Outlands

Outlands

       by D. ("Shak") Robespiere

              madona madona what grieveth you so

                        the pig's i'the meadow the cow's i'the corn

We set sail for the outlands January 1st in a snowstorm that made seeing difficult, let alone navigation. Winifred called that her foot had slipped and she was frozen to the mast from waist to neck. Billy Bucko went up the ropes then and freed her with ax and knife and brought her down gently to the deck where a fire was kindled and when the warmth seeped again into her poor limbs we all of us prayed a silent thanks to our maker. We might not lose her for to do so would be also to lose ourselves for her sight of things not seen protected us daily.

       By mid February we had reached what we agreed must be the tip of Greenland. Its southern shores, ringed as they are in the most astonishing cliffs of emerald granite, and of a sort not found anywhere else in the known world, and with which we intended to load our bark on our return journey, should there be such a happiness, came up on us unexpected through a fog so thick that Wanda did not sense Willy until after he had been forced to encircle her waist with his free arm in passing on his way below decks where the barrels of apples were kept. Wango heard and saw it all and laughed so that he fell out of the rigging. From up above one sees through fog more readily, strange to say. Miserable, she gave Willy a shove and sent him sprawling. She had had enough of unmannerly men. If she ever got back on dry land she was going to renounce them entirely, and that was a fact.

       Now, in the early days of May, when the birds sang and rampaged on the walls we'd built for the shelter we decided we needed if we were ever to survive the bitterest blasts and coldest clime in western Christendom, we came to a new conclusion. This land was certainly not as horrible as we had for all of February, March and April been determining. Here grapes grew, if you can imagine! This was discovered in late August. Wodensen had just come jubilating back from the south part of the island and calling that every one of us should hurry for all we were worth if we ever hoped again to raise another glass of the vine's purple to our lips in our God-forsaken, blight-ridden, crab-infested, bedsore-sodden, mother -------ing lives. Of course we wished for nothing more and ran as much as walked the four miles out to a promontory which, truth be told, gave out onto a meadow covered all in tall vine-trees bent to almost double with a load of grapes!

       Trees! Not vines, but trees! And grapes hanging so in bunches large they nearly broke the backs of the men who, in their greed to start, cook, drain and drink their harvest's promise attempted to carry an entire bunch alone. Oh, they hung in bunches the size of mammoth sacks! More in all than one could expect to cart home in a dozen years of unrelenting labour. Yes, grapes of the finest hue, if small in size. But small, they contained a more intense flavour and made the most delicious wines you, my reader, have ever had the great good fortune to encounter in your travels. We sang praises to our maker that dusk and did what men and women have done since the dawn of their conception, and we did it all that glorious night in the knowledge that nights galore of joy brought on by the raised and the drainéd glass would follow soon and we must now attempt, oh futile attempt, to show some appropriate alacrity of spirit and poise and fuck till we dropped as demonstration of our good intent and gratitude.

       Now, Wicked Mary from among our crew, given to incontinence of every sort in drink, food, dance and dervish, self immolation, self examination, both internal and external, and carnal acts of intense prolonged public intercourse in which animals, domestic and wild, children, male and female, old and young adults, trees, and even pussy willows played active roles, found her spirits so refreshed by the bringing on of fresh wine (our own not long so far depleted that available only to the captain whose reputation had suffered for her hording of such stores for personal use) gave herself over to her desires and as a first act of pronouncement of new happiness spent her entire time naked but for a small loincloth made of some sailor's hankerchief that she, for a small sum, lifted and waved about to show all and sundry what lay beneath  All saw, wished to see, would see, did pay and see.

       She was a ravishing beauty, was Wicked Mary. One would not have been able to deny her requests for small payment for large viewing. Even a minister, a man of the cloth, dressed all in black and reading from a text also bound in black, would not have, even in the morning and with no liquor yet down his gullet, the fortitude, if Mary had knocked and called out requiring an answer, had the wherewithal to withstand.

       Wailor the sailor, man of the mast, spent all his time drunk and from that time onward no one saw him when he was not staggering, crouching down to sleep, or already asleep. We cared not. When Wango slew him one night in rage over his treatment of Wicked, we all said a silent thank-you and wished Wailor a good journey to Wodensland.

       With that this tale ends, except for a sincere request for you, our kind readers, with your strong breath to give us fair winds and billow our sails as we once more set out, this time for home. With good prayers, yours to give, we'll speed back to house and spouse who'll waiting be with bated breath for news of land and beast not seen before. Yet think they dead the ones who left on voyage long. But like that famous travellor who on Cirus' shore grew ill and weak we are not dead nor have we died but fucking have we been and drinking wine and now must once again return to the groinless world where peace and penury play at games and austere labour mindless rules. Love us and we'll love you too, is that not right my Wanda, dear?

Sir Walter Reimer

January 1st, 1669

The year of our Lord