Myths of Origin: Four Short Novels

by Catherynne M. Valente

I must Walk By. Believe if I can that it was only the wind in your fur. Believe that it is only the madness coming on, a smattering of random and meaningless images firing in my brain, fading into un-reality and darkness. But how can I when I feel the oily leather of a handle breaking the skin rising from my back like the curve of a whale in the sea?

  Can you see? Can you hear?

  The Monkey’s fletched eyes wrinkled nervously, flicking back and forth from my blood-skin to the empty Road. They, of course, are gone, and my flesh is whole. I cannot see where I am going, night waves like a rice field, the Road is a pavilion of ash. I am grateful for his dry, leathery palm in mine, after all. My humanity is difficult to coalesce among all these writhing phantasms, I am voiceless and paralyzed, visions of frostbitten camels trampling through my paved-over eyes, my breastplate of arctic hare, face of a spread-winged roc, laminate fire

  (—which here, in this most desolate isle,

  else falls upon your heads)

  Oh, but they were there, and I heard the voices like feet crushing clouds into blue wine, I saw their hair brush the snow and their mouths hanging open, vomiting light into the earth

  (—I have made you mad;

  And even with such-like valour)

  No, I will not believe it, I am still whole, I am still myself. They came to the mountain, the mountain accepted, I accept. The Verses came—staccato notes, and they spilled over the peaks like the ecstasy of caribou, they sand and spoke and it is only that you cannot hear

  (—Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments

  Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices)

  But where do I achieve these slashing words, slantwise through my mind like a magician’s swords into the magic box, terrible and alien—from what black place could they issue if there is no beforethis to remember and reanimate? I could not say, oh me, but I must be I the central I, the lodestone, the trinity, the tripartite division! I carry the Compass, I know north from northwest (north lies the head, the kingspiece, the red screech of brain; northwest lies the right hand which writes the left hand knows not, amphibious inscription on the bones of a homo erectus with arms full of flint, still etching the cave Wall overandoverandover—

  (—Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,

  Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.)

  with a fatal buffalo, dressed in his finest brown and white)

  I know this, I see it, the body becomes the lodestone and I, oh, I, have become the Stone itself, turning in a grinding orbit around a flaming sun which is also myself, dying my skin with the blood of that beforetime hunting party, glutted out onto the slick glacier, around and around, faster and faster and something is breaking in me faster than it is being built, something is splintering, offbreaking, the vivisection of confession before their ravening altars, evisceration in the rays of that whistling sun, and, oh, the sky is opening and I am dying because it is growing so within, roots bursting out of my mouth, the thick rootandbranch of the Stone roars out in a beam of white, and I am breaking, breaking, breaking

  (—The clouds methought would open and show riches)

  Oh, what do you see in the sky, high up high where I cannot go, trapped am I here among the turn styles and empty way stations? Rice-fields planted by centaurs speaking all those scriptures I have heard as the caravan embraced the mountain? Are they there where you can touch their watery crop? The jasmine-blossom of the moon, fat and morose above me, eating the stars like escargot, popping each spinning pearl-shell into her milky mouth? What do you see that I cannot, I Possessed and ground under by those old smoking wheels within wheels bearing in their spear-spokes

  (—which Lie tumbling in my barefoot way and mount

  Their pricks at my footfall; sometime am I,

  all wound with adders who with cloven tongues do hiss me

  into)

  madness.

  Oh, I and all under the gallery of twisting night, what is becoming me? I see your outline, the macaque-shape sliver of gold against the grey-lit Road, and you cannot help me, cannot give me the redemption of nothingness, the benediction of emptiness. You suffer near me, I suffer inside this woman-skin, the shade of fire-salamanders, and both of us dread the night when I am not precisely what I am. But here in the dark that brings delirium, I am open and beating, my whole body become seven-chambered heart, aorta like a rope of rubies, like a red, red Road. I can feel him coming, the Monstrum, hinge by jamb. And in terror I approach the Beauty that dances the steps of annihilation, the Maenad-self with the blood of cats dripping off her Rosicrucian lips so that—

  (—when I waked,

  I cried to dream again.)

  18

  “Oh, Darlingred, what do you see when you are lost?”

