A PANTHER AMONG MEN by Laura Diaz de Arce

"Ah, Sharp-Tooth, I see you
have met the odd-feathered ones..."

The Heron does not make a good fool.

This is one of the things Short Tail’s mother taught her before they were separated. The Heron is patient and quick with the swipe of his beak. Do not play or try to make a meal of one. You can do so with the Anhinga, with the Stork, or even with the Vulture, but you should leave the Heron alone.

She thought on this memory while bathing in the sun one day, licking her claws clean of fish as a Heron stands true in the distance. It occurs to her that this Heron has been hunting in the same territory, and with a lazy scratch at her tree, she wonders where it has laid its nest.

Short Tail spent many a day like this, lounging in a knuckled tree in between snacking on the fish that were plenty, or the armadillo for a challenge, or picking a fight with a gator to ease the boredom. Deep in the swamps there were dangers, but not for her. She was the danger, with her reflexes, her claws, her teeth sharpened on bones of prey.

There was the occasional bear, of course. Even though one may make good eating, she knew more than to test a full grown beast. There were the storms, storms that battered the trees for a whole day and then some. And there were the other dangers, like a snake with painful bite or the dry season with sickly standing water. Short Tail’s mother had taught her well, and she navigated the dangers with nary a care.

Then, of course, there were the humans.

She had heard little of them, and seen even less, but what she heard was nightmarish. They made large nesting areas, and they carried things that could wound from a distance. She had seen a pack of them once, as she hid in the canopy of some large oaks. They had odd fur over their skin in patches. They were awkward, walking on two legs like a bear about to strike, yet they were unsteady cutting through branches. They made much noise and their scent was offensive.

Surely, these could not be the predators she could have heard of?

It was only when she saw them later dragging the bodies of three bull gators that she believed the tales. They did not feast, as would have been honorable, or store the remains in a tree. No, they made these loud noises from their mouths, like the call of a Clapper Rail. It was unnerving, and it made Short Tail push up on her haunches. Did they wish to attract attention?

Perhaps they did. For all their awkwardness, their loudness, they had no fear. They had no respect as they pounded through trees and sawgrass. Their odor, unusual and unnatural smells. Salt of their sweat having made the air acrid. They left, and the watery land was better for it.

Short Tail rubbed the sweat spot above her tail against the tree as she stretched. She was restless with the memory of such trespass, and she padded her feet against the ground. Picking through the bush, she made her way to the Heron to sit and watch the bird hunt its meal in the slow moving water. She sat by water, a few stretches away from the Heron when it addressed her.

“Ah, Sharp-Toothed one, have you come to make me a meal?” The Heron said, not moving to look at Short Tail.

Short Tail remained beyond spearing distance. “No Tall-Beak. I have fed today, I only wish to watch another hunter at work.” Short Tail’s mother had always made clear that most creatures were easily undone by flattery.

The Heron chuckled. Within that laugh, the bird moved with lightning quickness to scoop a fish into its beak. Still laughing as the fish went down its throat. “Then watch. And learn what a little awareness can do.”

That is what she did. They sat in companionable silence, the Heron eating and sunning. The Panther half asleep in the light.

After a time, Short Tail, no longer content with the silence mused on things like the rains and the weather. “I have heard thunder in the distance, but have see no rain.”

“That is not thunder Sharp-Toothed one.”

“Then what could it be be?” She asked, an eye half open, her face laying on her paws, feigning sleep.

The Heron did not reply., choosing instead to move upwards, flying to a nearby tree. Short Tail was only glad that the fellow beast could not make a meal of her with its unsettling silence.

In the weeks after, the dry season came. The rains were gone and animals moved. New flying beasts moved into abandoned nests. There was new fish in the water, but there was a sense of scarcity. Short Tail grew hungry, for in the years before there had been deer to hunt, now it seemed there were less, and less vulnerable. Ponds had dried, and the low water kept away the fish. Of those left were staunchly guarded by gators. This dry season was scarcer than years before.

