The Orphan's Tales

by Catherynne M. Valente

  In the fourth winter, there was no crop at all. Wind howled across the fields, bare and bristling as a new monk’s head. Maciej and his fair wife stared at an empty table, and so too did all of those who worked that land. It was difficult, as such times are. The last dairy cows had been slaughtered; the last egg chickens had been slurped to the bone. I would not like to tell you what the most wretched of them did to survive.

  In the depths of this winter Maciej conceived a great hunger in him, conceived it the way some women will conceive a child. His belly snarled and lurched; he was blind with it, clutching at the very drapes to fill the hole in him. But fortune sometimes smiles on the suffering, and it was a rich, green spring, full of new lambs and new fields planted with seed and breeding pairs brought by sympathetic relatives of Malgorzata, who sent wagons from over the hills. Speechless with relief, Maciej ate, and ate. He paced his halls, his stomach gnawing caverns into itself, devouring apples and pig flesh and cabbages as quickly as he could—but there was no surcease for the unlucky lord! Yet he did not grow fat, for as quickly as he ate he was hungry again, his body burning so hot and bright that at night, the farmers needed no candles: the house on the hill was incandescent with the starving lord.

  Finally, when harvest came again and with it the lord’s due, Malgorzata thought her husband would be sated. Into his mouth went cider and beer, hazelnuts and venison, apples and currants and sheep shanks. Into his belly went squash and pies and hollering chickens; into his gullet went beef knuckles and mushrooms and pigs by the wagon. When there was nothing left for the farmers to give over to the house on the hill before they starved themselves, fair Malgorzata, black of hair and eye, went to them and begged them to give over their animals to her husband’s hunger, which was now so great that mere vegetables and fruits could not touch it. All would be repaid, she promised—had her kin not supplied the spring when the winter was at its worst? They could survive winter; they knew this now.

  At first, they surrendered ox and chicken, goat and goose, even horse and dog. All these Maciej ate at his groaning table, to bone and hoof—all save the teeth, which even he could not stomach. These teeth he tossed into a corner of his hall when he had sucked the marrow from their owners, and as the days wore on, the pile grew. His endless feast held no joy for him now: His belly burned and he could not slake it, could not even move from his creaking table. He wept as he ate, for he could not stop, and he hated the taste of gristle and bone—but he could not stop.

  Before long their holdings were empty of snorting and bleating. Malgorzata sent to her distant kin for ever larger and more exotic creatures: elephants and tigers and wolves disappeared into the house on the hill, which lit the nights for miles as Maciej sat at his board, eating and weeping, eating and weeping. His jaw crushed leopard and lion, griffin and even the odd unicorn. He did not notice their taste, but he ate them all the same, and the house on the hill blazed.

  But even this plenty could not last and the kin of Malgorzata refused to send more. There was nothing further to take from their holdings, and even the draperies had been stripped to feed the unfortunate lord. He had begun to gnaw at the cornices and baseboards, his tears falling from the cairn of teeth as he climbed atop it, trying to suckle at the reliefs of blossoming grapes that adorned the ceiling.

  Softly, as was her way, Malgorzata drew him down and sat him at the table which had become the rack on which his bones cried out. He looked up at her with hunger-haggard eyes, red as plague and twice as hollow. He looked at her, ashamed, with hunger.

  “It is all right, husband. I have known this day would come.”

  She laid her hands on the table, smooth and tanned with her days beating blankets in the sun and begging livestock from threshold to threshold. She spread her fingers against the juice-stained grain of the wood.

  “A woman may give her flesh as she pleases, and a lady owes no less than her people give. The lord takes equally, all from all. Take only my hands, and swear to me you will replace them.”

  At first he would not, feigned horror at the very suggestion—but there were her hands, fingers splayed wide and firm on the table, and his mouth watered for her. She did not say a word, but also, she did not withdraw her hands. After a time, he brought out his carving knife, and, weeping all the while, severed his wife’s brown hands at the wrist.

  Malgorzata did not weep.