  Out of my skull I blearily watch the world detached and departed. I drink from a fountain with a Minotaur pouring water from a maiden’s beheaded corpse, as though the Labyrinth were creating itself to taunt me. No comet-track of the frog-kicks of voices whispering from before, no sprinting ideation, no speck of camel-hair remains. We are moving, expecting to make time against the morphing Path, expecting impossible things and racing against the night which will bring only progress towards mania and fire-vertigo. I brush a long sheaf of burgundy hair from my face, and stare at the Road, in this region fashioned of polished cedar.

  “I see wheels in the sky and my own body cracking like a tree’s trunk. And strange whisperings tunnel through me like earthworms.”

  The Monkey scrambled up onto my shoulder and stroked my cheek with great concern.

  “I am so sorry, beautiful, pitiful girlcreature,” his voice was warm and kind. “It is so hard for you.” Garnet tears sprung to my Grecian eyes, spilling like paint.

  “I am afraid that I am not myself any longer. Even in the day I stare out of my body, I do not inhabit it. And I can hear the Door following us, shuffling and sliding.”

  “Yes,” the Monkey sighed, “I was hoping you had not noticed. She told the truth: there is a Door, perhaps a few hours behind us. It is very stealthy and patient. But I am more clever. I snuck up on it, to see what sort it was.” I waited, while he hopped from one foot to the other in agitation. “Oh, my dear, it is a great, black Door, oval and light-eating, with a bull’s head knocker. It will not come before your next heartblink, but it will come.” He patted my hair and fussed with his tail, softly murmuring, “We have time, little one, we have time. Hoo.”

  “I cannot think, Monkey. Tell me a story, or a riddle, or lecture me. But fill up my head, I am weary, I am growing old.” He paused, seeming to ponder some great puzzle.

  “I will tell you the storyriddle I think you need. I will tell you how I Devoured my name. Long was the time I lived young within the pretty stone arms of my Temple, and I was alone. I enjoyed alone, it enjoyed me. I swung from the thick red-berry vines, and felt their length firm and sure in my golden hands. I danced on the altar, I sang the songs of my birth-tree and my mother’s strong fur in the choir, echoing all through the dome as though my brothers and sisters were all around me in the forest. Hoo! I was content. I did not think about the Center, I did not care.”

  “Once I was like that, too,” I whispered sadly.

  “We all are. And then there is a day when we are broken into, like a rich house, and rifled through. Everafter we look sidelong over alabaster shoulders and know that we will never be so pure again. Mine was a pleasant spring morning, the rain fell like a grey sweater unraveling, and I played in the yarn-drops as I was used. I was not myself then, just as you are not yourself, but empty and happy. But that day, and not another though it matters not which, a Snail crawled into my Temple to escape the wet. He was very beautiful, with a great, grey double-spiraled shell like mother-of-pearl, sparkling even in the dim stormlight. His body was like living oil, goldensilver, rustling and slippery, large eye-stalks waving gracefully, visiondancing.

  I hooed in a more or less friendly manner, but he ignored me, moving within his ponderous shell tow
ards the thickest and most delicious of my vines, slowly breakfasting on a fat leaf. I marched up to him and rapped imperiously on that iridescent shell, whereupon his oilskin rippled slightly and eye-stalks swiveled vaguely in my direction.

  “Leathe me alone, thwiftfurry thing,” the Snail yawned. “Of course, my Darlingred, I was indignant, began to hop mightily and grow purple-faced in a most unbecoming fashion. I insisted variously that he ought to be more respectful than to gobble up my vines without a word, that he ought to vacate the premises immediately, that he ought to know he was eating in my Temple. Again, my only answer was the bored motion of glistening eye-stalks.”

  “Lithen, mate. I needn’t take orders from thome thilly primate who hathn’t got a name.”

  “I don’t need one, you lisping mollusk. My mother knows my smell well enough, and the Labyrinth has no use for names. Hoo! Now run along.”

  He munched thoughtfully on one of my red fruits. “Doethn’t it though? If you hathn’t got a name, you aren’t much of anything. Thith Temple can’t be yourth, you hathn’t got thome thort of deed, and even if you have got a document of thome fathion, to whom would it be made out? Tho the vineth are ath much mine ath yourth. Leathe me alone.”

