LIBERTAS MYTHOLOGY
vol. 29, no. 1
LIBERTAS
Table of Contents
Cover: Forbidden Fruit
Savannah Soraghan S
Woman (On Her Own) 2 Adele Zhang
Untitled 3 Colby Johnson S
Divine Sinning Belle Staley S
June Night 4 Courtney Lassiter Mythology
Savannah Vonesh S
Arachne 5 Jaiden Truhe S Moonlight Mystics
Ashley Allushki
Siren 6 Cate Goodin S Eros
Lacey Stephens Walking on Naxos
Mary Herdlin
Leda 7 Katlyn Saldarini S Spirit of Nature 8 Felipe Castellanos
Good Girls in the Graveyard 9 Madeline Richard S
The Night the Music Died- 11 Clara Oyanguren S (Funeral Song)
Notes on Ulysses- 13 Stephen Walker and the Concept of the Odyssey dying cicada as lancelot du lac 14 Ezra Perrine For the Peace of the Dead David Sowinski
Back Cover: Monkey Chimera Cindy Wan
*S For Staff Contributor
Editorial Staff
Editors-in-Chief Max Shackelford
Editor-in-Chief Abroad Elsah James
Secretary Cate Goodin
Caro Ewing
Fiction Editors Savannah Vonesh (lead)
Bianca Hassan
Sofia Cimballa
Clara Oyanguren
Phoebe Anderson
Katlyn Saldarini
Poetry Editors Eliana Burgin (lead)
Colby Johnson
Jaiden Truhe
Belle Staley
Kella Jahn
Caroline Rydesky
Layout Editors
Cole Erickson (lead)
Emma Huff (lead)
Avani Damidi
Savannah Soraghan
Laney Demarcay
Julia Carey
Issu Manager Phoeve Anderson Social Media Erin Price
POETRY
Untitled
Colby Johnson
At night, I dream of my creation. Seen in flashes—disorienting, colorless, A cacophony of startling noises: Hammer, anvil, Roaring fire, bellows.
You’re the image of the master craftsman, The armorer of the gods, Standing over me in my dream— I’m a project— Commissioned, paid for, Given purpose.
In my dream, I ask why the hammer falls incessantly, Night after night: “What is my design?”
But too softly.
He just frowns as if I’m a stubborn piece of steel, Unwilling to conform to the shape of his desire.
“No,” I scream,
“I’ll bend any way you wish!
I’ll lose pieces of me if I must, Take what you want, leave the rest! Tell me!”
His response is a frown and grimace.
I wake and wonder: Have I strayed from my design?
Divine Sinning Belle Staley
So why then?
Why do the gods act as fools?
Why do they steal?
Or murder for passion but then turn and love for nothing but desire?
Why did the goddess disregard her own claim?
Why then did she lay noncompliant to her lover, Uncaring in her bareness?
Why did she not choose to hold anything pure, nothing shared only by two? Why then?
Why do the gods act like humans if they are oh so divine?
Why did the King, unable to fall, drown his own blood, his own son?
Why did he not blink, as his child fell down, down, Down,
Drowning in the whim which he had been spawned from?
How can we be expected to be anything other than those whom we look up to?
Why do we praise these killers as our creators, these flippant teens as our elders?
Why do we allow these creatures of lust, of emotions uncoiled, of momentary satisfaction
To be the very best of existence?
Because even the gods must submit to our sins of passion, and so we might feel as gods when we sin in the same way.
June Night
Courtney Lassiter
I told you I was looking at the stars,
A mass of fairy dust favored, too, by the ancients, But instead of Orion’s glinting shield
I saw nine little satellites darting across the sky, Doing their dance around the earth; watching over her clouds and seas.
Is it a feat we’ve come this far, or a shame that we are?
I counted every time I saw a little light, Next to Cepheus and Perseus up in the sky, Flitting off from Nowhere, North Carolina to the other side of Greece, Where no longer Artemis and Apollo play,
And instead, yachts wait in the bay.
Nine little satellites, with no mention of the Little Dipper–It’s enough for you to say, “Huh, maybe she wasn’t even looking for the stars.”
Mythology
Savannah Vonesh
all the frogs in the pond, sat together in a circle and croaked their loudest all the crickets serenading from the trees harmonized in zealous debate the reeds and cattails and the grass, joined in swaying discourse the eddies convened with the dew from the trees washing the debate to the shore I sat on the sand, fingers playing with the ripples and the sounds and though we all disagreed on what created butterflies and bees we all smiled at the heron as she suggested: maybe, it didn’t matter.
the stories are all better with them in it, so we began to write a new one.
Arachne
Jaiden
Truhe
Truhe Arachne
I could challenge the gods. Every woman has said this, many try. This was BEFORE. What they do not know yet, is women come with tragedy already woven in.
No woman can defeat the gods and stay that way. She must change.
Hands aren’t meant to look like yours –perfect and uncalloused and dripping in blood. You did nothing to deserve open arms palms facing the sky a star burned into the floor.
All this
To carve a crescent out of me and put something of your own in its place.
And legs. That’s another matter entirely. Mine were supposed to be beautiful.
But these are the pillars, the points from which my altar fell, Where you, hands clawing at my hips, tore me down bone by bone.