  He would not eat before his wife’s gaze, and crouched in the corner below the mountain of teeth like a whipped dog, sucking flesh from bone. When he was finished, he placed the chewed bones most tenderly in a reliquary of copper and opal, fingers delicately folded on a green cushion.

  And for a while, the lord was sated. He was true, too, to his word, and made for his wife new and strange hands—for Maciej was a clever man before his hunger devoured him. He wove together hands of wicker, of hazel and red osier, green and pliant willow. He lashed them to her bruised stumps with leather and bolted the branches to her belt with fine, thin chain that looped and whorled through her skirts, so that she could move her arms as widely as before. To be sure, she moved oddly, her long wicker fingers clattering against dish and cheek, but she was much as she had been, and the house on the hill was quiet and dim at last.

  But the time came again when Maciej was consumed. He hid it as long as he was able, but finally collapsed before his lady, the terrible light boiling all through him as he hungered. Fair Malgorzata, black of hair and eye, raised him up and said to him:

  “It is better that I lose a limb than that the countryside lose all once more. Take only my feet, and swear to me you will replace them.”

  This time he did not argue, but brought out his carving knife immediately, nocked and pitted as it was from the joints of so many creatures, and severed his wife’s feet at the ankle. As before, he would not eat before her gaze, but crouched in the corner before the mountain of teeth, sucking flesh from bone. When he was finished, he placed the chewed bones most tenderly in a reliquary of silver and malachite, toes delicately folded on a blue cushion.

  And for a while, the lord was sated. He was true, too, to his word, and made for his wife new and strange feet—for Maciej was a resourceful man before his hunger devoured him. He wove together feet of wicker, of hazel and red osier, green and pliant willow. He lashed them to her bruised stumps with leather and bolted the branches to her belt with fine, thin chain that looped and whorled through her skirts, so that she could move her legs as widely as before. To be sure, she moved oddly, her long wicker toes clattering against floor and bedpost, but she was much as she had been, and the house on the hill was quiet and dim again.

  But the time came again when the lord hungered. And again, fair Malgorzata, black of hair and eye, looked out onto the green fields and covered her face with her wicker hands, saying that it was better that she lose another limb than for the countryside to lose all once more. And she gave over her knees, her calves, her hips, her rib cage, her shoulders. Maciej fed and glowed and wept and fed again, and all the while Malgorzata’s body became a strange skeleton of branches, her chest a hollow cage, her back a ladder of wood. Behind these bars still beat her red, hot heart, and still she had her jaw and some part of her fair face—and both black eyes—though she had given over her left cheek to her husband’s need.

  Finally, when Maciej starved once more, these things were all that were left, and Malgorzata walked her halls in a body of willow and hazel. He told himself he would not ask such a thing, that the rights of a lord have limits, that she had given more than any man could ask of his wife. But still, the hunger roiled in him, and after so much time the hunger burned for nothing but her. It was the dark of winter, and fair Malgorzata, who had nothing left of her black hair but a stiff fall of twigs, laid herself upon the old table and said:

  “It is better that I lose these last than that I live to see my lord ravage his lands yet again. Take my heart and my face which once was fair, but swear to me you will replace them.”

  Weeping bitterl
y, his hunger naked on his face, Maciej brought out his carving knife, darkened as its blade was from so much woman’s blood, and cut out his wife’s heart, and jaw, and fair black eyes. There was no gaze to meet, and he devoured his feast before her wicker frame. When he was finished, he placed the chewed bones most tenderly in a reliquary of gold and garnet, her jaw lying heavy on a red cushion.

  And he made for her a wicker heart, and placed it behind her hazel-ribs.

  And he made for her a wicker face, and fixed it to her willow-skull.

  And he made for her wicker eyes, and set them into her branch-brow.

  But her teeth he did not close into the reliquary. He climbed the mountain of teeth and laid them down at its peak, which was by now very near the ceiling.

  The lord was sated, and I awoke.

