by Tanith Lee
For now, when the village had done congratulating itself, it applied to Atmeh. Why had she performed this kindness?
“You also,” said Atmeh, “unasked, and with no suspicion of return, have done a kindness to a stranger, a kinsman of mine.”
Wondering, the villagers looked at each other.
“There has only been one stranger, saving yourself, since my granddam’s time. An insane mad lunatic, who is in a desperate mad insane state in the ruined cot up the hill. It could not be of him you speak.”
But it was, of course, of him.
They had come on him seven seasons before, or longer, for their method of telling time was somewhat inventive. The goatherd who drove the village’s herd of three goats—soon to be increased to thirty—had been terrified on the hills by a sudden howling and a lumbering shape which accompanied it. Even as the herder turned to run, the horror stumbled and fell down, slavering and cawing and kicking its legs at heaven. Then it lapsed. It lay as if dead. And the goatherd inquisitively went to see.
The felled thing looked to be a man of eighty years, skinny and wasted, his head and face quite lost in matted hair representing all colors and all earthly dirts. Naked he was, and by this nakedness, the goatherd beheld that his life had not been tranquil. Many dreadful acts had been performed against him, beatings and whippings, and impalings by pikes, and even there seemed to have been attempts to hang him, to brand him, to put out his eyes and lop his ears, and to deprive him of his manhood. These forays, while they had left fearful scars, he had somehow survived intact. (And it had seemed later on, to the women of the village, that in his youth the maniac, for such he proved to be, was not uncomely.) Yet the madness, and the raving that was on him always while he had the strength for it—they did not abate. There was no means, in the village, to try to set him right. This they saw from the start, as they did with their own who sickened. The first day, the goatherd went to fetch his brothers, and when they returned, they met the madman on the track, revitalized, yodeling and jumping and rending himself, while gnashing his broken fangs. But once more, his failing vigor could not hold up the paroxysm indefinitely. Soon he crashed down again. They bore him to the empty cot. Here presently they shackled him, for fear of what he did to himself when able, and might also do to them. So, he became the village’s property.
When he was quieter, or unconscious, they would clean his hurts and cover him with straw and their own ragged quilts. If he roused, and would let them, they spooned broth into his writhing mouth. There was a girl of the village who had a sweet voice, and she would go to the cot and sing to him, and it soothed him, the madman, to hear her. And in the spring, she took white blossom and laid it by his face, and in the summer she brought him roses with the thorns removed, so he would not harm himself, he who had torn out his own hair and clawed his skin—“She is a little touched herself,” the village said. “She understands him.” But then a famine came to the village, which meant that instead of each man having nothing, he then had less than nothing. And in that time, the girl died. That night, under the crisp mockery of the stars, the madman rolled in his chains and made a noise so unhuman, so desolate, the entire village thought it should itself be driven mad.
“And since then,” they said, “he has been dying. Dying in great anguish. His energy is exhausted, for even when he screams now, no sound comes from his throat, and when he rolls and kicks, only the cot shakes a fraction, where before boulders would plunge downhill. Yet, though he dies, he cannot die. This we see. He struggles to throw himself in at Death’s door, but some portion of him will not allow it. Or cannot. So they say the immortals are, who never die, if such even exist.”
Then they conducted the beautiful maiden up the hill to the ruined cot.
“Here,” said the village men, and opened the door.
The maiden thanked them civilly, and sent them away.
In the village street below, the women brought the winged lion bowls of milk and honey, and the children braided violets in its mane. There was to be a feast out of the full larders. As they lit the lamps and torches, and took from chests old instruments of music to string and oil them, they did not glance toward the ruin. “He is in her hands,” they said.
Atmeh had sealed the cot by her magic. It was out of time, out of the world. Perhaps it was only her heart, and not her magic, which had done this.
There was no light in the cot, yet there was light, fragile as starshine. It seemed to stream from Atmeh, from her garments and her hair, and, softer, brighter, from her eyes. She stood and watched the wrecked creature, tied by iron and wrapped in quilts. It was awake, and looked at her. It did not cry out, or attempt to, but its huge starting eyes, whites bloody and irises pinched away to nothing, strained upward into her own that were so clean and beautiful.