“This is what you could be.”
You filled me with a mirror, and even when I shed these extra limbs I still see in double.
For now, my skin pulls me apart and I watch myself become the eight limbed beast I am now: MOTHER.
Now, I weave for eternity but it doesn’t feel quite human anymore.
Moonlight Mystics Ashley Allushki
Eros
Lacey Stephens
I have made far too many deals with Venus. The one who always smiles, I have made cry. I have become her child, Born of lust then shrouded in it, Cut in clay, I am the symbol of youth And sex,
And while I tremble no earth, Weigh no golden scales, I do have a string That goes nowhere. A weapon
That seems to only aim backwards.
Siren
Cate Goodin
The horizon Does not exist
It evades me
Drawing me forward
In its constant lull
I forget
Every sea Has its shore
Waking on Naxos*
Mary Herdlin
I hope you are weightless, relieved, unburdened, blissful With ease in your step, knowing the truth is out
I hope you take your next steps, confidently, relentlessly, unconcernedly With the wisdom to know honest love isn’t enough
I hope you retain your arctic strength Oh Theseus, I weaved your escape, supplied your opportune weapon
Leaving threads of truth, and a calculating sword You slew your captor and escaped from a labyrinthine love
Oh but maybe you’re no hero and I am no spinster Ariadne But instead, Arachne cursed to construct and inhabit my truths’ sticky meaningful webs
Sail away with your air of rational confidence
Leave me with my craft to forge a silvery gossamer of armor
I thaw your words no more or accept your crystal tears The wind carrying you fans my flame ever higher to my rightful place among the stars
The kingdom is mine to claim as long as I refuse to see wild cats as foes But instead as the drivers of a chariot delivering bliss
*This work references Titian’s Bacchus and Ariadne and is best understood in conversation with the painting. The poem’s narrator places themself as Ariadne in the moments before she wakes to the collapsed narrative scene Titian portrays. However, the narrator does not necessarily adhere to the same interpretation of the canon of Ariadne’s future beyond this painting in mythology.
The Spirit of Nature
The Jeep’s engine quit sputtering, but there remained just as much noise from the jungle all around. Critters droned nearby, the canopy of tree high up in the air like natural skyscrapers rustled in the wind, and phantom growls of large animals with sharp teeth groaned from any direction that I was not looking. My imagination seemed to want me on edge.
The road just ended here. Full stop. Civilization lay in our periphery, but not for much longer. Ahead was a leaf-covered path. Our journey was led by an indigenous man, progeny of the jungle by his decree. There was to be a two-day hike through the Amazon rainforest until we reached our campsite, he declared. As we trekked deeper and farther into the jungle, sweat beaded down my forehead, through my eyebrows, along the ridge of my nose and dripped onto my thin cotton shirt that would remain perpetually damp for this entire week.
“Respect the jungle,” the indigenous man would warn in his native language. “If you respect it, it will respect you.” He urged us not to toss wrappers on the ground, not to shout or insult the jungle during our expedition.
We reached our campsite before the last glisten of daylight and tied our hammocks up in between the trees. We sat on the forest oor, feeling the wet earth beneath us, avoiding large insects and larger puddles of water. As darkness fell, the jungle’s glow swelled. So greens and blues fell on our faces in complex shadows that danced and wavered with the weak light of the indigenous man’s cooking re. e day’s hike had been long, and our stomachs controlled every glance of our eyes and twitch of our limbs. e man had our attention and decided to tell us a story.
“First trip of mine like this, eighteen years back. Kids like you.” He pointed at us and paused a moment to form the next sentence of broken Spanish.
“Laura, that was the name. She not respect the jungle.” Laura, one of the girls on the trip, had been remarkably disrespectful towards the rainforest, shouting obscenities while she walked, tearing branches from trees around her, exteriorizing how much she hated the rainforest. Just like mine, her group arrived at their second-day campsite in time before the last glisten of daylight and tied their hammocks up in between the trees. Night fell, and everyone in the group lay in their hammocks to sleep. In the night, Laura needed to use the bathroom, so she asked a friend to wait for her by a nearby tree.
Minutes passed, too many, and feeling overpowered by her aloneness, her friend couldn’t help but check on Laura. She was nowhere to be found. Her friend rushed to the hammocks and woke the trip leaders. ey scoured through the neighboring trees. No luck. e group marked a two-kilometer radius luck. e group marked a two-kilometer radius
for the search. All night long they looked through the blue-green hues of the jungle at night. ey found old glass bottles and a rusty carabiner around the campsite, they found the carcass of a squirrel monkey about half a mile to the west, they found a massive web of spider’s silk so thick and intricate and tortuous that its other side was obscured. But no Laura.
The hunt continued through the night but yielded no results. The indigenous man insisted that the chief of his tribe would know what to do, but the group wanted to notify the national army first.
The army had posts stationed all over the Amazon region maze and, by the morning, had air and ground patrols looking for Laura. The nation’s largest newspapers wrote stories about the tragedy, and television chains were covering her story.
Two full days passed, none of the efforts had been fruitful, and the group was losing hope. The indigenous man left the campsite, silently treading for two hours until he reached the elder’s bamboo-wood and straw house.