  The white bundle of Malgorzata’s teeth descended to my heart, and out of the tooth cairn I stumbled, raw and uncertain as a newborn. Maciej stared as I took my first steps, hooves of tooth clicking on the tiled floor. I wobbled, my vision blurred—I saw him clearly, and the wicker body behind him.

  I saw him, and I hungered.

  THE

  FOREMAN’S TALE,

  CONTINUED

  “I SWALLOWED HIM UP, BONE AND TOOTH. I WAS still hungry, and I turned to the wicker-wight which was once Malgorzata, and we looked at each other, twig-eye to tooth-eye. But I would not devour her. She was my sister, we two things hollowed out by hunger. Instead I leapt from the house on the hill which was now dark, dark as rock over stone, and I took the hunger with me. It is all I am. I am all it is.

  “The hunger and I looked for things big enough to feed us. We began with cattle and peasants, but these were not enough. We tried forests but they were bitter, marshes but they were brackish. Finally, we came here.”

  I quavered, my flesh wet with gem and sweat. “Are you punishing us?” I whispered. “Because we are hungry, too? Because we eat strange things and are never sated?”

  The tooth-wight snorted, a peculiar, rattling sound. His movements were like a housecat’s, scratching at the soil, opening and closing his tusk-claws, tossing his molar-tail into the air. “Of course not. Does a farmer punish a cow? No, he eats it right up and licks his chops. You are pretty, and pleasing, and we suspect this place is big enough to feed us. We will pass you through us, and revel in your taste. I am no different from any other thing: I want to eat; I want to live.”

  Golod turned and fixed his oversized jaw on one of the long cedar roots. He ground at it and suckled at it and worried it like a bone—and slowly, the root turned ashen and peeled away from itself in shingles, wisping away to broken shards and pale strips of bark. It kept its shape—and I might have imagined it, I do not say that I do not imagine things, and who would not imagine things in a place so dark and terrible?—but it seemed to me a winding wind fluttered through the ruined root.

  “That is not eating,” I said softly. “That is wasting, that is ruining, but it is not eating.”

  Golod leered at me, his wolf teeth gleaming in their sockets. “Do you not also leave waste behind when you consume a thing? It is not my fault that mine is more interesting than yours.”

  We looked at each other. I knew then that he would swallow me up, and running was impossible—surely he knew these tunnels better than I, he who had chewed them into the lightless guts of the city. I was frozen—who would not have been frozen, about to be eaten like a ripe jewel? Cold emerald slipped down the nape of my neck. I thought of my cart, all my apples, and my little agate god statues, and my new golden spit which turned so quietly and smoothly in the hand. I thought of the topaz of so many years past, and how its juice had trickled down my throat.

  “I wonder what you will look like,” he said, “when you have passed through me?”

  THE TALE

  OF THE

  TWELVE COINS,

  CONTINUED

  “I PASSED THROUGH. IT WAS NOT LIKE BEING eaten, more like being worried—wasted.” Vhummim looked at us miserably, her eyes huge and milky in her round, floating face. She stroked her sinuous neck with bony fingers. “Golod put his teeth to me and my skin turned to pages and ash, held together by old, dust-clung air. Down there among the roots of bank and basilica, I became other than myself. My neck grew so long I could not eat, my limbs so long I could not run. Death translates us into what it will—we are the Pra-Ita, those who have passed through.”

  I stared at her, her withered, stretched throat, so thin I could almost see through to the wasted edifice behind her. Curling, grasping wind threaded the streets. She pulled her robes aside, gauzy and wispy as dandelion silk, and showed her belly, swollen as a woman long gone with child. But instead of flesh there was a jewel, a great colorless, faceted thing set into her flesh as though she were no more than a ring.