  I was at a loss, and covered in snail-spit. He seemed logical enough, if one forgot where one was. My pride, which in those days was great as the vaulting Road, was wounded. I growled at him and bared my yellow teeth, but the Snail snuffled further onto the emerald vine. “And I suppose you have a name, wretched slug?”

  The great Snail drew himself up to what I assumed to be his full height, his damascene flesh rippling in opaline waves. Across his broad chest a word floated uncertainly, but clear as your red limbs. It was quite sloppy, for a Snail cannot be very good at letters, but in its oozing alphabet I read distinctly: CALIBAN. He rustled and reduced slimily, with a triumphant little smirk. I stamped and hooted.

  “Where did you find that?”

  “Not that it’th any of your bithness, but I went though a green-and-clam-thell Door, downdowndown, and I found it, playing with thome ugly trout. It wanted to come to me. It’th mine. You can’t have it. Go Away.”

  (Now, Darlingred, you must understand that Snails know very little about anything, and are quite slow and rather silly. I think now that he must have stolen it. He was too fat and lazy to Wrestle such a fine name. They are officious and greedy, and they walk the Labyrinth believing themselves its masters. Snails are tiresome creatures.)

  “But why do you need a name, Snail?”

  “It maketh one Important, it makes one a Creature of Influenth. It denoteth Worth and Thubthtanth, pinpointeth one’s Plathe in the World. The value of name cannot be overethimated. It is one’th invitation to the banquet. My banquet today ith your vineth, becauthe I have a name and you do not.” He crawled even further onto the vine, which of course caused him to lose balance and tumble to the stone floor. He was not harmed, really, but scolded me anyhow. “Hateful little monkey! Your wretched vine tripped me! No wonder you are thuch a no-account, foul-thmelling thcoundrel! I thall never come back, never! Beast! Ruffian! Rathcal!” This train of Snail-speech followed the opalescent moon of his shell past the threshold and onto the Road.

  It mattered little, for by then I was not listening. I was fired like a field of dry wheat with the idea of a name, the desire for it. I cared nothing for being Important in the wobbling eye of a Snail, or my Place in the World, nevertheless, the need filled me like rising bread, a growing hole in my chest.

  But I could not leave my Temple, the Labyrinth would swallow it whole behind me and I would never see its warm Walls and cozy altar stone. Already I had left my birth-tree and lost it, along with the bristled, hot smell of my mother’s russet fur. So I laid a trap. Each day I left the Temple, just a bit, trailing a length of spider’s thread, sparkling like a strand of a star’s mane in the mild sunlight, to find my way home. I let the Doors catch my scent, let them pick up my trail in the blackberry brambles, leaving a bit of fur in the thorns. They would sniff around the Temple at night, creeping like mangy coyotes up to the vaulted entrance. But they are creatures of outwith, of the dark wild air and the external void, they would not come in, for the nature of a Door is a conduit, and they were lost like a wolf in a snare in the paradox of a Door entering through a Door, DoorswithinDoorswithinDoors. And I waited, watching them like a besieging army, fanned out like playing cards. I waited for the Door which would lead to my name. I was certain I would know it.

  And I did. A very fine old wrought-iron gate, designs of baobab trees, banana leaves, and lush hibiscus, a heavy steel knob in the shape of a panther’s head, complete with real fangs, stolen away, the milk teeth of some savage kitten. With a joyful snarl I leapt at it, trailing a length of strong vine behind me. Did the Door but no swifter than I, I looped the end of my emerald lasso around the massive knob, swinging wildly wide, entering the snapping Door. I shrieked and groped blindly, reaching out for the name, calling it, beckoning with my paws. I snagged something on my fingers on the backswing, slipping out of the Door’s grasp, nearly losing my tail as it clanged angrily shut. I fled back into the Temple, clutching my prize, accosted by the cacophony of thousands of Doors slamming in fury and gnashing their hinges. Hoo!

  What I held against my heaving chest was a gigantic sturgeon, swollen with silver scales and squirming in my grip. Her mouth gaped helplessly and its pupilless (so like yours, my own!) eyes blinked their transparent lids in fear. I did not lose a moment, but slit her Gautama-belly with my teeth and plunged my paws into the writhing black mass of salted caviar, searching, searching, searching.

