by Tanith Lee
But he remained in the town, at its outskirts, where the hem of the desert was stitched. Sand drifted into his domicile, which was an awning pegged across the end of an alley.
Gradually, some of the nomad band returned to him, along with the poor and the sick, and the children who came daily to sit on the swept sandy earth under the awning. Quickly, in haste, let us take up again the wandering life. To be static was never wise. Cobwebs clung to walls which stood. Men must journey, for in motion lay the seed, or at least the symbol of progress.
But then, in the night, the awning’s night which had no stars, softly something brushed into his ear. Like a petal—a moth—he started up and felt a golden chain riveted through his very soul with bolts of steel.
And by this, illusion in its turn displayed to him all its awful and consoling power. The granite was immovable. The abyss, out of which anything might be summoned, vanished from sight.
He was glad. He was made drunken by the relief of it. Powerless, the student of Dathanja, Zhoreb cried aloud a cry that shook the alley.
He went from the town before dawn, telling no one of his purpose, himself barely conscious of it.
Somewhere, as he hastened along, under the burning-glass of the sun, it came to him it was love that drove him, dragged him, thrust him. She—that woman in the house with eyes of tourmaline—she, with her transparent satin hair. He could not think what lay beyond the deed, which must be possession. He had seen it in her eyes—not famishment but entreaty, desire—they must have reflected the image in his own. For that very cause he had turned from her, put her from his brain into exile. But uselessly. She had fastened herself under his skull.
Love was the key to all things.
Illusion was granite, an immovable mountain.
Where he could he raced and ran.
• • •
On the seventh day the black rose crumbled into soot. There was a loud knocking at the gate. In her chamber, Jalasil, in a gown of colors, her hair combed with sandalwood, malachite paste on her eyelids, sat waiting.
He entered the rooms like a storm, dark flame, male energy, and the old women let him go up alone, as if they knew. They crept to their kitchen, as if they knew it all.
“You are here,” she said.
He saw her, how she had been pared by savage need. He loved her for her suffering and her pallor, her green eyes, her hunger.
“Jalasil,” said he. He came to her and raised her to her feet. His hands, which had healed many, and soothed many more, and which were not entirely strangers to the limpid skins of women, they clasped her. He drew her in, encircled her. He put back her head upon his arm and kissed her mouth. Her hair glided on his wrists. The touch of her hair, her body against his body, the pulse in her throat, the refreshment of her mouth, broke in the secret doors of a wisdom he had never dreamed of. Having her, he would possess himself. She was the key. The mountain must shatter heaven, them riding on the crest.
He lifted his face, to look at her. Her eyes, too, were pale, and far away. He did not mind it. He spoke all the love-words to her that the poet in him, that was, is, in all human things, knew to utter. They lay upon her bed. Her longing for him, her tortured yearning, palpable as the silk, had remade that couch.
He took her virginity with the gentle care of love, and with love’s glorious violence. They rode the air, clove through fire and water, sank in the closeness of earth.
And when it was done, in the death-like honey of after-pleasure, he watched her lean above him.
“Too late,” said Jalasil. “My heart had died of the wounds you gave it. If you had wanted me at the start, ah, how it might have been—sun and moon, earth and heaven. Stars would have fallen. But I have dreamed of you so often, I have dreamed you out. You are only a shadow, and even that shadow came to me, not from love of me, but through a filthy sorcery of demonkind, who hate all men, and all women, too. I have suffered and given too much to have you.”
And then he saw her eyes as they were, cruel and empty, wanting nothing any more.
“You,” she said, “you. You might have brought the best of the world to me, and I, perhaps, some comfort to you. But it is too late, you are a shadow, you are the demon’s toy and trick. Zhoreb loves me, Zhoreb desires me. Therefore I no longer believe in Zhoreb’s love and desire. Perhaps I am to blame. I made you a god. You are only a man.”
And from under the pillow she drew the knife which had cut the rose. And he, like the sacrifice, chained in gold, felt only the granite mountain heaped on him, which there never was, or ever is, any moving.
• • •
“In my chamber,” said she to the porter, “you will find a dead man with a dagger through his throat.” The porter lowered his gaze, as if he were only sullen. Jalasil walked down into the oasis. Above, the ship of salt glittered in the sunlight, and the water of the pool flushed bright below.
Taking off her girdle of green braid, she knotted it into a locust tree, and thereby hanged herself.
And here, through the day, she hung from her bough, and through the glistening noon she hung there. But in the afternoon, the shade came and garbed her round, mantling her whiteness, binding her eyes. In the end each trace of color melted into the ground. And night covered everything, black as a rose.
As a mortal, Atmeh lived long. A seer and healer, she dwelled for many years of her old age in a temple on a mountainside.
Yet she did not end her days there, but in another place.
Game Players
WHEN THE WOMAN’S copper pot turned into a frog, she did not believe her eyes.