  “I speak the tongues of death,” she whispered, her voice mingling with the wind. “I am translated, and I do not know myself, save that I have become what I have eaten, and it has become me. Thus went the rest of the city, slowly, the way of the Rhukmini, the way of Vhummim. The Varil’s green and blooming docks sank into a river of detritus; the war memorials sighed into crumbling. Finally the Asaad, too, lost all its scarlet and gold, and became nothing but its own shell, money and paper and stiff, dead silk blown together by that endless wind. It happened so gradually that we did not really notice, until we had all passed through, and still we spent our money, still we traded our wasted goods. It is a habit, a compulsion, and it does not need translation. The wind, that relentless, thrashing wind that Golod brought, blows us from place to place, now. The wind keeps us together as long as it can, and then we are gone, gone until there is another valley or cliffside to sigh against, and then it breathes us into our old shape again. This is where we have come, now. It is like any other place to us.”

  “And the place you wish us to go, with all the strange words on the lintel?” the shorn girl asked.

  Vhummim blinked slowly, as though it should be obvious. “It is the Mint. You will work, like the other children. The living work; the dead do not. Be happy that you were chosen for work. It is better for you this way.” She closed her dress and fidgeted with the ragged cloth, looking up at us from behind her lanky hair. “If you do not go now, they will miss you at the counting, and it will be bad for you.”

  “We could just run, you know,” I quavered, trying not to think of that flat, heavy door and what it would sound like when it swung shut.

  “Please believe I would catch you,” said Vhummim solemnly. Her leg cocked up like a stork’s, a promise of speed our little legs could not hope for.

  We followed her. Who would not have followed?

  The door swung shut. It sounded like bones breaking.

  THE TALE

  OF THE

  CROSSING,

  CONTINUED

  IDYLL COUGHED IN THE DAMP AIR, HIS BREATH ricocheting in his lungs like a loose arrow. His fingernails, long as a wealthy woman’s, dug into the ash-wood pole as he dragged it forward. A tiny whirlpool formed around its pale shaft as he drew it up—unseen mud clasping, dragging down.

  “I would like to disbelieve you, but this is not a place where many men hazard lies. You were in the Mourned City—I envy you. I was there when there were neither ashes nor pages nor fish skeletons piled up into minarets. Are there roses there, still? Have they all gone white and brown, drifting along the dead dockside?”

  Seven frowned and shoved his dark hair back from a wan face. Around his bruised eyes were already lines and cracks that would one day be wrinkles, chasms, trenches in flesh. He spoke softly.

  “Some days, in the Mint, they blew through the door like snow.”

  Idyll nodded. In the farthest distance, behind the mist, Seven thought he could make out the spiky, scattered tips of bare trees, cat scratches in a gray sky, and a lonely beachhead. It was still so far off he could scarcely call the water a lake. It seemed to him a vast inland sea, and he trembled without wishing to. The ferryman rubbed at his k
nee with a hooked and gloved hand that seemed to have far too many knuckles.

  “I can feel the storm in my joints now, a soreness like longing. I’ll try to get you across before it comes through, but I can’t promise.”

  “What sort of storm? How can there be storms here?”

  “The sort that little coat won’t begin to hold back. And if you knew much of the local geography, you would have brought better and thicker, and a tongue less eager for questions.”

  Seven sank back against the ruined mast and drew his knees up to his chest. He rubbed his chin against them and the leaf-stiffened wind reddened his nose.

  “She’s there,” he mumbled.

  “She?”

  “My friend. She’s there, in the empty forest, where all those trees are cracking in the wind. She’s there, all wrapped in rags. She must be so cold. I can’t leave her.”

  Idyll shook his great head and tugged his cloak tighter around his massive frame.

  “Oh, son. I’m sorry. What a lot you have paid me for nothing.”

  The young man dug his fingernails into his palms and coughed into his sleeve, the nettle-sharp wind tearing his breath into scraps.

  “You don’t understand. You couldn’t possibly understand us—we always save each other…”

  THE TALE

  OF THE

  TWELVE COINS,

  CONTINUED

  WE WERE COUNTED JUST INSIDE THE GREAT hall, before our ears could adjust to silence and our eyes could adjust to darkness. The Pra-Ita were all around, their huge heads bobbing silently as crows pecking at grass. My head throbbed with the sudden cease of the wind. The bald girl stood just behind me in the long, gray line and clutched my hand.