Don't Get Pregnant By A Walrus
Now there in the city of Allus was a king called Drodger the Swift who rode atop a black caparisoned steed and was shod with black arms upon his body. With his might he conquered his neighbors and tossed wise-men and lords from the high walls of his city into wave-churned rocks far below, whilst their wives were distributed to his own dangerous warriors as slaves. For twenty years he did this until Allus was a kingdom, and its borders extended past the eastern plains to the moonlands, where walk the strange Cyranese hosts, men with backwards feet and bad attitudes. Terrible Cyran sorceries killed the men of Allus and rendered them unburyable; arrows seeped in birthing juices claimed men with wounds resistant to the most charmed physicians, and so this was called the Time of Dying: yet Drodger’s appellation was more for his impetuousness than his considerable skill in riding, and with his most dangerous hell-bitten men, who rode fast-stomping, snot-dripping, wide-chested steeds of a thousand colours taken from lands unrecorded on the maps of our greatest cartographers, he took a death ride to the Nightcity where lived the twilight Cyran men and women, that people that perambulate through an eon-long night to no seeming end, whose odd behaviour shocks and galls the worst and most liberal of us alike. On this ride he killed the backward-walkers without care: he killed the quick striders, the low lopers, the slow stumblers, the four limb crawlers—all these and more he and his men split with powerful downward strokes of their axes, and left the Nightcity strewn about with limbs of former flaneurs doomed to lazy days of keeping time by the pecking of crows.
Here he found a woman with many warts who walked circles under a gazebo. “Who will kill this warted woman?” he asked, and turned to his men. But his men were afraid, and from them emerged Rigallo who said, “My lord, it is a curse to kill a warted woman. Let her live, it is better.” And, their courage given voice, the other dangerous men gave their council, and all warned against killing the warted woman. But Drodger ignored them and split her down the middle. A finger pointing, her two halves mustered the strength to say thus:
“You, Lord Drodger, are cursed by me: your daughters will suffer misfortune in their lifetime, and despite all your wealth and power there is nothing you can do about it.”
“I have no daughters,” he said, “so this is a poor curse,” and he cut her horizontally and killed her in four pieces.
So ended the campaigns against the Cyran hosts. After the Nightcity slaughter, Drodger retreated and entrenched himself within his borders, for reprisal would come and did: quickly his claimed land receded, yet he had plundered riches enough to serve twelve kings for twelve lifetimes each. It was at this time he married a woman named Ameth, given to him by the elder of Varlin, the village under the trees, and her soft whispers and gentle caresses softened his hard heart, and through her good guidance he learned munifescence—thus his treasury became the people’s treasury, and Allus knew an abundance of great public works, and artists we still adore were patronized without any requirements whatsoever, save to serve their hearts; all this tripled the honour he had earned in wartime, and he was made happy by the birth of three daughters.
Born second among them was Evenlyn; it was a day of rainstorms, the kind which makes farmers complain and throw down their tools, when she was born lullabied to a sound sleep by the rain that wracked the walls of the White Palace, named for the pale shade of wood used in its construction.
“She is so peaceful,” said Drodger. “We’ll not have any problems with this child.”
Ameth rocked baby Evenlyn in her swaddling cloth. “No; if you can love her truly for her whole life, then no harm will come to her whatsoever,” because love protects from curses.
Yet from that day Evenlyn was so quiet that Drodger took no notice of her. For after handling the affairs of state and the hosting of feasts, Drodger’s remaining time went toward his other two daughters: Evelyn, the oldest, was the most competent and wonderful woman alive, whose blonde hair was stronger than the silk of mother spider, whose fingers produced sound like a violin when rubbed together—in short, the fairest and most wonderful woman of all time and times, a monster of beauties against whom the bluest blue of ocean waters appear grey, the scarlet sunset pallid, a blooming flower staid, a gilded palace a hovel. She attracted his attention as a prized trophy does an aged athlete, who can point and say “this is proof of my life lived.” Evilyn, the youngest, was a communist agitator who preferred well-trod city streets to candle-lit palace corridors and climbed from any building she was kept in so long as there was a window from which to make an escape. Her rebel heart attracted a coterie of terrible rakehell boyfriends, the awful sons of Drodger’s old comrades, and it was these that Drodger had to fight off with called favours and shrewd gifts—in all this hustle and bustle Evenlyn knew her tutor as more of a father than Drodger: when he appeared at scant moments it was the same to her as passing his statue in the market. Try as she might, Ameth could neither convince Drodger to offer more attention to his middle daughter (“She is a fair study, of reasonable looks, in good-ish health: what would you have me do?”) nor fill her heart with the love it was missing, not of quantity but of kind: the love of her father, who lavished his city with the wealth of ages whilst she grew into a woman.
