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By Root 412 0

… . The fighting’s been fierce. They have new flying cyborgs, can go rocket speeds and cruise at twenty kilometers … . We suffer heavy losses … .” The person in green and brown paused to look around as if to recover a lost intent. “At now, you all grasp from the last grandcil more of us are going to have to fight for a while … . Jackrabbit was no born fighter. Person would have been happier staying home. But fought well. Jackrabbit was wounded running out to move a sonic shield to protect our emplacement. Was dying when we got to per. Damage to chest and organs was too extensive for us to save the life. We blocked pain. Jackrabbit died within fifteen minutes. We corded a last message. Should I play it?”

Erzulia rapped out, “Play it now.”

Minor scufflings with equipment. Then Jackrabbit’s unmistakable voice spoke in brief, broken sentences, half swamped in crackling and background noise. “Luciente: weep and work. Was good. You have to help people prepare … . Bolivar: break open. Go to Diana for help. Finish our holi with browns, reds, greens. Glim into uprush. Earth itself moving. Armies of trees. See? Armies of trees … . Bee: bring Luciente through. Never got to mother. Mother for me … . Corolla: regret what will never fuse now … . Orion: have faith in visions and patience with matter—” The voice choked in midsentence. Only crackling followed.

The person in uniform continued apologetically: “Jackrabbit meant to give more messages, but couldn’t. We could tell person intended to speak to more of you … . At first we were trying to save per. We should have grasped at once the wounds were too severe. Otherwise we’d have started cording sooner. We wasted time while we didn’t want to admit Jackrabbit was dying. Our tardiness robbed many of you of a message.”

Bee said, “You did well. We’d rather have had Jackrabbit than any message.”

The person in uniform bowed slightly and walked out. A voice began to sing:

“The tree quivers

wetly

in no wind.

I cone upon you.

How the light breaks

like arrows

through my eyelids.”

Connie stopped listening, catching Erzulia’s gaze on Bolivar, his dry narrowed eyes and brooding forehead. Rigid he sat with his legs crossed and his head at the top of the pole of spine slightly inclined. His eyes burned. His hands lay abandoned on his thighs like a pair of old kid gloves.

Others were speaking their remembrances, recounting an episode, embarrassed or nostalgic. Otter said, “I remember stiffing it all night when a hurricane was coming, to bring in the harvest, to batten things down. How Jackrabbit kept us singing and made everything funny, even when the waves came over the sea wall and we were really scared.”

Diana and Erzulia conferred. Diana rose and came back with three women of her core. Lovers, sisters, daughters of the moon, they wore the knee-length white tunics of healers. Their hair was bound back and they bore as decoration the crescent of the moon. Now they carried a cello, a flute, and a drum. After tuning up, they began to play, sitting to one side of Diana, who stood to sing … or keen. Her voice began softly, sobbing, wordless but musical, used like a fourth instrument higher than the cello but lower than the flute. Her auburn hair fell over one shoulder. Tall and bony and commanding, she swayed. Her voice crooned, soared, ululated, wailed, and mourned over the rhythm of the drum. Finally Erzulia rose. She cast off her blue robe and stood in something like a dancer’s leotards, black against her black skin so at first Connie thought her naked. She stood still and then she seemed to grow taller.

She began to dance, but not as Connie had seen her dance the night of the feast. She did not dance in trance but consciously, and she did not dance as herself. She danced Jackrabbit. Yes, she became him. She was tall, bony but graceful, shambling and limber, young and awkward and beautiful, talented and bumbling, pressing off at once in four directions, hopping, leaping, charging, and bounding back.

Bolivar’s head slowly lifted from his chest. He was staring. Suddenly Erzulia-Jackrabbit