Lylas had said to her: You are mad. And from the positioning of the phrase, its coincidence with those other phrases concerning the riddle’s answer, Atmeh extracted her cue. Fate was on her side. That being so, scarcely anything would be random. And because she had sloughed all the former angers, spites, resentments, dashed the dregs of bitterness away, Atmeh saw clearly to the earth’s ends, and so found, and at the proper hour, the means, and also—nearly incidentally—the lover of her dawn.
Had he been parted from her? Even split into the grains and fragments of insanity, somehow had he not been with her still? Lotuses opening, that offered jewelry dice, petals that flew and kissed, water flowers that bloomed in winter frosts . . . he had loved her in her mother’s womb, they said, crazy Chuz, Prince Madness.
And now, lying on the straw, in the last deluded delirium, under Azhrarn’s curse, dying grossly as Azhrarn had decreed—yet immortal in the essence of himself, unable quite to die—thus, Chuz, finally. The hill trembled in its sheath of grass, to have such a circumstance taking place upon it. The stars above crackled in their dry dews, having no choice but to look down on this.
She did not say to him: “Do you know me?” He did not. He did.
And she did not say, “You deserted me. You preferred suffering’s game to the music of love.” He had. He had not.
She said, “Beloved.” And she laid her hand upon the warped and raddled, hairy, bestial face. And when the bloodshot eyes closed at her caress, she offered in her turn her flower to him. It was the poppy she had plucked in Death’s garden. Its petals dripped, like the purest blood, upon his eyelids, his lips, and breast. All pain it took from him at once, this scattering of the flower. That was the secret of the poppy, which even to this day it has not been able to keep.
For the pod of the flower had been despoiled, the fruit of it. Atmeh and night together had drawn from it a tiny vial of bitterest juice. Like all the fruits of Death’s garden, this too was poison. And this she offered to her lover.
“You have done all he asked of you. It is accomplished, and it is over. You have paid in full for a crime of which you were not guilty, as I shall hear you tell me, too, from your own lips, in the future. Drink now. Here is life.”
But at the last, and despite everything, as she set the vial to his mouth, her hand shook. She could not help herself. And a drop of the drink spilled on the quilts and it wrote a symbol there of the demon tongue, probably an insignificant one—but it was enough. Azhrarn’s bane apparently had an energy of its own, and outlived both the intention and the settled debt. Recollecting his allotted labor, the madman reared in his chains. He nudged the vial from him—it soared up in the air—and a hand caught it. Not the hand of Atmeh, but one she had clasped not long ago, black as a raven’s back; blacker.
Uhlume stood within the cot, tall enough his head nearly brushed the rafters. He said nothing to her, but going by the girl, he bent to the struggling madman.
When the creature saw him, which it quickly did, the fight left it. Even madmen heard legends. Even madmen knew of Lord Death. It was excuse enough.
And when Death offered the vial, and in the vial the blood of the poppy which Death’s own blood ha
d made, the madman craned and stretched to meet it. Thirstily, greedily, he gulped the liquor down.
For a moment his eyes were only cloudy. They were glad, seeing in their blindness all the vistas sight denied. Then, as a clockwork stops, he died.
“I stole from you,” murmured Atmeh. “Did I do wrong?” She hung her head, and her tears fell. “You have forgiven me.” If she spoke to Chuz or to Uhlume, none will say.
But it was Uhlume who brushed away her tears with the edge of his white sleeve.
“There will be a night,” he said, “when I shall come to you and offer you another drink and from another cup. But you will drink it.”
“Thank you for your courtesy in that,” she said. “But will you, then, be Death?”
“It may be I shall not. But still, for you, I will perform the office.”
“The wheat grows,” she said, “and is cut down. And again the wheat grows. Yours was a heavy task. But if you are only the chrysalis, lord, what will the butterfly be?”
“Ask that of all things. Nor exempt your father.”