“They never learn, do they?” the chief commented upon seeing him. “The jungle has her.” The tribal chief told him that she was on the floor of a Ceiba tree. He assured the man that she was safe.
The indigenous man returned to camp to ask the army to look in the Ceibas, but they assured him
He urged them to fly there anyway, and they confirmed that the base of the tree had dirt, plants, and dry leaves. No Laura again.
By the third day, if the girl hadn’t been able to find drinking water, all hope would be lost.
By Felipe Castellanos
Originally performed orally
However, the indigenous man trusted his elder. No tribal leader would lie about all this.
So, as a last favor, the man requested that they visit a further group of Ceibas, ten hours away by foot. The army agreed.
Soldiers descended from the helicopter on a swinging rope ladder. Leaves were flying everywhere, and all you could hear was the chop and thrum of its blades.
There she was.
Lying on the ground, supporting the side of her head with her arm was Laura. Her cleanliness made her look as though she had showered recently, and she didn’t have a scratch on her body. The overwhelming amount of noise from the helicopter didn’t wake her, so the men shook her. She was alive. Laura was hurriedly flown to a hospital in Leticia, the nearest city to the Colombian Amazon, where it took her about thirty minutes to regain consciousness.
“The Curupira called to me,” she spoke. “I took its hand, and it led me peacefully. Then, you woke me up.”
The indigenous myths of the Colombian Amazon have stories of an human incarnation of the jungle’s spirit that prowls through the jungle as a dwarf man backwards feet. Its name is the Curupira, and it lives in the roots of the enormous Ceiba trees. It is the protector of the jungle, and the only thing natives will tell you if you ask them is:
“If you respect the jungle, it will respect you.”
Looking through Netflix, Hulu, and other streaming services reveals a trend: consumers love Dead Girls. This might seem morose, but it’s true. Popular shows like Twin Peaks, True Detective, Pretty Little Liars, Thirteen Reasons Why, and You all fixate upon young women’s murders and disappearances — Dead Girls. Viewers are perversely fascinated by these traumas, explaining the sheer number of Dead Girl Shows. Looking at American media through a broader lens amplifies this pattern – many novels, like Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl and Sharp Objects, focus on similar issues and highlight the trope’s prevalence.
GoodGirlsintheGraveyard
By Madeline Richard
Dead Girls don’t exist in fictional isolation. True crime shows and podcasts also investigate women’s disappearances, which reveals how Dead Girls emerge in reality.
Our societal expectations for women eerily echo the Dead Girl trope too. Being perceived as a Good Girl — a flawless representation of our cultural myths surrounding femininity — demands that women are sweet, demure, and pretty at all times. The pressure to be seen as “good” often requires women to suppress their authentic selves and instead appeal to societal standards. In short, women often need to kill their self-expression and interiority to satisfy cultural expectations. This demand alludes to the ominous similarity between these groups. It might be comforting to separate Dead Girls and Good Girls, but these ideas are indivisible. Both tropes operate upon our societal obsession with mythologizing women, meaning that they’re fundamentally intertwined and proposing dark implications for today’s Good Girls.
Our society sees Dead Girls through a tragic lens, but looking further adds complexity – losing these girls allows us to sanitize their lives.
Alice Bolin explains this pattern in “The Oldest Story: Toward a Theory of a Dead Girl Show.” Most Dead Girl Shows, like Twin Peaks and Pretty Little Liars, focus on untangling Dead Girls’ legacies through detective work; after analyzing these shows, Bolin determined that “the Dead Girl is not a ‘character’... rather, the memory of her is.”
This trend seems reasonable at first.
Losing Dead Girls, like Twin Peaks’ Laura Palmer and Pretty Little Liars’ Alison DiLaurentis, causes personal tragedy and disrupts towns, families, and friendships. However, American media — including shows, literature, and podcasts — dedicates itself to solving their murders and disappearances. In our cultural imagination, this is a justification and a way to acknowledge the situation’s horror. We tell ourselves that we honor girls’ memories with this detective work — it seems like the right thing, the good thing, the just thing.
These investigative efforts are important, especially since communities might find solace in truth, but in practice, they become problematic. While looking for an answer, our media often idealizes Dead Girls’ pasts — we mythologize them as paragons of purity, even if that involves manipulating their actual narratives.
Twin Peaks portrays Laura Palmer as “pristine, unmarked” and “untroubled” in her death – all words connoting perfection (Bolin). Few people are flawless in reality, but Twin Peaks and its viewers romanticize Laura regardless.
This sanitization reflects a broader pattern — when girls die or disappear, we can erase any inadequacies.
Rather than embracing their honest, messy, and imperfect story, we demand that they “become whatever people need [them] to be” – often “holy, symbolic,” and “silent” (Marshall).
Dead Girls can’t retaliate, so others have complete control of their stories. This trend removes their autonomy and devalues their lives. It leads to objectification and Dead Girls become perfect pawns in a patriarchal game.
This pattern permeates our reality.
Americans often iconize young, female murder victims, even if they’d strayed from societal expectations throughout their life. 1969 murder victim Sharon Tate “was considered a little too vapid, a little too sexy, when she was alive,” yet when she died the narrative changed – she was widely grieved(Marshall). The public no longer had to grapple with her fallible humanity, so she became their exact ideal, regardless of who she wanted to be. This malleability raises another question: did Americans mourn her because they could control the myth she represented or because they cared about her?
