credit: Illustration within ivy frame, and story by Tiffany Osedra ‘Bassagirl’ Miller

CONJOO

(An Overture)

by

Tiffany Osedra Miller

Copyright 2010

Tonight, Conjoo island twists and writhes with the cackle-horn blows and stin-stin beats of Bacaban-Fairy songs. The Conjooners hear the soft
overtures to these songs just moments before the Bacaban-Train
arrives and the Re-membering begins.

Who can? We can!

Because we’re Bacaban

Who can? You can!

Because you love Bacaban

“The Bacaban have come early this year!” announces the Long-Legged Stidgeon, pausing beneath a Joontree.

“Isn’t it wonderful?!” shout a chorus of Galfellow Flowers, gathered together beneath the tentaclegs of the Stidgeon. The
Galfellows, shaking with the rhythm of the song, clasp their petals
together and open their eyes.

Who can? We can!

Because we’re Bacaban

“Wonderful? I don’t know about that! It’s much too early for Bacaban. We’re not ready. We’re not ready.” The Stidgeon
march-runs across the beach and across the surface of the water,
dropping below the horizon, then diving into its underwater home.

“We’re never ready for them, even when we know they’ll come,” say the Galfellow flowers in unison. The Stidgeon can no longer hear
them because the Bacaban songs have grown louder.

Listen:

All of this land

Blessed by Bacaban

Cry, when we cry

It’s for Shummingfly.

Black, we so black

As the Nightingjack

Twinkling lights infect the petals of the Galfellows, sending tremors through their stems. Each grain of sand opens its ears and eyes and the
Conjooners begin to suffer great bouts of imagination.

“Oh, how I want to be a fish,” the Whistle-flower whists.

“I want to be a Mountain!” shouts the diminutive Rose.

“I want to be the shining Sun,” says the Sunflower. They all laugh shaking their leaves until their laughter is drowned out by the
Bacaban-Train’s whistle.

The silver Bacaban Train comes winding through the island, like the Someday-Salamander. If you touch it, your hands, petals or
claws will turn into lights that won’t turn off until the sun rises
in the morning.

Tanty, the Black Ant Queen stops her descent through the winding paths when she hears the songs. Her entire colony becomes silent.
She turns to her children, most of them grown now. A question
she knows the answer to glistens in the pitch of her eyes.

“It’s the Bacaban!” they yell, like common bug-children. The ants run along their paths, nearly pushing Tanty aside but she stops
them with a stern tilt of her head and ascends to the apex of the
anthill. She peers out onto the island. The island’s fever is
rising, cooling the air underground.

“And so it is,” she says when she spies the Bacaban through the windows of their train. She wonders to herself why, though the
fairies seem to age and have hieroglyph-like wrinkles neatly roped
through their black skin, they never seem to lose their lights.

It is never easy when the Bacaban-Fairies come.

In the midst of their bacchanal, their mischief and mockery, their well-wishes and songs of spirit and love, they open up a tender
place. When they leave (and they always do, because they insist
they must) they leave behind the droppings of their unrequited
dreams, which mix with our own.

Listen:

“I want to be the Crowspus River,” announces the young field mouse.

“I want to touch the Heavens,” sings the sparrow.

“I want to be a house!” bellows the slug.

The first Bacaban emerges from the train. Her dark skin glows with a light behind it that rivals the moon. Some Conjooners
secretly wonder if the Moon is her sister. Her eyes, like most
of the Bacaban, emit black delicious lights that wander around the
island, searching for places to enchant. The Conjooners
wave to her.

“Hello Acaravanna!” But she doesn’t smile or wave back. Instead, she begins to flutter and sing in a low unrecognizable chant, her
little body bending into a dance imitating the movements and sounds
of the Shummingfly.

“Eh-eh, now what could be the meaning of this?” Spider Rock asks itself.

Many Conjooners instead of running to embrace the Bacaban-Fairies, as they usually would, remain mired in their roots. The Bacaban come
only once a year and they never imitate the Shummingfly, mockingly or
otherwise.

The Bacaban dances before the African Violets now, who shake their petal-heads with a mixture of confusion and delight until Tingro,
their leader, says to the dancer:

“You must stop this, now. You’ll anger them.”

“Where are the Shummingflies, anyway?” asks the Spider Rock. “I haven’t seen any of them around for a long while.” But the
dancer, oblivious to the questions, continues her Shummingfly dance
while other Bacaban-Fairies bless the ground around her.

Below the ground, the ants begin their ascent out of the anthill to witness the dancing Bacaban, Acaravanna, dance to the tune of the
Paraswan-whistle. Her little body moves with mourning and
matches the baroque pata-pata-rastatat rhythm of the
Stinny-Drum. The Stin –Beats produced by the
Music-caste Bacaban (a group of fairies so ethereal in appearance you
could mistake them for a warm Conjoo Island Breeze) pulse through the
entire island.