Quiet, fascinated by nature, yet too shy to follow her sisters, things went like this: “I’m away to negotiate a peace treaty between bitter-hearted nations,” said Evelyn, and left; “Want to come and smoke foreign flowers that make you see the future?” asked Evilyn, in an outfit too revealing for literature, and Evenlyn would dream of following but shake her head no. “Okay, don’t push yourself,” and Evilyn leapt out the palace window into the linked arms of devil boys waiting below. Evenlyn, alone, put her nose in a book and waited for what she did not know.
That all changed when Evilyn introduced her to Castle Black, a vampire of some renown. “Hey babe,” said Castle Black from the shadows of the market square, “your dress is cool, the green looks tough.” Never before had a boy lavished her with such attention, and immediately the two were lovers. Drodger did not notice Evenlyn’s nocturnal absquatulations—even as militiamen rushed about the city to get Evilyn away from a dockworker strike, for Drodger planned to put it down with force, Evenlyn went unnoticed through shadow to the arms of Castle Black.
“Will you always look at me?” she asked.
“Yeah, whatever works,” he said, and tried to keep it cool, though if he had a heart it would have beat fast enough to make him scream at a mere flutter of her eyelashes, or a flash of red upon her almost winsome cheeks.
They spoke of a thousand things: she told, over long hours, in gruelling detail, the plots of her favourite stories and he, with his vampiric memory, would repeat obscure story beats back to her just to see her smile, this though he cared not a whit for her particular taste which he thought vapid (Consider that, at one-thousand and twenty-one years old, he had read a majority of the extant literature of his time before judging him on this count); he showed her his vampiric skill at climbing trees. “Look at me climb this tree,” he’d say, and then do so with such inhuman alacrity that it terrified and thrilled Evenlyn. “I love that you’re a monster,” she’d say when he returned, and “yeah, cool,” would be his response, yet her words stirred disquiet in his unbeating heart.
Then on a rainy day, her birthday, Castle Black took her to the edge of a
cliff a few hours walk from Allus (though only a few minutes for a vampire) and turned his back to her.
“I have to go,” he yelled through the storm.
“No! I won’t let you leave!” she cried.
“I must!... I must!—” he changed to a bat that flew to her at the speed of sound then, at the last instant, was a man and stopped a half-inch before her nose. “You don’t understand… what you do to me!”
“Tell me! Tell me and I’ll try! I need you!”
“You see these teeth?” and he pointed to canines which were slightly more pointed than is normal in a human, “these are the teeth of a monster! And each time we lay next to each other on dew-kissed grass through to the very last of dawn when terrible sun parts us, I want only to sink my fangs into the fat of your neck and drink of you, as men do of Jesus at Communion—you see!? my love for you burns me crazy… Ugh!” and he became steam beaten by the rain and a mouth formed which he used to speak moistly: “I’m protecting you, that’s why I’m going far away to Rome.”
“No no no—please would you stay? I promise I’ll be good,” she would’ve held onto him but his vapours only soaked her more. “I promise I’ll be quiet for you—if that’s what you want I’ll be quiet and simple.”
“Ugh!” his steam mouth said, “you just don’t get it. When the combined wisdom of three successive popes teach me to love like a human I’ll return to your grave and honour you. For now goodbye forever—re-mem-ber meeee e e—” and his steam body flew away from her into the moonlight, then looped back to the ship he had to catch in Allus (Though on account of the storm its departure was delayed by two days).