Returning to detective fiction offers an ominous answer. We love that we can mythologize Dead Girls, but often criticize the women who survive. We’re invested in Dead Girls because they meet unattainable expectations.
Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl is a perfect example of this inclination. Amy Elliott Dunne fakes her murder, so though she technically survives, she’d qualify as a Dead Girl. In reality, she’s sociopathic – she feels no sympathy for her mother’s many stillbirths, falsely accuses past friends and partners of stalking, and paints her husband as her killer after his infidelity. Yet throughout the novel, she’s romanticized by neighbors, family, and the media as a “nice, pretty, sweet lady, stolen from her own home” (Flynn 117). These descriptors conform to society’s sanitized expectations for femininity, and though the final phrase seems sinister, it adds a key layer. Being “stolen from her own home” paints Amy as weak and submissive, thus connecting to our societal resistance to powerful women.
This perceived loss of agency is twisted, but reaffirms our desire to mythologize women. Amy is not stolen from her own home — instead, she leaves on her own accord and has a cunning plan for her escape — yet her community could not imagine any other story. They assumed she was helpless, sweet, and innocent, and, in doing so, began searching for a just answer.
Our culture is so interested in helping these Dead Girls and countless others, yet devalues living women asking for simple things – to have
their sexual assault stories heard, to receive equal pay, to exert their bodily autonomy. This conflict poses an uncomfortable truth. We believe that girls are most deserving of detective efforts when they conform to our societal standards, like Laura, Amy, and other Dead Girls. But when women stray from a mythologized ideal of femininity, we feel less obligated to find an ending.
American society is only focused on supporting mythologized women, but it could still seem that there’s a path to validation – becoming the Good Girl (maybe disguised as the Cool Girl or the Nice Girl). The name looks promising, with its sparkly qualifier offering hope and appreciation, but the reality isn’t this simple. Living as a Good Girl demands that women sacrifice their autonomy and individuality, often to appease patriarchal systems — she’s “basically the girl who likes every fucking thing [men like] and doesn’t ever complain” (Flynn 223).
The Gone Girl movie adaptation reiterates the demands placed on Cool Girls (another variation of the Good Girl) through an unforgettable monologue.
“Men always use [Cool Girl] … as their defining compliment,” Amy points out. “Cool girl is hot. Cool girl is game. Cool girl is fun. Cool girl never gets angry at her man. She only smiles in a chagrined, loving manner and then presents her mouth for fucking.”
This pattern of powerlessness even infiltrates their homes and hearts, where they’re supposed to feel most safe. They feel pressured to please their parents and become their “walking ideal,” even if it’s incongruent with their personal goals (Flynn 259).
In their marriages, “[they] don’t ever want to be the wife who keeps her husband from playing poker – [they] don’t want to be the shrew with the hair curlers and the rolling pin. So [they] swallow [their] disappointment and say okay” (Flynn 157).
Myths about Good Girls and Dead Girls permeate American media and society, and they’re more than fictional — they hold women back by devaluing their complex interiority.
Good Girls aren’t encouraged to express their honest emotions, pursue their aspirations, or defy others’ expectations. Rather, they’re sweet, submissive characters in someone else’s story. They don’t own their lives, which reveals that they’re metaphorically dead and inspires an ominous comparison.
For all intents and purposes, Good Girls are Dead Girls, and Dead Girls are Good Girls. Neither group directs their narrative but instead allows others to define them. They’re whoever society wants them to be, making them the problematic ideal in both media and reality.
The Good Girl trope essentially renders women and girls dead throughout their daily lives, yet there’s hope for survival. Though both the Good Girl and Dead Girl tropes rely upon patriarchal control, our society can step back, think critically, and understand toxic patterns. We can kill the Good Girl trope, allowing women to write their own narratives, embrace their autonomy, and define “good” for themselves. These
Works Cited
Bolin, Alice. “The Oldest Story: Toward a Theory of a Dead Girl Show.” Los Angeles Review of Books, 28 April 2014, https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/oldest-story-toward-theory-dead-girl-show/.
Flynn, Gillian. Gone Girl. Broadway Books, 2012. “Gone Girl (2014) HD - Cool Girl.” YouTube, Kristi Rushiti, 22 Feb. 2019, www.youtube.com/watch?v= 0o4heKCLeTs
. Marshall, Sarah. “An Interview with Rachel Monroe.” The Believer, 20 August 2019, https://believermag.com/logger/aninterview-with-rachel-monroe/.
The
Night the Music Died (Funeral Song)
By Clara Oyanguren
This is a story you have heard before. You may not know this version, but you know the ending. Maybe it’s worth hoping against, maybe it’s not. That’s up to you.
Calle sat on the empty park bench, watching as the moon slowly climbed upward. She opened her phone again, scrolling up through her messages with Marshall. This was the right place, the right time, but she couldn’t get her nerves to calm down. He was nowhere to be seen, only empty pathways, dewy grass, and thick trees.
It was beautiful, in its own way, but she couldn’t shake this feeling. Marshall told her to meet him here, told her that he had something to show her. She drew her phone up to her ear and listened once more to the voice message he had sent her.
