Free Celestial Inventories by Steve Rasnic Tem Page A

while!
    And she always had time. For the old ones, especially. Alejandro remembered being angry they took up so much of her life.
    The other men his father’s age had still laughed about how the beautiful Felicia had hooked him all those years ago. How he had been such a
poor
fish, but a happy fish for all that.
    Every Monday then his father would drive his truck out of the village and across the plain into the forest to choose the wood that he and his workers would turn into furniture and carvings for the shops in cities far away. And Alejandro’s mother, Felicia, had always gone with him. It was the only time she ever left the village. Alejandro never left.
    Then one day there were no more trips. There were no more workers in the big workshop snug to the back of the house, on the other side of the wall from Alejandro’s room so that he could always hear the nick and the scrape and the tick and the saw as the beautiful carvings were made.
    There were no more carvings, no more words or time for anyone from either of Alejandro’s parents. For that was the day his father had had the accident, and the day the splintered bit of wood had miraculously passed through glass and passed through metal and passed through the heart of the beautiful Felicia.
    ----
    He had heard the old women of the village say how this bit of wood had been like a giant thorn, a thorn that had pierced the heart of Felicia. It was these same old women who had brought all the food to their house the day after his mother had died. They had come in their long black dresses and shawls, their faces barely showing, like large black birds, flock after flock, so many and all of them dressed alike. Alejandro had wondered who they were, where they had all come from. He had not believed there were so many old women in their small village. He saw some come from houses he had not known contained old women before that day.
    They brought deep into the darkness of that hollow wooden house great bowls of steaming beans, tortillas, platters of meat, plates of silvery, staring fish, offerings of potatoes, cheeses, breads, and desserts of all kinds. Alejandro had never seen such a feast.
    On their table top of tree slabs sanded and joined into a glass-like perfection, the feast had sat a day and then another day, untouched. Sometimes his father would come to the table at the usual time, sit and stare at the soft and gentle spread of food with tears in his eyes, his fingers rubbing the smooth edges of the table endlessly. But he would not eat. Alejandro, too, had sat solemnly, not touching the food the old women had brought, because perhaps this feast was for watching and not for eating.
    Instead he had stolen fruit and bread from the local merchants to keep himself alive, nibbling on the small bits as he sat back in the dark and empty woodcarver’s shop.
    After a few weeks the stretch of feast softened and ran like yellow wax in the heat. The nuts fell out of the cakes and breads. The fruit rinds blackened, the meat turned greasy and sour, and flies speckled the collapsed mounds like dark garnish. The fish grew thinner, their eyes larger and clouded. Sometimes he witnessed his father staring at the remains, whispering silently to himself. Sometimes he had to fight off the urge to cover the decay with a sheet, thinking it somehow obscene but afraid of how his father might react.
    Eventually the flies spread beyond the dining room, gathering in neighbourly groups and filling the house with the first conversation Alejandro had heard in weeks. A sweet stench flavoured the young boy’s dreams. Alejandro expected the beautiful wood of the house to begin to show at least some small signs of this decay, but this did not happen.
    ----
    Again he woke late in the night to the sounds of weeping. He wondered if his father was drinking his own tears, if that was what was keeping the master woodcarver alive. Alejandro missed even the nervous talk of the flies.
    But then the weeping