By Ed Staskus

   Oliver and his father were at Meinrage Beach, just north of Klaipeda and south of the Giruliai Nudist Beach. It was a week after they had arrived in Lithuania. Meinrage means mirage in German. Klaipeda is a port city on Lithuania’s western border with Germany. It wasn’t always a Lithuanian city. When it was sauerkraut land it was called Memel. After World War One the city and its surrounding district were split off from Prussia by the Treaty of Versailles. Lithuania annexed all of it in 1923.

   The boy and his father had left Kaunas at sunrise at 5:30 in the morning. It took them less than three hours to drive to the shore of the Baltic Sea. It was a fine Saturday, warm and sunny. The sun wouldn’t be setting until after 9:30, making it a long fine Saturday. They stopped at the beach near the spit to sit in the sun. Oliver thought they might visit the Hill of Witches on the other side of town. It was a museum of wooden sculptures, full of devils and witches.

   Oliver was nine and  half years old. He was the Monster Hunter of Lake County. He lived in Perry, Ohio, west of Cleveland, with his sister Emma, mother, and father. His father was an electrical engineer who had been sent as part of a three-man team to the Heat and Power Plant of Kaunas to help modernize it. Oliver had tagged along, being on summer vacation.

   His father was partly Transylvanian Saxon and partly Lithuanian. He spoke enough Lithuanian to get by. He didn’t speak Transylvanian or Saxon. Oliver’s forebears had been from central Romania, where Saxon farmers and fighting men had emigrated 700 years earlier. Transylvania is known for mountains, medieval towns, and castles like Bran Castle, a fortress linked to the legend of Dracula. His grandfather had lived in Brașov, which featured thick walls and bastions, as well as the  Black Church. The Saxon churches were fortified in case prayer didn’t prove effective against Muslim marauders. 

   His grandmother had come from the Baltics. She was from the small town of Rokiskis near the Latvian border. She was born just after World War Two broke out. Her family fled their home in 1944, never to return, eventually making their way to the United States. Oliver’s grandparents met, got married, and set up shop on the ethnic east side of Cleveland.

   His father was taking a nap on a green blanket spread out on the white sand when Oliver went for a walk. He waked along the seashore, up a dune, down another dune, and ran through the surf. On the way back he noticed five solitary trees standing in a row at the far side of the beach. The trees were five different kinds. He went over to them, curious why five of them would be in a row. A creek came out of the woods there and drained into the Baltic Sea. The trees had all the fresh water they needed at their feet.

   One was an oak tree, one was an ash tree, one was a birch, one was an aspen, and one was a spruce. He looked up at the spruce tree when it began to talk to him.

   “Young man, do you know any spells or incantations that will restore me and my family to human life?”

   “I might,” Oliver said. “Were you people once?”

   “Yes,” the spruce tree said. 

   “What happened?’ Oliver asked. “How did you become trees?”

   “It was a warm and sunny day, just like this day,” the spruce tree said. “I was swimming here with my two sisters. When we returned to the shore to get dressed, I found a snake in my clothes. The snake spoke to me in a man’s voice. He promised to return my clothes if I promised to marry him. I needed my clothes. I couldn’t go naked. I said I would marry him. Three days later a knot of snakes in a wagon showed up at my parent’s farm. They came to claim me. Their leader said, ‘We are here to take Egle to our master.’ My parents tried to trick him by giving him one of our farm animals, but a bird of passage warned the snake about the trickery. In the end they wound themselves tightly around me and took me away.”

   “I’m iffy about snakes,” Oliver said. “Even when they’re not poisonous they can be venomous.”

   “They took me to the seashore where I met Žilvinas, who was the Snake King,” Egle said, ignoring Oliver’s observation. “He was young and handsome. He took me to an island and then to his palace under the water. We got married and lived happily. We had three sons, Ažuolas, Uosis, and Beržas, and a daughter, Drebulė.

   “The children started asking about my former home above the water. I became homesick and asked my husband to let me and our children visit my parent’s farm. He was against it and set many impossible conditions, which were to spin a never-ending mound of silk, to wear out a pair of iron shoes, and to bake a pie without kitchen utensils. A kind sorceress helped me accomplish all the conditions and my husband had to let me and our children go.

   “Our reunion was a happy one. We stayed for a month. When time came to return to our underwater palace, my parents did not want to let me go. They decided to kill Žilvinas. They needed to find out how to get him to come up from the sea. I wouldn’t tell them. They insisted my children reveal the secret. My sons refused to tell them, but my daughter got scared and told them the secret.”

   “What happened when they found out?” Oliver asked.

   “I had twelve brothers. They got their scythes and marched to the seashore. They had an evil plan. They called for Žilvinas with the secret words they had wrested from Drebule. My husband appeared in the form of a snake and my twelve brothers hacked him to pieces with their scythes. When they got back to my parent’s farm they didn’t say a word about what they had done.

   “The next day, ending our stay, my children and I went  to the seashore and called for Žilvinas. The only answer we got was a bloody foam that appeared at our feet. I realized my husband was dead. In my grief I summoned my kind sorceress and she transformed us into trees. My sons became an oak, an ash, and a birch, and my daughter became an aspen. I became a spruce.”

   “Why don’t you ask your sorceress friend to help you?” Oliver asked.

   “She has disappeared off the face of the earth,” Egle said. “Nobody has been able to help us these many long years.”

   “OK, I’ll try “ Oliver said.

   He knew an incantation he had learned from the honey badger who lived in the woods behind their house in Perry, Ohio. The honey badger used the incantation whenever he was bitten by a snake. It always worked. He always shook off the venom. He was hale and hearty and planned to stay that way.

   Oliver spread a black cloth on the ground in front of the trees. He cast a circle. He placed water, earth, incense, and a white candle on the cloth. He lit the candle. “I call upon every force I have come to know, water, earth,  fire, and air, the gods and goddesses and their fairies, the powers within myself and the powers within Egle, help her and her sons and her daughter become as they were. This is my will. So may it be done.”

   He stepped in front of the trees one after the other and set them on fire with his candle. All five of them were an inferno within minutes. The next minute Egle and her sons and daughter stepped out from the flames transformed into the selves they had once been.

   “Aciu,” Egle said.

   “All in a day’s work,” Oliver said as the smoke cleared.

   When they were gone Oliver felt like it had all been a mirage, except he still had the white candle in his hand. He blew it out. It had thrown its fire and light far. It was how good deeds shine in a wicked world.

Ed Staskus posts monthly on 147 Stanley Street http://www.147stanleystreet.com, Made in Cleveland http://www.clevelandohiodaybook.com, Atlantic Canada http://www.redroadpei.com, and Lithuanian Journal http://www.lithuanianjournal.com. 

“Ebb Tide” by Ed Staskus

“A stem-winder in the Maritimes.” Sam Winchell, Beyond Fiction

Available at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CVDP8B58

Atlantic Canada, 1989. A small town on the Gulf of St. Lawrence. A missing satchel full of one hundred dollar bills. Two hired guns from Montreal. One RCMP corporal stands in their way.

A Crying of Lot 49 Publication