“Callie!” His voice had a laugh. “Meet me in the downtown park just after sunset. Across from the lake. You know the place. I have something for you. I love you. Bye!”
Callie couldn’t help but smile, lips curling upward despite her nerves. His voice was bouncing and musical. It was like that when he sang too, voice flitting from note to note like a bird.
She couldn’t sing, no matter how hard she tried. Marshall insisted she could, that she just hadn’t found her song yet. Callie knew better. Her voice was fine speaking, and it wasn’t like she didn’t know how music worked there was just… something. Something kept her voice from sounding right when she sang.
And so she had long given up music before she met Marshall. It wasn’t important to her then. She didn’t need to sing.
And then she met him, and all at once, music became her life. He became her life. Marshall was music; it permeated his speech and his movements and his smile. He sang every other sentence and was never far from a guitar.
Callie still didn’t care much for song, but Marshall did. And what was important to him was important to her. Love was funny like that.
It was still hard to reckon that she loved him. She hadn’t loved much of anyone in so long. Gave up trying just like she gave up singing. And then he showed up and, again, everything changed.
Callie fingers hovered over her phone screen, hesitating. The keyboard was open, Marshall’s stupid grinning profile smiling up at her, and she had begun to type out a message while she thought. Would he even respond? It’s like him to be late, but he hasn’t explained anything and -
As if her musings had summoned him, Callie suddenly heard what can only be described as a ruckus near the end of the path. Marshall was running toward her, hair all out of fashion and arms and legs spilling over each other. His guitar was strapped to his back, and he carried a little bag in his hand.
“I’m sorry I’m late!”
Callie stood, turning to face him. He finally reached her, doubling over to breathe. She smiled.
“You could have at least told me where you were.”
Marshall stood and smiled at her, lopsided grin, dimples, and all. She reached up and pulled a lock of hair out of his face, tucking it behind his ear. The two of them stood like that for a long while, staring at each other, bathed in moonlight. Callie suddenly remembered where they were.
“You had something to show me?”
His eyes went wide and he grabbed her hand, dragging her off the path and into the grass. Dew clung to her pant legs and shoes as they ran through the grass. Marshall dragged her toward the lake, where one of the public boats floated gently on the water. Callie hesitated.
“Are we-”
“It’ll be okay,” Marshall responded, eyes glittering in the low light, “I won’t let you fall out.”
Callie took a deep breath, nodded and climbed into the boat alongside him. The water lapped gently at the side, and it sent chills up her spine.
Marshall reached out and grabbed her hand, setting his belongings on the floor of the boat. Callie looked up at him, and he smiled.
“I love you.”
Callie blinked.
“I love you, too.”
Marshall grinned.
“I wrote you a song.”
“Again?”
“Of course.”
Callie rolled her eyes as he picked up his guitar. He pressed a small button on the side of the speaker and a gentle piano tune began to wrap around the two of them. That was his too. He played more instruments than she could name.
The gentle rocking of the boat and splashes on the shore began to fall in time with the music as Marshall strummed on his guitar. He still sat, cross legged on the bottom of the boat in front of Callie, but his posture had entirely shifted. His shoulders were squared and his eyes were up on the stars and his knees brushed against hers every time the boat rocked.
He began to sing. Callie was too entranced to pay much attention to the lyrics. His voice was even more beautiful in song. Everything seemed to sway in time with him, the boat, the water, the trees, the two of them.
The world was at peace for a moment. Several moments, actually. Callie was grateful. She didn’t get a lot of moments like those. She wouldn’t get many more.
The wind began to pick up around his voice; clouds seemed to crane their heads to listen. The moon was blotted out at some point, darkness cascading over the two of them. Callie reached out to grip the edge of the boat. Cold water lapped at her fingers.
Marshall didn’t seem to notice anything was changing around him. His eyes were screwed shut as he tried to remember the lyrics for the song he wrote just yesterday. Callie was too afraid to interrupt him.
The tempo picked up, and so did the wind and the water and the storm brewing overhead. She tried to call out, but her voice was carried away by the very wind her lover accidentally brought upon them. Her hair whipped around, hitting her in the face and disrupting her balance. Her clothing seemed to try and carry her off into the storm.
Water had begun to seep into the small boat by this point. The speaker went silent. The dew still clinging to Callie’s shoes was quickly joined by lake water, climbing its way up her legs.
Callie pulled her legs up out of the water, breaths hitching in her throat. She gave Marshall a panicked look.
The song ended.
And the world seemed to collapse in on itself.
All at once the wind rushed down on top of the two of them, the water climbed up to find the missing song, and the boat capsized. The two of them were plunged into the dark waters, moonlight still missing from the sky.
Callie fought against the swirling waters around her as they dragged the two of them down. The lakebed wanted the song too. It wasn’t fair.
She saw Marshall splutter to the surface, clinging to the ruins of his guitar, but the water didn’t want to let her go. It didn’t matter if she was the one singing the song or not. It was about her, it had to follow her.
The first thing Callie noticed was just how hot it was. The second thing she noticed was how dry it was.
She blinked. Once, twice. She still couldn’t see anything but darkness, but she wasn’t underwater anymore. Her lungs weren’t filling and burning; her legs weren’t tangled in the waves. The air around her was hot and dry and suffocating but in a very different way than water.