She lay despondent until the rain ceased, and by chance a shepherd found her and returned her to her home. She wouldn’t talk, or move, or do anything except smile slightly when her mother read her stories. It was in this state that Drodger saw her and said: “My daughter is like a dumpling! She lay and lay and lay and does just about nothing!” (and to this day we still call sick people dumplings when we wish to hurt them).
“Her heart is broken, or always was,” said Ameth while feeding Evenlyn soup.
“I’ll find a way—I won’t have a dumpling daughter,” and for the first time Drodger put his full attention on Evenlyn. It was while caring for his daughter that Drodger at long last struck a peace treaty with the Cyranese and, to cement the good relations between their peoples, the latter sent a strange gift, a blubbery monster of fearsome proportions that swam the quicksilver seas beyond the eastern plains. This being was large and fat, thick of tusk, fearsome to behold: awesome, a being of size and power, yet rendered helpless away from water, for all its bulk saw it sag heavy to the earth. The lord-elect of Cyran called it Walrus, which Drodger put on display in a temple to the gods of the sea.
The whole of winter Drodger spent by fireside with his daughter, and little by little her strength returned. Ameth and Evilyn visited frequently and though Evelyn was on a tour meeting forty-seven potential suitors they had a painting of her on the wall, and together they were a happy family.
“Would you care to see Walrus?” asked Drodger, and, with a weak nod, Evenlyn agreed.
It was a strange and lonely creature behind those bars; a fat, lumpy beast of unloveable proportions. It lay then on its side and looked beyond Evenlyn as if in search of the mercury waters it called home. Somwhow this being brought peace to Evenlyn’s heart, and, from that moment, she was better. Drodger then left her alone again and attended to his duties; Evilyn loved her sister, true, but had her youth to live out on picket lines and in secret cells, debating theory, doing drugs, and meeting with rapscallion boys; Ameth’s love wasn’t enough—Evenlyn appeared to be well to all who spoke to her, for she was calm and quiet, but a change had occurred best marked by new behaviour: her books lay untouched in piles and each day, for longer and longer periods, she watched Walrus in his cage.
His smell was thick like oil, a heavy and overpowering musk; his heft lent a solidity to his presence, and to her who watched he was more real than others—a thing painted in a world of pencil, or an anchor in the ocean, or the inexplicable contrast between a friend not seen since childhood and the memory of what they once were: such was the weight of him who loomed, this sprawling thing of lament. What weight he had, what affect! to feel its tongue mop fish slop from her hand was to walk the ground of a distant planet, and suddenly she loved him.
In the dead of night she prayed and prayed that his cage be opened, and it was. She sank into his fatty skin, rind thrice the thickness of a pig’s: the monster moved torturously toward the sound of water, and soon acolytes of the temple took notice of the disturbance and tried ropes to restrain the beast to no avail, for it weighed two tons and could not easily be halted. She escaped atop Walrus to the sea—winter’s chill still alive in the waves froze her bitterly, but her lover’s body kept her swaddled in warmth. Where she went under the waves I do not know—what universe of ocean secrets unfolded before her? What rocks like scars jutting from the seafloor? or the mysteries of sunken ships? or reefs of colours unseen by man? What love they made! for she welcomed him into her and was made pregnant by a Walrus.
But the beast soon disappeared. She was left alone on an island far from her home. It was the most painful birth ever, for pounds of seaweed came out from her and the opening of her womb was jammed with barnacles. Midwife crustaceans worked very hard to see the child delivered because their pride would not allow anything less. Evenlyn died, yet before she left she had enough strength to tell her massive son this: “Let them see you, Chardle: let them see your body its heft, and let them remember me in your face,” but he was a brand new baby and couldn’t understand a word she said.
To this day people say “don’t get pregnant by a walrus” to criticize bad parents: the walrus is the walrus of bad ideas that fills the bellies of mothers and fathers with a spirit of neglect that, upon its birth, makes parents prize one child over another. Thus, when a friend shows clear favouritism to a particular child, tell them “don’t get pregnant by a walrus,” and they will know what you mean and, with God’s help, amend their faulty behaviour, or else doom their progeny to fill the void of love with the fullness of a monster.