Yes, the garden glows with light tonight on the island planet called Conjoo, an island filled with animals and flowers, now overrun with
weeds and Bacaban.

Before the first arrival of the Bacaban, Conjoo had been a regular, dusty, un-enchanted island-planet. It hung in a corner of the sky like
a tumbleweed. Colorless, fruitless and barren, it was inhabited
by Stidgeons. Long before this, it had hummed with life from
the presence of the Shummingfly who built up the island into a
majestic place where great learning occurred. It was this
learning that produced the Bacaban, though the Bacaban would tell you
it was the other way around. A Bacaban would say that they were
there before anyone – that they built up Conjoo only to have it
swallowed up by lava from Filligus Volcano. Some
Conjooners might say that a Shummingfly and a Bacaban are quite the
same thing. But it isn’t true. Is it?

Oh Acaravanna! Great Peacock-Bacaban look at her wings as she moves them. The moonlight streams vibrant colors: deep
purples, greens and reds. Look at her great black beauty,
her antler-crown, a deep Shummingfly-sadness in her fluttering eyes.

The moonlight hovers above the Conjoo Ocean. A group of long-legged Stidgeons rise from beneath the water, dip their heads beneath the
horizon line and walk across the water to the island forest where the
train has stopped and where many of the Beings of Conjoo watch the
Shummingfly movements of Acaravanna. After she reaches the end
of her dance, she bows her head in prayer. All of Conjoo
stands, or sits, in silence.

Tanty, losing her patience, crawls up to the praying Acaravanna.

“What is it, Acaravanna? What has happened to the Shummingflies?”

“They’re gone,” she says, raising her head from her prayers, “all of them.”

“What do you mean?”

“We received notice today of their extinction.” A chorus of gasps escapes from the Conjooners.

“Who notified you?” asks Jinti, the Stidgeon.

“Monyo,” whispers Nester, a senior Bacaban.

“Monyo! But Monyo’s a Shummingfly,” shouts the slug. “If they’re extinct, how is it possible that they delivered this message?”

Nester turns toward Acaravanna, who looks away.

“We’ve come to pay our respects. Conjoo was their homeland. They are our ancestors.”

“Did you not hear the Slug’s question? Did-Did you not? How can a Shummingfly deliver a message when it is extinct?” asks
Jinti. “I don’t like this. I don’t like this at
all.”

“This is not easy to explain. We come to honor the Shummingfly. Their presence on Conjoo has helped extend the work we carry on year
after year to ensure that this island remains enchanted. But,
in recent years, most of the Shummingflies ceased to aid us in our
work. Why? Because they were dying. When a
Shummingfly or a Bacaban-Fairy dies, a place loses its imagination.
Remember when the entire island would rise up, taller than the
Stidgeon, revealing hidden legs, and start to travel? Do
you recall a time when the flowers and plants in the garden moved
from place to place, and doors opened in the trees, revealing world
upon worlds hidden in the narrow bark of each? And there were
so many more wonders. Year after year, we Bacaban brought our
bacchanal and the Shummingfly continued it. But gradually
they ceased and none of you noticed.”

“Of course we noticed!” cries Jinti, his small head knocking the overripe Joon fruit off of a Joontree, “but what could we
do?”

In an earlier time, the Bacaban and the Shummingflies worked together: the Bacaban brought their magic from another place and the
Shummingflies continued to spread it; they preached the magic of the
Bacaban, though they often felt powerless to perform the magic on
their own.

“Monyo is dead like the rest of them, isn’t he?” Jinti asks Acaravanna, and she nods her antler-head. “So how did you speak to him,
then?”

“Have you already forgotten our teachings? Everything speaks. You only have to listen.”

A great heat descends, becoming a mist that rubs itself into the skin of the island and its inhabitants. A voice off in the distance
calls and shouts. A looming dark shadow appears in the
Joontree.

“Monyo!” shrieks the slug. Jinti and the other Stidgeons run away, deep into the forests of the island, but quickly return to find the
Bacaban with their heads down, kissing the ground, before the
angel-apparition.

“This is the Great Re-membering of what all of Conjoo, including those great carnival -conjurers, the Bacaban, have struggled to forget: we
are one, conjoined race.

We die, you die

Because you’re Shummingfly

Try to deny you are Shummingfly

You believe you soar high

above the Shummingfly.”

The Bacaban move closer together and the rest of the Conjooners move away from them.

“We’ve come to honor you and your people, Monyo, with song and dance,” pleads Nester.

“My people are your people!” Monyo yells.

Continued on page 35 in Lunewing.