The water loved her. Too much, perhaps, but all it wanted was to listen to her song. This air owned her.
She didn’t know how long she sat there before a cold voice echoed out around her. A bright white spotlight shone down on her, and she saw a face looking down at her. A sharp, sallow face, with dark eyes and a darker expression. He would be handsome if he wasn’t dead.
“Name?”
The voice vibrated to her very bones.
“Callie.”
“Cause of death?”
“Uhm. Drowning, I think.”
“You think?”
“It was a blur.”
“Everyone says that,” the man muttered, “Just pick something.”
“Drowning.”
“Hm. Last wishes?”
“What?” A sigh.
“You get one final wish before entering the afterlife. Nothing too exorbitant, I can’t make you go back up as much as I would like to.”
“Anything else?”
“Sure.”
Callie paused.
“Um.”
“You’ve got 60 seconds. I need a drink.”
The face turned away and the light dimmed, casting orange and purple shadows over her form. She stood, feet heavy on the checkerboard tile beneath her and looked around. The walls were white concrete. Her clothes and hair still swirled as if she was underwater. She looked at her hands. They looked the same as they always did. A little bluer maybe. Or was that just the lighting? She couldn’t tell.
It was oddly difficult to lift her hands into view. They were heavier than normal, as if dragging something along with them. She tried to take a step. Her hands wouldn’t let her.
Callie looked upwards. There was nothing but an endless inky void. She needed to get back there. If only to tell Marshall she loved him.
He would come after her, she knew he would. But would that be such a bad thing?
If he came down here, they could be dead together. If he got her back up, they could be alive together. It was selfish. She knew it. It hurt her to think, but she knew she had no other choice.
The face returned and the light brightened again. Callie squinted up into it.
“Have you made your decision?”
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Is it part of your wish?”
“Does it have to be?”
“No. What do you want?”
“Where are we?”
The voice was silent for a moment.
“Hell.”
The word fell on her like stones. She was silent then.
“Don’t be too worried about it. It’s not as bad as all that, and heaven doesn’t really…’exist.’ Not in the way you think of it at least.”
“What?”
“Doesn’t matter. What’s your wish?”
Callie took a deep breath.
“I want you to find my lover. Marshall. A poet and a musician. And tell him where I am, what happened to me, and that I want to see him again.”
The face smirked.
“Everyone and their mother tries that one, y’know. He’s not going to come for you.”
“He will.”
“If you insist. Your wish will be granted.”
The light shut off and Callie was bathed in darkness again.
It is months later when she hears a voice she recognizes. She began to count the days as soon as she was whisked away to her new quarters: a tiny stone room with neither doors nor windows. She had no idea whether the days she counted were full days or more or less. She just marked the wall with charcoal whenever she felt it had been long enough.
The room was small and seemed to grow smaller with every mark she made on the wall. She didn’t remember where the charcoal came from; it just appeared on her floor one day. Her fingers became permanently stained a darker and darker gray with every mark.
Her hair and clothes still swirled and the air still burned in her throat, but she’s still sane. Mostly.
She heard his voice then, echoing as if over an intercom. There was no way he could be in the room, but she heard his voice echoing through her mind. She knew it was his. No one else spoke like that.
“Callie? Are you down here? I got your message?”
Her heart would have stopped if it was still beating.
“I’m here,” she called back. Her throat ached from disuse as she responded. Her voice was quieter than she intended.
“I hear you. I’m coming to find you.”
She was almost crying then. He came. He really did. And he’s not dead either, not in the way she is.
Callie stood and began banging on her cement walls and screaming, hoping some sound could reach him outside. She heard what can only be music
on the other side. A melody.
The walls seemed to crumble around her, and she collapsed into his arms.
“I didn’t think you were going to come,” she coughed out, tears staining his clothes.
“Why not?”
“It’s been so long… I thought-”
Their eyes met. Neither of their eyes are the same. Marshall’s are tired and Callie’s are dead. But it’s them nevertheless. They are both crying now.
The lights clicked off around them and a spotlight shone down. The concrete floor became tile, and Callie’s blood ran cold.
“What’s the plan now?”
The face leaned down toward the two of them, scowling. Neither of them responded.
“You’ve made it down here. You’ve found each other. What’s the plan now?”
“We go back,” Marshall said finally, standing. He’s still holding her hand.
“She can’t. She’ll die again. Won’t even come back here. Will just stop being.”
Marshall paused.
“What can we do then?”
The face smiled.
“I’m so glad you asked. I haven’t gotten to do this one in so long. “
Water began pooling on the tile floor. Callie immediately stood.
“You swim up. Until you reach the surface.”
“She can’t swim.”
“I know. That’s what makes it fun.”
“If she can’t swim, she cant-”
“Ah ah ah,” the figure chided, wagging a finger at Marshall, “I hadn’t finished.”
The water still rose.
“She will reach the surface eventually.”
“And you promise?”
“I swear on all the dead and living. She will reach the surface if you do not interfere.”
Marshall nodded.
The face turned to Callie.
“And you? Do you agree to the terms?”
Callie squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again abruptly.
“Yes. I agree.”
“Excellent.” The face grinned and retreated back to the shadows. The spotlight shut off. And all of a sudden, water filled the room.