But there it lurked on her hearth, croaking and burping at her, a great coppery amphibian in which, plainly, it would be no use trying to simmer the broth. So then she came to believe—not her eyes—but the sense of injustice and frustration that swept over her. Had she ever had any luck? No. Therefore, small wonder even the one prize of her home should be ruined.
And “Out with you!” screamed she, taking a broom to it. “Out, you pot-frog!”
And she chased it from the house into the village street.
Save for this incident, it was a quiet evening. In the west, the sky still burned and smoked a little, but on the hilltops the stars stood in small groups, as if awaiting someone.
The frog capered off up the street. “Perhaps I dreamed it.” But on glancing over her shoulder, she saw the hearthstone was empty. “Then, again, can I have offended the gods?” She had come to the conclusion that either the gods hated her especially, or, since she deemed herself unworthy of such attention, they were asleep. Married in her fifteenth year, her first husband had perished a month after, mauled by a lion in the hills. Her son, born dead, had in some way injured her and left her barren, and thus, when she wed again a man she did not like so well, he cast her off after three years as a wastrel of his seed. The last of her kindred, an aunt, had taken her in. Presently the aunt fell sick. At her death, the two-roomed house became the property of the niece. But she herself was by then in middle life, had lost her looks, and besides was reckoned unfavorable, under some curse. For nothing she did or had ever prospered—even her cows died, and the herbs in her garden were sour. The men of the village shunned her, and the women, who would sometimes give her the time of day, still called her Unluck and pulled their children aside at her advent, lest her passing shadow infect them.
On the hills, a couple of herders’ fires had blossomed. (Unluck observed them a moment; once young herdsmen had admired her.) She turned back to her house, to search out the other battered pot which spoilt the taste of the food.
She was scouring it when the second thing happened. The second thing was heralded by a faint noise, like the sounding of one string on a harp, and when she raised her head at it, she saw a flower had sprung among the stones around the hearth. Perhaps a seed had lodged there and the fire now quickened it, yet how swiftly. It was a lotus,
and even as she watched, the petals unfolded to form a goblet of the thinnest flower-skin, through which the firelight shone as if through alabaster.
The third event followed instantly on the second.
Unluck heard barks and angry rumblings in the street.
She got up at once and went to her door. “That potfrog has caused some annoyance. They will suspect it is mine, accuse me of witchcraft and fine me.” (Something similar had already taken place a year before, when someone’s goat, having eaten an apple stolen from Unluck, had given three days of bad milk.)
However, on looking out of the door again, Unluck perceived she was not the author of this disturbance.
Several of the villagers were standing on the street. Lamplight from windows and doorways showed two figures set aside by the well, under the cinnamon tree.
“Yes, they will be beggars,” said Unluck to herself. The village pushed all itinerants off, unless they could prove their worth. “How young they are, a young man and a girl. So slender she is, and so weary—look how she leans on him and he supports her.” And then Unluck felt an inner qualm of pain and envy and other less translatable things. So I might have leaned, had life been other. But who is there for my tiredness now? But she put the quavering from her, pushed it down. She thought, If I go after them when they are clear of the village, I suppose no one need know what I give them. I can spare a loaf, and a handful of dates, and the curds—I must warn them the gift may be unlucky, but in the past when I did this, I do not reckon I worked much harm.
So then Unluck went back into her house again and started to busy herself assembling the food. While she was doing it, the altercation in the street finished, and the dogs felt their masters’ feet and prudently grew reticent until presently it was easy for the woman to hear a soft scratch upon her open door, and in that way she heard it.
She had something of a shock then. For there under her lintel stood the two beggars. And they were not a youth and maiden, but an old, old man, thin and bowed as a winter branch, and she that leaned on him, she seemed older even than he, by a century or more.
A spasm of pity clenched Unluck’s heart. She took up the bundle of food, and some other items besides, and went forward.
“Here, take these provisions. They say I am cursed, so it may be best to speak a blessing before you eat. But I think to have my unlucky bread will do you more good than to go luckily without.”
Then the old man smiled at her. The smile seemed to smite out of his ragged cloak, his ragged face, and hit her a great blow so she nearly reeled. And as this went on, the ancient crone he held against him, she opened her eyes.
And oh, her eyes, her eyes. They were the sky at spring and noon, and summer midnight, they were the seas that were kingdoms, they were sapphires and the sapphire flowers of vines and mountains, and the color of mountains also at a vast distance, and the whole earth as the bird in flight might see it—so blue, so blue they were, they put out the light.
“Madam,” said the woman, “lord—”
“Let us come in,” said he. “The village shall not punish you for it.”
“Fly blowings on the village, and may it be damned. Are they so stupid? Yes, and I always guessed as much, the clods. Enter and be welcome. I have nothing worthy of you, but since you are here perhaps it will do.” And she stepped smartly aside, kneeled down on the floor and bowed her head.