Then Atmeh laughed, like a child—for she would ever be a child, much as, when a child, she had seemed also ancient decades beyond her span. And like a child she embraced Uhlume, and Uhlume—he suffered it. And they say he smiled, but who can be sure, for even the skull grins cheerfully as if it knew something the flesh did not.
Yet so they parted, the niece and her uncle, for a couple of hundred years.
After their parting, Atmeh performed a very ordinary mortal deed. She bathed the body of the madman, and poured over it spices and perfumes. She laid the limbs straight, and combed the hair, and shaved the face. And when all was done, she brought to the body, by sorcery, the clothing of a great prince, the silks, the gems, and dressed it in them.
And there he lay at last, dead Oloru, or the replicate of Oloru, rather aged and emaciated, yet still a handsome man, even a king, it would seem, who had fallen on hard times.
And over this body, in its splendor, the village was afterward to puzzle, for like a petrified substance already long dead, it never decayed, but remained firm and wholesome. Therefore they built a tomb above it, with a window of crystal in the side. Those that came to take the curative air of the village would also stare in at the wonder of this cadaver.
“What can it mean?” they asked. “What can it portend?”
For it was, and is, often that way, with instances which mean and portend nothing.
But Atmeh had left the body at once, when she was done with tending it. She passed through the village feast unseen, and calling the winged lion, rode over the night sky.
They flew high up, near to the starfields, and below, the world unrolled its carpets of seas and shores, forests and mountains.
“I rule none of it,” called Atmeh to heaven. “Listen to me, you peerless soulless gods, I rule nothing and no one, and soon, soon I will outshine you, for I will be a mortal. And one day, as you never can, I and mine shall inherit the earth.”
PART THREE: The Lotus
1
WANDERERS there had always been. From the choicest city to the direst hovel, they were a likelihood, if not always welcome. Nor so much remarked, unless they sold wares, or knew scandal, or were sorcerers, or caused death. Atmeh then, a beautiful girl accompanied by a large lionlike dog—which some, but not all, claimed had wings—traveled quietly. It was true some also said this girl performed healings, and others declared they had been told of those who had found a dish filled with pearls when they had only given her a dish of milk. Others remembered she had told stories which children and the aged liked to hear. Still others recommended, “Do not get on her wrong side.” But not many had been inclined to do that. Those who did were unsuccessful in any case. For example, rich landowners who chased itinerants off their estates with dogs discovered their dogs would only adore this one. In places, persons entreated her to stay, for no reason but that the look of her lifted their spirits. Yet she never remained anywhere for long. In her diligent practice for humanness and mortality, she would eat and drink, she would learn weaving and the care of plants by simple means, and she would take up and rock in her arms this baby or that, the rich woman’s infant wrapped in velvet, the naked one raised from the warm ashes of the fireside in some cave where the poor subsisted. And these children did well, as if those slim arms, fine hands, had imparted to them something rare. Yet now and then, despite all that, there were those thought they saw the young girl flying about in the evening sky on her dog. And now and then too, the many men who fell in love with her came asking for her as their lady, or their wife, and these, gently, she put aside, though to a handful she granted her favors, but only in a woman’s way: She shielded them from demon lovemaking, for they must be content with mortal women after, and she too, one day, content to be such women herself.
In this manner, time moved on, and late summer came, a great glassy heat, into the land where Atmeh wandered with her dog-lion beside her.
On a rosy afternoon, as Atmeh walked along a dusty path, a child of, perhaps, seven years appeared before her, a boy raggedly dressed and clumsy of feature, but with hair of rose-gold like the sky. On either side the hills went up and rills of water glittered down, but ahead the way ran flat and broad with nothing on it but dust, and light, from which the child seemed to have been formed.
“Luminous mistress,” said the boy, bowing to the earth, “there lies before you, three miles distant, a humble village. Do you journey there?”
“Perhaps,” said Atmeh.
“My master,” said the boy, “who has heard of you, for you are famed, trusts you will pause in this village. He may then elect to meet you there. In token of which he sends you this.”