Callie felt the burning in her lungs almost immediately. She was drowning again. She flailed around in the water, reaching out for Marshall. He had swum out of her grasp and was slowly swimming upward.
Callie steeled herself and began to mimic his movements, slowly reaching up.
It was a long, long swim. Callie was surprised several times over that she did not die again. Marshall still didn’t reach out, or even look at her, but she saw his movements falter every so often. Her arms felt like lead as she clawed toward the surface.
She could see light now. Sunlight sparkling on the water’s surface. They were so close. Marshall surfaced first. She heard coughing right above her. Callie felt the sunlight warming the water around her as she reached for Marshall’s hand. They had done it. She mouthed his name, bubbles floating off her tongue.
And all of a sudden all of it was gone. The water, her lover, the sun, the burning. There was nothing anywhere anymore.
It took her a few seconds to realize what had happened. She didn’t exist anymore. There was no way back to him. No way for him to find her. No way home
Her hair and clothes weren’t moving anymore. She didn’t even have hair and clothes anymore. In fact, Callie wasn’t sure she even had a body at all anymore. Even if she escaped wherever here was, there was no way to find him.
Callie began to sing.
I told you the ending. I told you that you knew what happened. And yet you read anyway. Why? Did you think it would be different this time? Why not try again? Maybe it will be different then.
Notes On Ulysses And The Concept Of Odyssey
Stephen Walker By Stephen Walker
J.M.W. Turner’s Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus leaves onlookers with more questions than answers. For one, why paint this specific scene from Homer’s Odyssey with its protagonist Ulysses evading the notorious Cyclops. What is it that one can say from observation of the escape? The notes below seek to answer these questions by asking even more questions. Maybe that’s insane. Or maybe that’s the point of this work: thinking a little differently about the most famous of the Greek stories, examining it from a new angle which defines it in a new light. I intend to show that by stopping and observing the little things, the less flashy points of such a grand narrative as Homer, that Turner has captured the essence of the Odyssey. Is it enough to choc this all up to a “life’s a big series of journeys” analogy? Perhaps there’s more than meets the eye, or lack thereof in the case of the cyclops. Nevertheless… enjoy the ramble! I found many points pulling my eyes into fragmented moments of focus when viewing this hazy, triumphant escape scene. Ulysses’ golden ship, tearing the seas in half as it glides toward the center, headed for places unknown to us, and perhaps the ship’s crew as well. Such a bright moment of relief brings one to thoughts of the thrill of the sea, the explorer lifestyle which has captivated millions of its readers, seemingly offering nourishing virtue to man’s soul as he drifts near disaster only to escape by a thread time and time again. What about the in-between? The traveling ahead. That which follows the action, subtly hiding behind it. The moments which only exist in the shadows of the great triumph of the hero. The solitude of the sea. A conflict of the internal, in many ways the sea proves a far more formidable foe than that of the one-eyed beast. For one, nothing exists for those on the sea but the waves. No laws, no morals, no greater forces at play than your own thoughts and the ripple of the water shielding that which lies beneath. Infinite outcomes are possible, all depends on the minds which sit aboard the ship. The possible outcomes of which only they are capable of producing. Nothing can restrain the most violent, horrific of developments which the sea may give rise to in the men who bear its force. As they beat on against the waves, Ulysses and his
crew face monsters of a different kind. Monsters which are far more formidable than the seemingly simple Cyclops, a victim to wits and use of force.
And what goes on in the mind of Ulysses–the crew’s fearless leader, our obsessive wander–when placed in such circumstances? Is what he seeks real? What happens to a place, Ulysses’ homeland, many years later in the mind of the man removed from it? Not only is it a place that no longer exists, in a sense it never did insofar as his memory, diluted by time and battle and adventure, shape and reshape his memory and birth a grand imagination of this homeland. While many of the struggles faced form the action of the story, one of the great struggles our hero must be facing is between that of the idyllic haven which he imagines awaits him at the end of his journey, and the one which awaits him in reality. It may not be real, it may be a figment of the past. While that changes the entirety of the ending of the story from triumph as he reclaims his throne to a tragedy of potential realization that what he spent countless years fighting for and journeying back to never existed. Even if the latter is true… does it even matter after all that took place? And what of the imagined past, is one’s actions motivated by a fictitious past ideal an ethical justification for one’s present behavior? The more the questions unravel the more my own lack of a grasp on this story becomes apparent.
Much like the ship itself, much like the advent of contemplating such a timeless story–one molded and passed down by word of mouth for generations of men to add to, takes us in directions we have no control over, much like the ship itself is beholden to the will of the sea. The illusion of control may pervade the minds of those within the ginormous hull, but their vision is only partial, they have no way of comprehending the size of the ocean which guides them along. They are children of fate.
So much about going forward, pounding toward the goal. One almost forgets to contemplate exactly what has been left behind. The cyclops remains, blind as its victims escape, taking its vision with them. One can only imagine what inspired the creation of such beasts in the minds of the story’s creators. No creature of myth shares so many connections to divinity while simultaneously seeming the embodiment of so many humanly characteristics. Their capability of force, propensity for violence isolates them from either category. Defeated by violent means, one wonders what Polyphemus is left with once his vision, a vehicle with which his destruction is carried out, is taken from him with a blend of wit and force beyond its comprehension. What would the Greeks find should they return? What was Homer’s inspiration for such a beast that rejects both man and god?
