The Splendid and Extraordinary Life of Beautimus Potamus

Chapter One “Applecheeks! Agnes! Please fetch my oracle bag, and be quick about it.” Beautimus Potamus had overslept again. Between hot flashes producing so much night sweat that twice already her household help had nearly drowned in it, and her hormone-induced insomnia, rarely did she enjoy a good night’s sleep. It’s late in the morning for my daily oracle reading, and I’ve yet to bathe in the river, or eat breakfast. As she rose from her pillows her bones and joints snapped and popped, and when she stretched her legs, she groaned. The house squirrels scrambled atop the altar and pulled the gold brocade pouch onto the floor. Together, they tugged the draw-string bag to the hippo still reclining on her sleeping pillows. Agnes scampered to the cooking pot to make the morning tea, leaving Applecheeks to attend to Beautimus. “Thank you.” The hippo closed her eyes and raised her head in prayer. “Oh, Great Goddess Genesis, thank you for blessing us with your presence.” She opened her eyes, and gave a quick nod to the squirrel. Apple pulled a divining cloth from the bag, spread it on the floor of the abode, and straightened the corners. She put her paw into the bag and withdrew the first of three glyphs. “Moonmagick,” Beautimus said. “Goddess energy strong at work today. Please pull the next.” The squirrel withdrew the second of the stones, placing it to the right of the first. “Dreamlizard. Ah, yes, my recurring visions. The Goddesses say I must pay attention to them.” Beautimus studied the glyphs. “It’s rare these two stones appear in that order in a reading. Something is up, Apple. We’re to be on the lookout for omens, signs, chance encounters, anything out of the ordinary. You and Agnes keep an eye peeled. Will you?” Applecheeks nodded. Beautimus took a cleansing breath. “Now. The outcome glyph.” When the squirrel placed the last of the stones on the cloth, Beautimus leaned in to look, and gasped. “No. No. Please. Not again!” Her eyes rolled back into her head, and she sunk into her pillows. *** Visions. Beautimus experienced them on and off since adolescence. But they were so infrequent, sometimes a decade would pass without one. Recently, they came at her in bunches, like fruit flies in a mating swarm. One right after another they came. For six days in a row, Beautimus’ mother, Sangrina, who’d long before passed into the arms of the Goddess, appeared to her. It was the same each time. Without warning or reason, Beautimus’ eyes rolled back, her lids closed, and she dropped to the ground aware of her impending unconsciousness, but as if in a state of paralysis, unable to do anything about it. First, a resonate buzzing originated from inside her head. Then the visions appeared and played out for her like the classic films she streamed from Earth. Only these movies were projected on the inside of her eyelids. In them, Beautimus sat under a blooming yarron tree. She watched roan mares dancing with red dragonflies in a grassy meadow near the edge of an emerald cenote. A fog bank, the color of spun pink sugar, rose from the water and rolled onto the meadow. Sangrina stepped out of the fog. “Beautimus, it’s time.” “Time for what, Mom? Tell me.” “You’ll know soon enough.” Without so much as a wink or a nod, Sangrina faded into the aether. The fog cleared, the horses and dragonflies vanished, and Beautimus came around to consciousness, confused and groggy as a drunken coati. The visions stuck to her like a coquillet midge to a sorghum blossom, but try as she might, Beautimus couldn’t ferret out their meaning, or why they recurred. Then today for the first time in decades—the reading, and the glyph, the one that never failed to predict a life-changing event. Beautimus activated her Crystal Interface and connected with her friend, Lizzy, a mastodon she’d known since she was a bubbit. “Lizzy, during my reading this morning…White Light.” “Did it land in the outcome position after Moonmagick and Dreamlizard?” “Yes, exactly as it had when the janitor discovered Áine’s body.” “No kidding. What do you think is going to happen?” “I don’t have a bloody clue, but I’m nervous as a Phidippus spider. The last time I’d received that glyph in that order…who knows what may happen? The Anam Glyph, plus the repeated visions of my mother, it’s like….” “…Bea, you know the Goddess is speaking to you.” “And, if only I had paid attention last time …I mean…I may have been able to prevent Áine’s murder.” “Maybe