Short Tail grew thin, tired and desperate. In the middling heat, she licked her grande teeth and remembered when there was flesh there. It was on such a day that she came upon a familiar scent. Blood. Fresh and aromatic cutting through the brush in the early morning. She bounded beneath the eaves of a gumbo limbo onto a curiously bare trail. In the center of the path was a set of clean meats.

Blood. It called to her, and in her hunger she was hypnotized by the scent and the sight.

If Short Tail had not been as hungry, she would have been more cautious. She would not have stepped so suddenly into a bare path, towards clean and carved meat. If she had not been so hungry, she would have heard the click underfoot as she approached the meal.

But Short Tail was hungry, and tired, and eager. Thus she did not think to question why fresh bloody food was before her, why there were no vultures nearby, nor did she hear the click as she stepped close.

Just as her nose came close to the meat…

SNAP!

CRASH!

A large cage came down from the trees trapping Short Tail!

No longer hungry, she growled and scratched at the metal bars. Short Tail had thought herself smarter than this, and instead had gotten herself trapped. After knocking her claws for hours, she whimpered while licking her paws.

“Ah, Sharp-Tooth, I see you have met the odd-feathered ones,” said the Heron, who had flown into the vicinity.

Short Tail moved her face away from the Heron, too ashamed to face the bird. “They do not hunt with honor. Go away before they come back.”

The Heron looked this way and that, studying the caged panther. “Have you eaten what was left? For it smells odd to me. And I saw another become ill after eating what the odd-feathers left.”

“No. I am not so foolish.”

The Heron laughed. “Ah, yes, though foolish enough to be trapped.”

Short Tail hissed at the insult. “Leave! Let me be beset in my misery!”

The Heron flew off, leaving Short Tail to sulk alone in her cage, waiting for the arrival of the humans and knowing she would be too weak to do anything. When just a short while later, the Heron appeared with a large fish and dropped it between the bars.

“Eat Sharp-Tooth. For you will need your strength if we are to get you out of this.”

Short Tail greedily ate the fish and as she sat, a little less famished then before looking at the Heron and asked “Why?”

The Heron did not look at Short Tail, choosing instead to examine the cage. “Because, you called me hunter. You knew me for what I was.”

Never had Short Tail been so thankful for her mother’s teachings.

After a time, The Heron located a mechanism, and after getting the opinion of a nearby crow, Short Tail was able to push open the very heavy door. Before the Heron could leave, Short Tail called. “Tall Beak, I have escaped, but what of others? Should we just leave it as it be?”

“What do you propose then?” said the Heron, beak moving this way and that.

“That we show these what they have crossed upon.”

They gathered the other creatures of the land, water and air. The handed Racoons, the large alligators, the armadillos and the vultures and ralied them to their cause. These two-footed ones do not hunt with honor. They said. They destroy what is around them. They take for sport and do not eat.

Soon, in the trees were animals in alliance of the swamp, waiting for the humans to come and collect their spoils. It did not take long. They could smell the humans first, a stink that made lynx sneeze. They came upon the cage and began to screech at one another.

On Short Tails roar, they launched forward. The Humans were not prepared for the creatures to come forth at once, and they began to run, the snapping turtles on their heels.

It is said that they were too scared to hunt in that part of the swamp afterwards. It is also said, that you should never think the Heron a fool and that flattery will get you anywhere. Even out of a cage.

Laura Diaz de Arce is proof that you can't take the girl out of the swamp, even after it has tried to kill her. She is the author of Monstrosity (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07PNP1Y9H?tag=creati0a5-20) which features two stories originally published in Enchanted Conversation. You can find her on her Patreon (Patreon.com/QuetaAuthor) and overusing Gifs on her Twitter @QuetaAuthor.

Art: Marc Franz
Layout: Amanda Bergloff @AmandaBergloff

El Vendedor Y La Bruja or How Eduardo Found His Heart - Laura Diaz de Arce

He feared he would 

never fall in love...

