The Fire Bringer — Excerpt

from Act II, Scene i


Savannah, Georgia, late 1864
Lepius Lee’s living room
Chorus: female slaves loaned to assist Lepius




Solomeya, salting the living rom for a spell, talks with Elijah. Beyond the hospital, Lepius Lee has been treating patients out of his backyard; finishing up with them, the Chorus enters.

1 CHORUS
I had one yellow zombie made his body a courtroom drama, every spot a doom-cast juror he begged me to bribe, that Judge Fortune wouldn’t know, Judge Fate would say “it’s so,” that the prosecutor’s drowning every day and the defense is thirsty (so they say), to surprise the rest with—Anyways, medicine’s greater than gold, dark sprite, your ass, twin mineral hills, to bite—so I slapped all my might, another juror to pool, which pooled him to geysers—delirium’s cruel—noxiously selling his own vile worth, his breath more foul than the born rotting earth, his body more foul—Queen of Sheba, sublime!—so I smacked him again—ring hand this time, which made him to think, or knocked him out cold—the same look in men, if truth be told. Hello, Elijah, dear: still praying Ve and Layli a pash?

ELIJAH
More fervently now the longer they last.

3 CHORUS
The bigger the flame the faster it burns.

ELIJAH
From a stubbed beginning—

2 CHORUS
The darkness returns.

4 CHORUS
Salting the earth or casting a spell?

SOLOMEYA
Both: for protection.

1 CHORUS
Then weave your spell well, for the haunting is real--

3 CHORUS
For what we cure kills us, or it has a feel.

4 CHORUS
Feeling to break, they’re breaking to bone.

2 CHORUS
The last thing to reel.

SOLOMEYA
The first thing to roam. Instinct and drive make or unman, seekers oft damned then saved in remand, to know we are all possibility, a chimera becoming all that we see.

ELIJAH
People, traits, purpose.

SOLOMEYA
But above the world’s tree?

3 CHORUS
Give me some claws to scuttle and bark, and mark me some bastards to bring in the dark.

1 CHORUS
That’d slash the whole south.

SOLOMEYA
The doctor’d prove whole.

2 CHORUS
Here goodness is taxed and time takes its toll.

SOLOMEYA
That doesn’t pay back what his family has loaned.

4 CHORUS
They’re the best that I’ve known since they’re not grown at home.

2 CHORUS
The fever then symbols the still seething rot.

1 CHORUS
As a society’s defined by it’s most vulnerable lot.

ELIJAH
As the greatest evils induce in the good.

Enter Layli and Ve from the front door.

LAYLI
A bright mid-morning.

VE
The least that it should.

1 CHORUS
Happy day, Miss Layli. You’re sun-baked by flaming lips, like pips the more you grow to him and flower in his sips. Won’t you herald us your gentleman knight?

VE
Don’t you know me on sight? You’re my father’s.

LAYLI
Oh, yes! sorry: this is Ve, son to old Roe. I hope you all like him and soon get to know he’s as genuine as generous, he just needs a bow, as noble in meaning as he is in his shows, his good intents deeming a much better being, and one day, by what his father knows and his own beaming sense, my own dappled knight and everyday prince.

2 CHORUS
Pleasure in acquaintance, young master Roe. With what minstrelsy of nature does your day flow?

LAYLI
We dally-spree’d the sycamore streams, laid low the willow bank.

VE
It felt we owned the rank city, but for ghosts that sank th’ air to reek in dreams.

3 CHORUS
We couldn’t deem life without Layli’s bearing: she’s our pixie-shine and sparkle whose fairy-dust we sweep ‘n’ bottle to glitter feelin’ blue.

VE
You could sell that priceless were that true.

LAYLI
Is my father through? I seek to show Ve in my context, more a mirror than another met.

SOLOMEYA
A house now calls your father’s duty.

VE
I can’t fret my day on a candle’s whim. Time is a sunlight of fathers grown dim: I high to mine, yet disappoint him, and so write my lessons on the back of the noon, for there is soon so much to do to make my inheritance proud for you. I’ll call tomorrow, the boon that flew the lark.

LAYLI
Dark until: let sleep cheat time.

Layli embraces Ve.

VE
Your sigh on my rhyme. Adieu, mademoiselle. I must say farewell or never leave.