you could have. Maybe not. Don’t blame yourself. But, do pay attention this time.” “I feel certain I’d have been able to save Áine. I live with this every day of my life.” Many years before, Beautimus had experienced a series of similar visions, and one morning as the squirrels pulled her three daily Anam Glyphs, White Light surfaced in the outcome position of her layout as it had this morning. Back then, Beautimus found her recurring visions and the glyph reading a curiosity, but dismissed their messages. A few days after, a janitor arrived at dawn as usual to Dr. Pimbly’s School of Goodly Educated Adults where Beautimus held the position of History Professor of Earthly Things. That morning, when making his rounds, he discovered the dead body of the beloved Wise Woman, the red fox, Lady Áine. The Wayflower Quacker printed verbatim what the janitor had told the reporters. Death of a Wise Woman: The Custodian’s Story That mornin’ waz derned flat dark. No moons at all up in that sky. I fumbles arounds a bit until I founds me keys to The Commons so’s I could groom the grounds likes I always does. As I waz a rakin’ beneath a two-flowered acacia I stumbled on sumpin’ that felt like a lumpy fur-covered sack of tubers. Holy Mother Genesis, what’s that? I asks meself. Then me paws slipped in sumpin’ wet throwing me clean off balance. Holy Mother! There waz her body right there on the ground under that tree. What I’d a-slipped in waz blood. When the sunlight busted over The Commons wall, I seen her good. I run full speed out of The Commons. ‘Oh me Goddess, she’s dead, she’s dead,’ I hollers. The dead gal waz that pretty red fox, Áine, a Wise Woman, that one next in line fer the High Priestess of Wayflower. Her throat were ripped clean out, poor little thang. Horrible, I tells ya, the most horriblist thang I ever did saw. News of Áine’s murder shocked the whole of Wayflower. The Dean, Sr. Henry, a distinguished grey mole, gave his statement to the reporter from The Quacker: “None of us can imagine what kind of fen-sucked evil gudgeon would kill dear Áine. She was a kind soul, one of our finest graduate students. Beyond her promising future, we all knew her as the sweetest natured fox in the entire District. We are stunned by what is by far the worst tragedy in our institution’s history. To ensure the safety of our faculty, staff and students, I will post twenty-four hour guards” He kept his promise, and hired a trio of lionesses to prowl the grounds. The Guardians arrested the janitor, a slow-witted badger, after witnesses reported him running wild-eyed, squealing in hysterics from The Commons, his fur covered in blood. The Guardians paw printed and questioned him, but in the absence of more substantial evidence or a motive, the Lead Inspector freed the badger. Few in Wayflower doubted the badger’s guilt. He remÁined under suspicion for the remainder of his life. Women hissed as he passed. Children threw rocks and taunted him even long after he’d retired, and had grown old and feeble. By the time crippling arthritis had gripped his hips and paws, blindness had also set in. The badger couldn’t get on by himself. Once each day Beautimus stopped by his den to look in on him. She sent Agnes and Applecheeks to dispose of his droppings, tidy his abode, and bring him contÁiners of fruit soup and steamed blue corn. When the badger at last died, the controversy over Áine’s murder died with him, even though the Guardians never caught the culprit. So many years ago. Must have been two hundred at least, maybe more, but Beautimus remembered it as though it had only been a mere half century. Áine and Beautimus had been friends and neighbors since childhood, and the brutal murder of the fox delivered a gut punch to the hippo, and it hurt that the killer had never been found. *** Beautimus planned to attend the Wasenia Festival with her best friend, Samuel S. Goodwings, a lime green praying mantis. The hippos of the Wayflower district built their abodes on the River Kwa not far from the Mantis Tribe. Although Samuel and Beautimus lived near one another, there was little reason for them to form a personal bond. Rarely did creatures as large as hippos become friends with creatures as small as praying mantises. But, in spite of their differences, Samuel and Beautimus were close. When the two weren’t arguing, Samuel had a way of making her laugh. “I think you two have some weird co-dependency thing going on. Really, you need to look at that, Bea,” Lizzy said