Author’s Note: This story is written, for lack of a better phrase, in Spanglish. I grew up in a bilingual household, and stories were never a 100% English, or 100% Spanish. The free form nature of Enchanted Conversation’s stories this month really allowed me to play with that, so I wrote a story to honor where my mother comes from - Chile. I hope you enjoy it.

-Laura Diaz de Arce

Once upon a time, there was traveling salesman who was called Eduardo. Eduardo sold hats, los sombreros más lindos del mundo. -Sombreros para los padres, niños, rancheros y sacerdotes.-He would chant, coming into the village. The children would come and stare at Eduardo, for he carried every hat he sold on his back and on his head. It was quite a sight!

All the women would come when he came to the village as well, for Eduardo was very handsome. Even though he carried all those hats, caminó como un príncipe. He had a voice like the easy roll of thunder y una sonrisa that shined like light breaking a cloud. He traveled from village to village in the valley of a mountain and wherever he went, the young women would smile and flirt with him. They all wanted to marry him and the young women’s mothers wanted him to marry their daughters. -¿Y cuando te vas a casar Eduardo? -la Señora would ask, indicating her daughter with the tilt of her chin or a batted eyelash.

Eduardo would just laugh that booming laugh of his, cuando me enamore -would be his answer, and he would soon move onto another village. It came to pass that while Eduardo found many women beautiful and charming, he did not feel he could love them. Even Serena Del Río, the most beautiful woman in all the villages, with her dark hair and skin as clear as still water, could not move his heart to love.

On a hot summer day, after turning down Serena’s hand, Eduardo sat down on the foot of a hill with all his hats and seriously considered this. He found many women pretty and he often felt something for them, but he was never moved to love. While Eduardo was thinking, one of the respected men of the village, Don Juan Carlos, came to see Eduardo in his pensive state. -¿Qué te pasa amiguito? - asked Don Juan Carlos, -¿Por qué tienes esa cara?

Don Juan Carlos was a respected ranchero with a lovely wife and many good children, and people often looked to him for his wisdom. Eduardo told him everything, about how he did not feel his heart stir for any woman more than just how beautiful they were. Eduardo confided in Don Juan Carlos that he feared he would never fall in love and have a beautiful wife to come home to, or a woman to bear his children and fix his meals.

After hearing this, Don Juan Carlos stroked his chin as he thought. Then caramba! Se la prendió el bombillo, Don Juan Carlos seemed to have solved the problem. He looked at Eduardo with a face as serious as stone - ¡Amiguito, creo que no es un problema tuyo solamente! La bruja que vive arriba de la Montaña te ha hechado una maldicion y te robo tu corazón.!

This is how Eduardo heard of the witch who steals the hearts of young men and resolved then to find and confront her. Con todos sus sombreros, Eduardo made his way up the mountain. This journey was not an easy trek, even for one as young and strong as Eduardo. The air was thinner and cold. The terrain was hard to climb, for the soil was shallow in many places and his boots could not grasp it. At night he would build himself a little shelter from his many sombreros and brew mate tea to ease the pain all over his body. But Eduardo was determined to get his heart back from the witch and one day fall in love.

He reached the witch’s cottage early one morning. It was built on the slope of the mountain and he could see a small garden y un corral con cabras y alpacas. Eduardo put his large stack of hats aside, straightened his back and knocked on the door. The woman who answered Eduardo no era la mas linda del mundo, no linda como Serena Del Río, pero de una manera muy peculiar era linda. Eduardo was shocked, for he thought that a witch who lived on a mountain would be an old crone, not this young woman with a delicate face, high cheeks y ojos claros.

Eduardo blinked himself back to reality and looked the witch straight in her eyes. In his booming voice he said -¡Bruja! ¡Tu te robaste mi corazón! ¡Da me lo que me robaste!

La bruja looked at Eduardo quizzically. Who was this stranger who had come to her solitary home to accuse her of stealing his heart. She looked at the handsome salesman, who was quite obviously more handsome when he hadn’t struggled up a mountain and replied -Yo no le robe su corazón pero lo tomaré si me lo da.