The elderly couple passed into the room. With them came a muted, pleasing scent, such as would not generally be associated with antique and starving bodies. . . .
When Unluck looked again, they had seated themselves on her wide chair before the hearth. They were so gnarled and slight, so crumpled in, both fitted there.
Then Unluck approached on her knees and offered them milk and honey, and began to set the food on a low table.
“How tiresome that must be for the knees,” said the old man. “Would you not prefer to stand up?”
“I know you do not ask me to kneel,” said Unluck, “nor am I fawning. But I take solace in it.”
When the table was ready she brought it close and added to the array a crock of beer.
“There is no harm can come to you through my paltry curse,” she said.
The old woman spoke.
“But we require nothing. Only I—to rest, and that you have given me.”
Her voice was frail.
Unluck stared at her and for the first time seemed puzzled. The eyes, the manner of Unluck asked: How can it be that you need anything, being what you are?
“Do not be afraid,” said the old woman. “I am near death.”
Unluck gasped. She blurted: “But can the gods die?”
Then the old woman gave a frail laugh.
“I am not a god. No, I am a mortal, as you are. And as with you, death will be nothing to me. For you and I, our kind, have souls, and so live forever.”
Unluck gaped at her. Then dropped her gaze. This one existence of Unluck’s had been sufficiently unhappy she had lost all hope, and perhaps all wish, for everlasting life.
Then the old man spoke again.
“My companion has been a priestess many years, aloof on a mountain. But she has an uncle—older I may say than she is—and he came to visit her, to bring her certain news. And so she undertook this last journey.”
“I am a mortal,” the old woman repeated in a sleepy whisper, like a child’s. “It is fitting that I die where mortals are.” And then she directed her wonderful blue look upon Unluck again. “I am called Atmeh.”
“Lady—I have no name but what they call me. Unluck. I beg you, do not you use that name for me.”
“I shall not,” said Atmeh. She closed her eyes. She seemed peaceful, leaning on the old man, who held her so supportingly, so strongly, in his own fragility.
“No, we will call her Frog,” said he. “For she has lost her best cooking pot.”
And then Unluck—or Frog—burst into mirth.
“Why, lord—was that your doing?”
“Mine,” said he modestly. “Some call me Oloru. But I have another name. It is the other name makes frogs of pots.”
“Well,” said Unluck-or-Frog, “since it was your making, it is welcome, and the frog shall be welcome, if he cares to return.”
And then it came about quite suddenly that there was no more restraint and no more suspicion of gods in that room. There was respect and concord. And the food was eaten, and the beer hastened between the old man and the hostess, and it had a taste of superior grapes, and in the same way the plates were never empty and the jars stayed full. And the fire did not need attention, or the lamp, which gave enough light for nine. And once or twice, when she glanced about, Unluck or Frog seemed to see a rare polish and gleam on her possessions and that there were more of them than she recalled having, and she felt such a weightlessness in herself and such a sparkle that finally she said, “It comes to my mind that once I was known by the name Flaxen. For I had in my girlhood the prettiest hair.”
“Flaxen, my heart,” said old Oloru, “pass the beercrock.”
But later yet, the lamp and the fire grew rosy and russet, and from the warm safe stillness of the house, Flaxen heard a nightingale singing in the very thatch of her roof. The beauty of it let tears into her eyes, but no pain put its claws into her heart.
From his cloak, old Oloru drew a kind of lyre, a botched and creaky implement, on which he began to thread music of gold and silver. The nightingale, enchanted, alighted on the sill of a window to serenade the lyre.
Then the nightingale flew into the house. A plain little brown dab, it perched upon the wooden chair, and chimed and chirred and rang, and filled the room with bells and stars.
“Long, long ago,” said old Oloru, “when the gods were half awake and made things, they fashioned many animals and other creatures. Last of all they made a bird so exquisitely beautiful th
at the other birds, the peacocks and canaries, the ibises and swans and doves, went into a pet from jealousy. (For the gods’ inventions are notorious by their errors.) Everywhere this bird was shunned or set on. It came to hide by day and to live by night, alone. After a while the moon, however, spied the outcast, and cried, ‘Oh, how fair you are!’ ‘Hush,’ implored the bird. ‘Do not betray me. I wish you would burn my splendor up with your cold white rays.’ ‘That is not possible,’ replied the moon. ‘Beauty can never be destroyed, merely transposed.’ And in that moment all the painted feathers vanished from the bird, he was drab and small upon his bough. But when he opened his beak to thank the moon, out burst a spill of melody at which the earth caught her breath. And does so yet.”
And when the fire was red as a king’s scarlet, the nightingale slept upon the chair’s back, and the moon did come in person to the window. Then Oloru sang softly this, to the ancient priestess, and Flaxen heard it.
