(Blackout, then the hysperscreen lights up: A blank page, slowly shifting to a midnight blue screen, which slowly fades into a navy blue, which slowly shifts into two, lighter hues of blue. The center of the screen is divided by a horizon. At the center is a spotlight, shining directly at the audience. Then all lights black out, except for one spotlight on a body lying on center stage.)
A:
After the taking. Asea. Away we go!
I am pinioned. A leaf chafer on velvet, while I watch you soar, you with 10 foot wings that span the breadth of the ocean, the living legacies of primordial tempests; you whose wings beat to the rhythms of myriad ancestors’ songs, revising my visions of what's possible, even now, as I lay here at the bottom of this ocean vessel. I want so much to soar, too, to share that space with you. Around me, I see only landlocked brown bodies. We are lost. We are not of the ocean. There are no familiar marks to differentiate the sky, even from itself. Nothing to blur the horizon, except for itself. I am drowning here, on top of the sea.
Screen shows plump puffins, sturdy erns, comical pelicans, awkward blue-footed boobies on cliffs, on beaches, on land. Abruptly, images are replaced by an image of one albatross. Albatross sails on, not stopping on land for a year, barely flapping its wings, riding warm ocean currents. Albatross looks down at the ship below. (Perspective shifts…)
(Before the first births at the fair. We see three figures sitting around another who is clearly pregnant. The first of the sitting individuals rises and touches the hand of the pregnant person. On the hyperscreens, we see transparent images of babies, arms reaching out to one another.)
A:
Which witch is which?
The First:
These will be tales they hold in their hands. Now, at this time of birth, gather silk worms and place them in their palms, curl fingers. Make fists. Bandage them shut for three days. Each worm, a weaver of stories, each palm print and imprint, tales of movement, perhaps of dance, or tears, perhaps sorrow, or a shimmering star at the edge of the universe that can never be touched, even with eyes open as wide as imagination.
The Second:
Into their skins, burrow! Under their skins, spin! Each line names a place, a time, a person. Each line names a name, places a place. Into their skin. Spin!
The Third:
This line tells the beginning. This one marks the end.
All:
Each one circles around, a snake eating its tail.
The First:
But this line is still being told. Look closely. See the silk worm spinning its thread. At times it struggles against callouses, bruises, bone, but it continues. Today it swims through blood not knowing where it’s headed. It only knows it must continue.
(The first becomes the second, the second, the third, the third morphs into the first, again and again, until the changes become so rapid that the audience cannot distinguish one from the other. While the morphing happens to these three, the “ghost” babies speak).
Ghost Baby 1:
I hunger. Salamander eyes to burn a path and cicada wings to clear the sky for words to form in my throat.
Ghost Baby 2:
I freeze. Night’s chill air surrounds me.
Ghost Baby 3:
I wait. Clouds above still...silent waiting for release.
All babies:
When the downpour comes, we become like locusts devouring the pages of time itself, become chameleon changelings altering what’s been said, what’s been written, what is believed.
We become like wind issuing warnings of storms yet to land.
We become storytellers.
The Three and The Babies (Together, as one voice):
The wind chills locust, freezes chameleon wings; clouds burn swathes of pages, salamanders croon lullabies to the sea. Histories turn. Time renamed. Survival, recast. Again.
(BLACK OUT)
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