And finally, the gods. Apollo looks over the men as they escape from the skies above. What is he? Where does the authority of the gods start and end? Is such a concept as authority even something they are conscious of? What gives them purpose in a world in which they wield so much power, is this all for their amusement? All the answers and more lie within Turner’s painting. The ship seeking out its homeland. The enemies left behind, to be molded, to fit into the histories of the victor. The gods overlook it all in judgment of the mortals below. If one thing is certain it is that no one entity defines the Odyssey, all the moving parts work their way into shaping the narrative, seeing it in different ways and pushing it in new directions according to their abilities to define the lives they play a role in shaping.
dying cicada as lancelot du lac
By Ezra Perrine
bug hum pulls everything else into it the way a ball drops into fabric. i, enchanted, walk barefoot into familiar humidity; i’ve never been good at knowing where a sound is coming from. (i imagine a cicada troupe sitting on the porch, a lyre gently held between insect legs.) i crush acorns under my feet, feel their bite, and then i see him— not a band, but a single bug. he lies, helpless on his back, atop the sandy dirt. i name him lancelot. i have no idea how an animal can make such a loud noise. (i forget i scream.) his brood bored underground the year i was born, hibernating in damp soil. all these years later and we are in a stare down. (how can time mean anything if he and i are the same?) he is so still, wings encrusted in white dust. (why have wings? he died the moment he met the sky.) i wonder if he was wounded like this yesterday. (i wonder if i am the same person as i was yesterday.) lancelot du lac grew up submerged, tenderly held by his Lady of the Lake; how, lancelot, does one breathe without air? his Lady’s world carved him into a knight, not a boy, but if he had been a boy, boy of the lake, would he have liked singing? would he have liked to fly? his only answer is that damned hum but here i am. (the last thing he will see.) i’m not sure how much pain cicadas feel, but i know this one is aching, legs suspended in awkward angles, like a fighter’s last defense. by now, his hum has quieted. i gulp down damp air because i can and he can’t. lancelot du lac, would it have felt
For the Peace of the Dead
By David Sowinski
The stewards of the earth, Great Protectresses, Must hold to account—
For whatsoever debasement thereof—
An ungracious guest,
Lest the ungracious guest fancy themselves
A steward.
In the Shadow of the Mountains dwells the Vulture.
Baravôa is young. They light the land of Moğr—by the glow of their flames, draw unto Her land the Vulture’s eye, and with that, its hunger. The fell creature unfurls its wings and the mountain wind bears it to the resting place of the Dead. Moğr, the Serpent, Protectress of the Peace of the Dead, weeps to see them defiled, stolen from the earth. Her fangs fill with venom at the rise of Her fury.
The Serpent gathers Herself and descends the hills. Fire-glow flows like a river between banks of shaded green, leading Her to Her prey. A low hiss—weighty with the agony of the Dead disturbed—ere She opens Her great maw and sinks Her fangs beneath the skin of Baravôa.
Moğr carries Baravôa up through the hills and returns to Her watch. There, She entraps them in the coils of Her long body.
The Vulture circles overhead. It eyes the Dead on the land of Moğr. Venom pierces the flesh of Baravôa; and they know pain inconceivable. Venom pierces, then, the heart of Baravôa; and they know despair inconceivable. Venom pierces, then, the mind of Baravôa; and they know torment inconceivable.
Baravôa bleeds in the coils of the Serpent, ever beckoning beauteous Death. So near does Death approach—so heavy falls Death’s scent on Baravôa—that from on high the Vulture soars and snatches them from Moğr’s unraveling coils. Prey in its beak, it returns to the Shadow of the Mountains. Thus rest peacefully the Dead.
LIBERTAS
Letter from the Editor
Dear Davidson,
Last year, Libertas was reborn. The magazine and organiza tion were this shiny, new, exciting thing to me. Elsah James began her year as Editor-In-Chief with no contributors, no staff, and no co-editor. And by the end of the year, we had accomplished so much: three issues, dozens of printed pieces, several unique contributors, and a young staff.
Elsah and I had our plates full just trying to get the magazine printed. But now that our staff has some experience and confidence, we are focusing on the details. What alternative forms of art can we incorporate? Can we do more to contribute to the campus literary scene at large? What’s the right spelling of our theme? What culture are we building with this new Libertas?
This magazine has taken many titles during its near thirty years of existence: a zine, a newspaper, an independent student journal, a themed literary magazine, and so on. And during our first staff meeting of the semester as we debated the first issue’s theme, myth emerged triumphant. That can’t be a coincidence! Because the only thing that ties Libertas’ many disparate forms together is that this magazine has always engaged in its own mythmaking. Our organization seems to dissolve and reconstitute itself in cycles. This magazine is a site of constant re-invention and innovation on Davidson’s campus. We have been, are, and hope always to be a myth of Davidson’s present moment. So, please, dear readers, turn these pages and sustain this myth we make.
Thank you for reading (and for forgiving my pretensions),
Max Shackelford, Editor-in-Chief
Monkey Chimera
Cindy Wan