often. Beautimus didn’t know if she’d talk to Samuel on their half-day walk to the Festival about her visions or the Anam Glyph reading. He didn’t believe in things like mysterious nocturnal messages from the dead, deities, or stone oracles. She and Samuel bickered like old married folks over religion and political ideology. He might ridicule her. Already rattled by the memory of sweet Áine’s murder fueled by her recent visions, and the recurring White Light Glyph’s appearance, she felt grateful to at least have non-judgmental Lizzy to talk to. “I only wish I could get Mom’s words and the meaning of that Glyph out of my head long enough to concentrate on my classes,” Beautimus said to Lizzy. “I’ll be too distracted to focus on my students unless I can prevent this thing that is going to happen from happening. And, my publisher is expecting edits to my Earthian Culture text this week. I need to be able to think.” “It’s good you and Sam are going to the Wasenia Festival. At least for a short while your mind will be occupied with more pleasant matters.” Beautimus strolled to the river for her morning bath. She looked one direction, then the other to search the landscape for anything or anybody who might offer a clue as to what could be coming her way. She passed a pond where a congregation of alligators and a wisdom of wombats engaged in a heated argument over economics. Nothing unusual in that. Beautimus caught a snippet of their argument. “…yeah, I wouldn’t expect anything more from the Wombat Tribe. Do the wombats at least support the new Rendazian Banking Initiative?” One gator asked. “As a matter of fact, we don’t support it. And, the proposed Macro-Economic Stabilization Policy is a pile of stinking horse manure. I can’t believe you alligators back it,” said a wombat. We wombats…” “…what exactly do you mean by, ‘you alligators’?” “You’re really pulling that alligator card? You’re clearly losing this argument so as usual you resort to your old trick of deflecting the issue by turning it into speciesism. Un-be-lievable.” “If you weren’t such a goddessdamn lizardist, a reptilephobe, a…” “…you’re calling me a lizardist, a reptilephobe? I ought to…” “You ought to what?” The alligator opened his mouth to display a row of rapier-sharp teeth. “C’mon, guys. No need for threats.” Beautimus said. “Why can’t you agree to disagree and let it go?” Right then, she first caught sight of the solitary brown chicken. She’d never seen the hen before, but the chicken’s curious behavior piqued her interest. The chicken positioned herself close to Beautimus, keeping herself within the hippo’s peripheral vision. Beautimus left the alligators and the wombats to their arguing, and continued on her way to the river, the hen close behind. She addressed the chicken. “Are you following me?” The hen ruffled her plumage but didn’t respond. Every time Beautimus turned to speak to the chicken, or make eye contact, the hen looked the other way or fluttered off in a frenzy of feathers to one of the ubiquitous purple-wood wattles. The brown chicken re-appeared and continued to shadow the now annoyed hippo. “Excuse me, but who are you?” The fowl remÁined silent. “Do you not hear me, or are you intentionally ignoring me? If you’re trying to be stealthy, you’re not doing a good job of it. I can actually see you, you know.” The chicken preened. “What the hellzabob? I’ve got enough on my mind as it is, classes to teach this afternoon, and the Wasenia Festival to prepare for. I don’t have time for your absurd games.” Beautimus decided to ignore the hen. *** Only on rare occurrence did Beautimus consult her Glyphs in the evening, but tonight felt different. The time for the festival neared. In spite of her night-sweats and bothersome insomnia, she intended to get a few good nights’ sleep and wake up the day of the journey clear-minded and joyful rather than disturbed by repeating visions. The squirrel pulled the bag to Beautimus and spread the divining cloth on the ground. Before Apple drew the first stone, one tumbled out of the pouch on its own and landed face-up dead-center of the cloth. White Light. Beautimus’ throat clenched. As if that wasn’t bad enough, as she lay her head on her pillows for the evening, instead of dropping off to sleep, her legs trembled, her eyelids fluttered, and the vision returned. Only, this time the pretty red fox, Áine, also emerged from the pinkish fog alongside Beautimus’ mother. The fox whispered, “It’s up to you, Bea. It’s all up to you.”