Translated From The Japanese:
Lia-Pin Duck started talking at the very young age of two weeks. Her diction and pronunciation as succinct and sharp as any adult in her village. For the first few weeks she mostly rhymed and sang, forming words she’d heard from others and spouting them in a funny, cute-sounding stream of consciousness:
All day long at school is Mama! A banana tastes like cheese if the walls are soaked. Sometimes it’s a piece of goo that settles in a tummy and other times we get trees. Speak of long old places and animals that run and tip over cars. Soccer and eating are almost like aunts and the stars and the flys are bothering everybody but not daddy!
All day long she’d hold forth like that from dawn to dusk. In her cradle she’d mumble herself to sleep. The next morning picking right up where she left off:
Kelp sings like the magi and competing isn’t healthy for tubes! Is there dirt for sale? Campus? Old hens would, except they don’t know people about oceans. Skies can be baking soda and dolphins travel like raindrops. A cow is worth a dog and maps rule the division in the central highlands.
And it was good. Lia was a bona-fide miracle and people traveled from far and wide just to listen to her ramble. To the villagers she was nothing less than a gift from God. Until the day she starting talking about her eyes.
***
It was a Monday (does anything good ever happen on Monday?) that the “eye” talk started. Lia began the morning rambling her tone-poems like always, but somewhere around lunch time, the townsfolk started hearing the word “eye” conspicuously. It began with just a few “eye’s” but by evening that night, practically every sixth word was “eye” or was at least “eye” related.
My eyes are full and my eyes think. Eyes are eyes for the one real eye. Eye and eye Irie. The world eye sits on eyes above and below. Why eye? Whose? Eyes for days and weeks and eyes. Fill my eyes on fire..!
And on and on. There was much whispered conjecture and worry. As the days and weeks went by her speech lost it’s pleasant sing-songy quality and she stopped free association all together. Instead she began to prosthelytize. Beaming with certainty and bold as she barked:
You’re eyes! Deep, perfect! Not like mine!! These eyes are not my eyes. My eyes, my eyes, my eyes…I can’t see forever. I can’t dream with my eyes. Help my eyes and their eyes. Help. I feel both eyes. In my head. Please…
Pain in my eyes.
And it wasn’t just the words. Lia was talking more than she ever had. Spending 12-15 hours a day ranting, resting for a bit, and then going off again for hours without pause. Her larynx rebelled. Her voice became a shadowy whisper that grew to a dry raspy cough in the excitement of those terrible fever-tinged addresses.
…No pain. My eyes are tired but they will see. They will see. You’ll see mama‘s mama. And her grandfather. When I can look up everything will be better. For now I just suffer, wail to expel the eyes from my sight. Soon father, soon Mama. The day with sun. I will suffer and cry and wait for the sun. My eyes withering. Death will follow me and death will be me. My eyes wont see but my heart still…
Word traveled, and soon the countryside was abuzz with talk, not of a six-month old talking like an adult, but rather of what she was trying to say and how best to deal with it.
Lau Moosh, an elder and seer who lived far atop Mount Min arrived in Lia’s village one day to bear witness. He spent an afternoon following the miserable child, writing down the things she said and observing her movements. He called to her parents and sat with them. Lia languishing in a dark corner of the house, listening to the old man talk, her pale wasted form crooked from malnutrition. Breathing in quick gasps like a snake.
When Lau Moosh finally took his leave, Lia’s mother cried for what seemed like days. Overcome by fear and confusion and crippled with fright, she knew she could never do as she’d promised. She prayed to whatever sympathy there was in the universe.
***
The given day dawned cold and soaking. As the morning gave way to noon-time though, the sun broke and misty heat began to enwrap the little town. The villagers, coated with sweat and saddened by what they knew, began to gather listlessly around Lia’s family home. When her mother and father took her out, intent on performing the old man’s specified procedures, there was crying. An old woman said “oh, but they mustn’t”
They began to walk toward the path up the mountain. Lia trudging dutifully behind her father and flanked by her mother. The little girl’s face downcast. She was - incredibly - silent. They hadn’t come very far when she shouted out.
“It’s here. Look!”
And as she said it, the mists burned off once and for all and sunlight glowed. A warm blanket of air fell on the scene. The little girl said it over and over and then she looked up.
Nobody could tell what was happening, not right away. It didn’t take long though. Lia was stopped dead in her tracks, head at an obscene angle, eyes wide open, staring directly into the very center of the sun.
Her father ran to her, reaching with both hands for her tiny face. He stopped not two steps away as if he’d run into an invisible wall or a typhoon-wind. He and Lia’s mother were driven to the ground by the unseen force. Through it all, the little girl gazing intently at the burning globe blazing down at her.
The townspeople stood and watched as if hypnotized, and Lia’s mother began to weep and swoon. The minutes ticked by, in time the little angels head began to shake and then vibrate. A tiny bleat, tea-kettle pitched and sustained, escaping her lips. Little steam-rivulets began to seep upward, first from one eye and then the other. Soon they became thick stacks of vapor billowing. The bleat had become a banshee-howl now.
Her eyes burst and sizzled:
First left (pop-hisssss)
Then right (pop-hisssss).
The gathered crowd fell into paroxysms. Gown men wept and begged for God’s mercy. Women bared their chests and prayed for death. Everyone weeping.
But the little girl - the angel - Lia, was having none of it. She raised her hands and felt about her ruined face with curious delicate fingers. She was smiling. With the dark holes turning black and still smoking, she began running and dancing up the mountain path. Heading to meet her destiny in the craggy remove of Mount Min.
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