  With the last gulping heave of the great Fish’s gills, I seized and pulled from her corpse the body of my name, all entangled with translucent entrails and strips of silver skin, scarlet and flowing moonstone, clinging to the shredded womb of dark eggs and golden flesh. It was furious, and began to bite at me with the sharp branches of letters. I knew I had little time and gripped the vicious thing in both paws, shoving it down my triumphant throat, the sweet tang of starfruit and water-moccasins. Hoo! It was mine, I held it within me.

  After this, I began to understand things, as the Snail could not, since I alone ate with intent. I was wholly Other. I had Devoured a Center and it arranged my organs into ascension, made clear the Paths of the Labyrinth, and I ceased to fear it. I ceased to be myself, and yet I was myself, whole, and no other.

  At this the Monkey began a slow grin that split his face, terrible and feline, punctuated by his long yellow teeth. He reached into his belly, pulling aside the golden fur like theater curtains, the skin and muscle Wall parting like an ocean, and behind it the dark and secret moon-shape of the Stone. He held open his body so that I could see, pushing against the oily flesh of his stomach like some misshapen fetus, the outline of his name in a savage jungle-calligraphy, still trying to escape the calm pool of his gastric perambulation.

  EZEKIEL.

  19

  “I could never do that, Ezekiel,” I murmured as he closed the sheath of his skin.

  “I know,” he said, closing himself as though buttoning a suit. “You are not strong enough. There are ways within ways. You follow the way of the mad. It is different.” He shook his head at me. “But I am here, hereandnow, I will not leave you.” The Road had slushed almost entirely to deep, rich black mud, and we were slogging through it one sucking footprint at a time. The Monkey’s fur was streaked in dirt like war paint, my arms like ruby stalactites circled in bracelets of earth.

  “Why are we walking? The Labyrinth will change around us, the Door will swallow us. Why do we not trust in it? I want to lay down, I want to Stop. It will carry us to her, or it will not. I don’t care.”

  “We must keep up appearances, Darlingred. We cannot stop. Forward motion, endless if, but still we must.”

  “I don’t care.” I stared ahead, unblinking, scarlet eyes drinking in the wide marshes and waving reeds. “Once I was the Marsh King’s daughter, and my wings were br
own. I sipped at tadpoles with a delicate beak, scimitar-curved, and when I took tea with my father, I crooked my little finger like a scythe. I was a blade of flesh and nail, I was murky and obscene as the delta water.” Dew formed in blood-droplets on my eyelashes.

  “You are slipping away from me,” he warned in a whisper. “No, I know it did not happen that way. But was there a timebefore, Ezekiel? Was there? Was I a child once, did I make mud-pies and leap two-footed into inkwells? Was there a yellow-clouded summer once when I skinned my knee, and felt the prickle of a father’s beard on my cheek as he dried my tears? Did I love a boy once, with hazel eyes and hair like wheat in the sun? Was I a woman once and not this? Did these breasts like swollen apples ever feed a daughter or a son? I could not say, I could not say, there has never been anything but this, but oh, Ezekiel, what if it has not been foralways?”

  I was crying, long, stringy hot wax-tears, coloring my face like a Christmas candle. Through the red blur, I could see the landscape changing, the mud drying into desert-cracks, gold streaked with spider-legs, expanding into the horizon, sparse Walls become cacti—filled up with their thick tequila-water, oozing from green shell like mucus. The Road nearly disappeared into the thirsty land, its track crossing back over itself over and over, fashioning from dust and sand a checkered pattern we strode, a weeping candle and a gilded djinn.

  A terrible thumping sound came ripping across the land, searing and boiling the air, the sound of a Door opening and slamming shut hungrily.

  Thumpthumpthumpthump.

  It was the whole sky, eating all other sound. I clasped my hands over my ears, screaming to drown it out.

  “We must move quickly, Darling. This place smells of tar and spoiled vines. He is coming! Hoo!”

  “I am Sister to Rigor Mortis,” I shrieked as though it were a mantra, a spell to ward off the Door. “I am the Wife of the Crucible. I am still, the desert moves.” I felt a calm pool of darkwater within me, growing, a lake which had never known the rumor of waves. My fear was stopped up like a bottle of wine and speed flowed into my limbs.