LAYLI
Never leave!

VE
Farewell.

Ve exits out the front door.

4 CHORUS
Men taught me long ago that golden words lack value, bending to the touch as he that tongues, as pretty as petty, but his rings true with the lot he drew.

LAYLI
He spoils me blue and bitty, yet corrodes if flows from a gilt and not a golden heart. A miracle grows of nature’s art, a carbuncle heating ‘mongst coal undepleting, every other eye an eclipsed emerald, in envy of his peerless cut. He smells really nice, too, a musk like amber.

3 CHORUS
A cur once beat me to bleeding rubies, but, inspired, I painted his canvas red.

ELIJAH
Nature follows your sole, as though the waters of life flow a trickling sail off the ripples of your dress’ tail, flowering in following.

Enter Lepius from the front door.

LAYLI
Father! It’s seemed a day and night since you’ve been gone.

Layli embraces Lepius.

LEPIUS
An endless night and awnless day: just space for sky, no room to pray for where in here my two hearts stay. I’m sorry familiar business ‘s made me so unfamiliar: not known to you is unknown to myself, undefined yet realigned in our mutual health, all together: with the first frost our holidays commence and shall not let til the last snow’s remembered: Christmas for a month, with presents everyday, a candle-laden tree in every stay, festoons of holly swathing ways, yuletide desserts, carcarols in the park, sledding through the drifts, ghosts tales in the dark, hot chocolate at every time of day—my work will be done ‘til the rains of May.

LAYLI
That their fertility brings death.

LEPIUS
And with each death a new birth, to each their time, the rhyme of the earth, as age forgets the year but remembers the season.

LAYLI
The reason so many passed without ever knowing summer?

LEPIUS
A mistake in Nature I seek to correct.

LAYLI
Is that natural? If wrecked, is Nature wrong?

LEPIUS
Beautiful and monstrous, beyond other categories, but’s it’s most natural to better our own, and help better others’ stories, that what’s right for Nature isn’t always what’s right for us, for we must survive to stay alive.—

LAYLI
—And hive.—

LEPIUS
—If Nature grows a garden, then a gardener recultivates to thrive, who’s correct?

LAYLI
Depends on what the gardener tries.

LEPIUS
By what judgment? Science or taste?

LAYLI
Your taste has always been for science.

LEPIUS
I try helping Nature to better herself, reteaching my lady to better our health, smoothing too often the too violent touch of a too flighty schoolgirl who throws things too much, stormed away many a day to play in the dark where the espers lay, throwing my logic at me in rhyme, which makes me to smile, and makes her to shine—Oh, how rude of me: hello everyone!

CHORUS
Hello, Mr. Lepius!

ELIJAH
How do you do, sir?

LAYLI
Father, there’s something I need to speak to your heart: there’s a light whose shadows part, started dallying days, he makes long hours short and whirling.

LEPIUS
And whose twirling smarts your smile so?

LAYLI
A shadow known to you, for a shadow before you has he been, that never saw him in the sun and hid his face.

LEPIUS
His race to win: I see lots of shadows, will even talk with a mean one.

LAYLI
He’s Evarius Roe, old GOR’s son, and heir to his industry.

LEPIUS
Evarius! Of course! His waiting glee at your arriving dappled your face like the dawn, each drawn to the other borne into a more than natural summer storm, like you and he had test on the matter—the tin and the patter, your mother’s win—he’s great! very golden—anxiously studious, as charming as charcoal, politely politic like a part pre-written—I’m very happy for you, my heart. (They embrace.)

LAYLI
Thank you, daddy!

LEPIUS
You must have him over to dine: between her wine your mother will mine with knife and fork this gilded pork to map each sign of every quark and sweep behind what she may find if he survives the torque.

LAYLI
For dinner! you make me so happy! more than a duck if the sky collapsed, more than a drought humming for desperate rain. You’ll find him even more a knight un-appareled, without embosséd gloss.  I feel a new hue. I’m off to tell mother the news!

Layli exits up the stairs.

LEPIUS
So, how’re we doing? Couldn’t keep my patient abroad, I hope we’re doing better here.