With that, the witch went around her little farm to do her daily work. She milked the goats, fed and brushed the alpacas, dug for potatoes and planted more. Eduardo watched, confused. What did she mean she would take his heart if he gave it? He settled in to stay for a while, hoping that perhaps she would accidentally drop his heart somewhere and he could take it back. He built his little shelter out of his sombreros and observed her as she worked around her little home.

That evening, she left her casita and approached Eduardo’s shelter con un vaso de té. She had seen him out there in the cold and took pity on him. In the moonlight, she looked even more beautiful. Her skin seemed to glow and her dark hair faded into the starry sky like it was made con el cielo. Eduardo felt something stir in his chest.

Pero eso no es amor.

It was attraction. Eduardo had felt that for many beautiful women, but he knew it was a fleeting feeling. A feeling easily replaced con una nueva cara linda. This witch looked at Eduardo’s little set up and invited him to her fire for tea y sopa. At this Eduardo felt something else stir in his chest.

Pero eso no es amor.

That was kindness. Kindness was something he had given and received on his many travels around the valley. He was thankful every time. Part of him still feared this was a witch’s trap, but he was so cold, hungry and tired that he could not say no. They ate in silence, but the small meal filled his belly and he slept warm and silent in front of her fire. Esa noche Eduardo soño de su corazón y de una mujer con ojos claros.

The next morning, the witch woke up with the dawn and worked around her casita. Eduardo watched her move with such deliberateness. She had rigged up a device to collect eggs and snare small creatures, and Eduardo noted how clever she was. He again felt that little stirring in his chest.

Pero eso no es amor.

That was admiration. Eduardo knew that feeling, of seeing something accomplished or done that you hoped to aspire to. Watching how the witch moved in the difficult climate with such ease, coming up with ways to survive, Eduardo was impressed.

He thought, that since he was there, he should help. Especially since the witch had already invited him to her hearth and fed him. He combed and sheared her alpacas for her. As a man who knew fabric from his trade, he had never seen fur this fine and soft. He brought the fur to her and watched as she shaped the fur into wool, her hands and fingers moving la lana con una destreza que solo una bruja pudiese tener.

He asked if her skill was because of her witchcraft and she just laughed. The warmness of her laugh made something stir in Eduardo’s chest.

Pero eso no es amor.

That was just the pleasantness of humor. He liked to hear her laugh, and yearned to make her laugh again. When she finished she explained that no, ella no era una bruja. Y que los campesinos de alrededor no concevían come una mujer le gustava vivir sola y por eso llamaban “Bruja”.

-Bueno, yo no voy a llamarte ‘bruja’ entonce. ¿Como te llamas? -Pregunto Eduardo.

-Me llamo Marta. -she said, con un sonrisa.

Paso el año y Eduardo and Marta began to live together on that mountain. Eduardo began to incorporate Marta’s wool into the hats he sold. He smiled more than before, but he no longer had wandering eyes for the maidens of the different villages. After a trip or two to the valley, Eduardo would find himself eager to come back to Marta. Often, when he was around her, he felt that little stirring in his chest. Sometimes she would look at him and he would know that she felt it too. They always felt better together.

The years went by and Eduardo was no longer the young, handsome gentleman before. His back was bent from carrying su sombreros y su pelo estaba gris. La cara de Marta estaba arrugada, su cabello lucia como el color del cielo por la no y con una nubesita blanca. Yet, despite being old and frail, their hearts still fluttered around each other.

Porque éso si es amor.

Love was not one singular feeling for Eduardo and Marta, it was the combination of all these wonderful feelings they had for one another. It was the closeness and necessity of togetherness and companionship that did not falter, but grew with age.

Y ellos vivieron felices para siempre.

           ….and they lived happily ever after.

Laura Diaz de Arce is a South Florida based writer and the daughter of two immigrants. She is one-half of Smoking Mirror Press and has been known to do a pretty good rendition of "Quimbara" at Karaoke.

You can find her at SmokingMirrorPress.com

and on Twitter @QuetaAuthor.

Cover by Amanda Bergloff