo says, and he clicks his tongue.
“I’m too good.”
“I thought it would snap off.”
“Trying to get rid of your competition?”
Theo purses his lips and looks away; all funny-eyed. He’s not wearing his sunglasses because they’re not fighting.
“Well,” he says, with great gravity. “I am the biggest bird.”
Parrot laughs, high and ringing and fond, a little like a child. The wind blows through smoothly and slowly. It smells like smoke and sawdust; the scent of explosions, clinging to Theo everywhere he goes. Far away, in the city proper, they’re ringing bells on a tower to call the market open. The neighbor is singing in her garden. Muted singing, soft and sweet, some old song that sounds a little familiar but he can’t place where.
“What’s wrong?” his best friend asks. “Parrot, bro?”
He presses a hand to his mouth and curls into his knees and shakes a little. Theo hovers, but he doesn’t touch.
“Parrot?”
“God,” he says, at last. “Oh, my God. I’m happy. I’m happy. I’m happy and he’s gone.”