2 CHORUS
Everyone’s livin’, if y’ can call that clear: breathin’, but more raggedy than the worst-dressed bum, conscious, if callin’ pain constitutes some, talkin’, if babble had some points, movin’, if shakin’ spasms joints. There’s one can’t feel his toes and swears we cut them. One can’t feel his chest, hollow bound, or him his hands to thumb ‘em sound. Yonder his head, swears it floatin’ to jeer; but what he see when he looks—well, I’ll teach ‘em to leer. We were just ‘bout to check ‘em, give ‘em some stuff: chipped ice and watermelon, when you shuffled back rough.

LEPIUS
Do so, if you would: they swear it’s ambrosia of the gods, and as they can eat nothing else, makes them godlike: treat them as such, and laurels garland you for graces.

CHORUS
Yes, sir.

The Chorus exits to the back.

ELIJAH
How was relieving? Was there anything left?

LEPIUS
Unexpectedly, the bereft compounding the horror. Ever hopeless and unprepared, ‘midst the seep of rotting straw, I entered the heating of the sick-enlayered hell-mouth choking raw. The air was sweat delirium, and the flies enmassing, deafening, hive, til my eyes adjusted to the pitch and bodies molded from every side, all gone by in puddles of filth, the sodden wreck of heavy rain, everything shining in vomit black, and then I saw his eyes insane: yellow, glowing, hollowed out, the only light in the boarded sun: a boy, shaking terrified, they bulged to fall in a putrid run; his organs boiling in steaming blood, he saw it coming petrified, his melting mind becoming mud, a corner wept his final sigh: a child suckling a mother green, rotting into sheets like waves, in putrid streams of curdled cream, in a dream to the hospital’s maze, yet I could not hope to raise my head, even with the raggéd mobs all howling at me for a bed, clasping hands on bended knees, their desperate pleas all mine to heed, but as a dead leaf falls, begging pardon of the breeze.

SOLOMEYA
Some fall and some float; you could have been his wingéd boat, as you freed the suckling child from a tragic rote of knowing naught else: through your darkness and despair, your pain saved lives today, and shone where all else faded.

LEPIUS
We can only hope, and hoping makes us bold, daring to venture where angels fear, to whom hope’s a forgone thought when all thought’s foreknown, unnecessary to their perfection. All the horrors of the world flying the polluted space on fell wings, yet hope sings locked safely in our breast,—what can they screech to be? We but squeak it cracked to let it shine, and what can they do but flee, flouted by the lack they rue, outdone by what they sought to do.

ELIJAH
Hope enacted by new hope grows ‘til its second star reprioritizes the world, a new day unfurled by the light’s bearer.

LEPIUS
You both correct th’ error of the waned; I thank you reminding me of myself again. Elijah, can you hie to the back to see the beds brought in?

ELIJAH
At once, sir.

Elijah exits out the back.

LEPIUS
Sitting in the den of that falling house, searching the desolate visage of that doomed boy for soothing words that could allay the fray of his desperate flight, I thought of you, and spoke as I imagined you would.—What would you have said?

SOLOMEYA
Whatever you said.

LEPIUS
Your words are gold-making; my best a something-silver.

SOLOMEYA
I don’t deny myself in giving you gold: your bounty returns that I’m richer than sold in a silver swoon, richer by the moon, so soon improved with your face on it.

LEPIUS
As I muse the sun with your’s, that your wisdom’s infused.

SOLOMEYA
I would not be the sun; let us share the moon. Slavery’s like the sun, the loom in it: rising at the same lost time, both tear the back, exhaust, both claim the same dominance and cost, both long parched til the fountain of your mind’s garden first quenched my thirst: you have a fire in your head, and a cloud in your mouth.

LEPIUS
Your shrouded mind burns brighter without fuel, your mouth your tool more naturally fantastic: your sentence may begin a lion, turn dragon by the middle, and end as a swan in repose, laying eggs of persuasion in ponderous foes. 

SOLOMEYA
My talking ring spoke of your woes; I felt your power before we met. I want you to have it, have for a long time longed to let (she gives him her ring) all of myself but myself: ask anything, and know me met in response, but beware: the ring riddles needs, not wants.

Celestie enters at the top of the stairs.

CELESTIE
Ah! Finally! You’d leave my jaunts to pine to a point. If I kill all the sick, will I quick get some time with you? I’ll burden my soul purple to play with your hair.