And the child came to her and offered her a single tiny seed.
Atmeh accepted the seed.
“And may I pat your dog?” asked the boy.
Atmeh assented. So he patted the lion with the partial illusion of dog upon it. (And the lion wagged its tail.) Then the boy vanished, becoming only dust, or light. But the seed lay hard and still in Atmeh’s palm.
Atmeh continued along the path, and after three miles came to a gap in the hills and the village. It was a small one, but prosperous, well used to travelers, but kindly careful of them. It welcomed Atmeh in, and as the dusk fell, spread out a banquet, under the stars which hung overhead thick as grapes on a vine.
And it seemed the village knew that here was a witch, for it prompted her eagerly to perform feats. So she did such things as might be pleasant, and which were the stock in trade of what they thought her, doubling and trebling the quantities of food, turning water to wine, causing lights to burn in midair, and strange visions to dance and to foretell interesting happenings.
But of the one who had said he might meet her in that village, the boy’s master, she saw no sign. And presently, when she looked for the tiny seed, it had crumbled into nothingness, less substantial even than dust, or light.
Next day Atmeh left the village. She climbed up a steep hill, the dog-lion trotting at her side.
As the afternoon was drawing out toward sunfall, Atmeh came upon a grove of wild orange trees beside a pool. And by the pool stood a youth, about thirteen years, waiting for her it seemed. He was of a staid appearance, but well dressed, like a merchant’s son, yet his hair was his only jewel, a lustrous rosy blond.
“Iridescent mistress,” said this youth to Atmeh, bowing to the earth, “there lies before you, three miles distant, a proud town. Do you journey there?”
“I wonder if I do,” said Atmeh.
“My master,” said the youth, “who has heard of you, for you are illustrious, trusts you will linger in this town. He may then elect to meet you there. In token of which he sends you this.”
And the youth came to her, and offered her a single pale bud on a single slight stem.
“I looked for your master last night,” said Atmeh.
But she accepted the bud.
“And may I pat
your animal?” asked the youth. “Which is not a dog at all.”
Atmeh assented, so he patted the lion, which had less than usual of the disguise of a dog upon it—and which purred. Then the youth vanished, becoming, it seemed, another of the orange trees. But the bud lay warm and still in Atmeh’s palm.
Atmeh continued along the slope, and in something less than three miles, she crossed the brow of the hill and saw the town below. It was indeed a proud one, and let her in only after some interrogation, though the sun was by now sinking.
As the dark came, Atmeh entered the marketplace, where the storytellers had put up their awnings and sat under their colored lamps. Here the girls of the night also sat, in rows, beneath bold torches, with copper rings in their ears and cornflowers in their hair. Atmeh took a seat not far off, upon the ground, but she lit no light for herself, though a light did seem to be there, where she was. A man quickly approached and asked her if she was a whore or a fortune-teller or a teller of tales. “None of these,” said Atmeh, “yet we are of a brotherhood and a sisterhood. For we deal in magic, all these, and I.”
“How is a whore to be magic?” scoffed the man.
“Go lie with one, and you will see,” said Atmeh.
At this, the girls under the torches became interested in Atmeh in an amiable way—before they had suspected a rival, and some had been plotting to push her off.
Gradually then, the night-walkers of the town came to sit about Atmeh on the ground, the stones of which were yet warm from the day’s oven. The people debated and discussed matters with her, and sometimes they fell silent, and she told them stories that were not stories, and gave them news of their fortunes without divination, and seduced them quite, without lying down in their arms. What she said was amusing, too, and comforting. She spoke the truths which are forgotten, but which all men know in their hearts. These, being given them again, were like long-lost friends that they embraced gladly, if only for one short minute. “A man may say to himself,” said Atmeh, “why should I trouble to do anything that is useful or compassionate for half an hour, when in another hour’s half I shall go back to my former selfish, cruel ways? But there is all the more reason for him, then, to do good when he can. Ten years of evil do not cancel a single moment of gentleness or a solitary profound thought.”