LEPIUS
Is that the greater good?

CELESTIE
If not it should be: for good compounds as fantasies pound: good you’re home, good that your patients are good enough to pardon your good time, good again that I can now get drunk on you and save my good wine, and good for Layli with her good news that she now has a good knight to damsel her about the knee.

Solomeya exits out the back.

LEPIUS
As ever you bring the good along, and best to me.

CELESTIE
So what do we see in this gallant, little Roe: rowing’s in the name, but I’ll teach her to play the doe: tie a leash, keep her close in keeping him close, and out the butt-end of other hoes; Evarius: to play various parts in himself, that she may have a new man every day; I’ll teach her sewing to suit his suit to her ever say—it's more fun to pick their clothing anyway, though dolls behave better, and know when to quiet.

LEPIUS
Then a scarecrow’s the perfect fit.

CELESTIE
All men are stuffed; the question is what with—this one with gold it seems. Think he’ll propose affiance? I have so many dress ideas: she must be petal’d to dance, that’s certain. I told her to drain ‘im of holdings to lock in a box of which she alone’s queen, lest he mean to tend an allowance to a wimpering pup, crawling beggar-lean, only seen when on her back; he sack the money, she keep assurance in what’s mounting, first the spending, then accounting.

LEPIUS
Layli hasn’t a head for that: she’s for growing things, not diminishing them.

CELESTIE
Gold well hemmed is gold well grown: she’ll water with her wiles his sowings with interest shown, checkered skirts for checkered dealings, dainty arms of mighty feelings, Rumplestilzkin’s kin upon the wheel, gold from woven dross, dross into deals: a steal if he speaks of her as she spells him, painting a reality of austere whims, unframing doors her giant’s walking through, breaking chairs to sit ‘em too, a deafening whisper, a booming mew—we must reinforce the floorboards, too; he’ll step ‘em through! we’ve already spoke: she’s hired a crew.

LEPIUS
A potential giant: his father cages him from growing ‘fore his time, a crime though his mind’s as keen as th’ interest in him Fortune’s had. I’ve met him, well, his mime; he’s been around the house a time.

CELESTIE
Souse me, where have I been? Dreaming, dozing, both, or doting? I saw no giant. Did he see me? I want to flee. Was I presentable? Suitors see in the lover’s mother their spouse’s sudden future, as times will be, and if he saw my gorgon look pass the balcony by—

LEPIUS
Thank God I’ve built my immunity.

CELESTIE
We both concede our mornings’ little deaths: my monster face to your dragon’s breath.

LEPIUS
I love your snakie strands.

CELESTIE
Like Medusa in fiery bands, but at least hell has cold isles, unlike the swamp piles of these baking flats.

LEPIUS
I like how you glisten like that.

CELESTIE
I that so? you like oily fish? am I a tench?

LEPIUS
A mermaid scaling me. The stench of animals overheat, though, like the people grown replete, some more mad than you.

CELESTIE
I dare them.

LEPIUS
It’s true: their feet run away to drown in the sun; birds turn truant from their songs to fly the dark and weep of wrongs, while animals enslaved are beaten dead in the mires’ dirge to pitten beds, even streetlamps suicide in explosive fires. Nature mires nature with violent overthrow in every degree in every show.

CELESTIE
I get the boarded windows, keeps the nasty air out, but what in sanity’s the hearth-blaze about? Must we bake in degree triplicate? Can we breathe a breeze, and not the clotted air’s sneeze?

LEPIUS
It’s supposed to cleanse the air from impurities.

CELESTIE
But leaves feeling everything but clean: clothes aren’t supposed to stick, like starch itself chemical and sick, like a laboratory’s discharge, a sin to lug and lick—and I don’t do sins, I take a bath and curse the stew, yet immediately dry to dew anew, and so I sunk my rue into my sin to rise a raisin once again, that chaffed and soused and sweating too I complain to flies who complain of you, even started namin’ ‘em, too: true, they can’t touch but vomit and dine on shit—so: friends, like home a bit.

LEPIUS
It’s called formalin, the disinfectant.

CELESTIE
I don’t care what form’s expectant, it smells like a virgin’s twat.