Myths of Origin: Four Short Novels

by Catherynne M. Valente

  The stones moved aside like water and with a cloud of sweat and dust Izanagi was thrown onto the long grass still clutching his burning comb—though it scalded him, he held it before him as though it were his only dear thing. There was a sudden detonation of light, and he sprawled, prostrate as a penitent, on the green earth, beaten down by the sky and covered in the detritus of the Root-Country-which-is-Izanami, soaked in her dead-sour ablutions, clammy and shuddering.

  Yet still, the cry barreled up from the weed-massed crevice, and he covered his hands with his face as it serrated the air:

  “OUTOUTOUT! OUT OF MY GRAVE, OUT OF MY FLESH, YOU HAVE NO PLACE IN ME! EATER OF CHILDREN, EATER OF DEATH, GLUTTON, GLUTTON, GLUTTON! GO WITH THE CHILDREN WHO ARE TOO BIG FOR YOU TO EAT, GO WITH HONSHU, GO WITH KYUSHU, GO WITH KAGU-TSUCHI. COME NEVER HERE AGAIN, I WILL LET NO ONE PASS. I WILL DEVOUR EVERYTHING YOU MAKE, I WILL DESTROY EVERYTHING YOU SIRE WITH THAT SICK, MEWLING BODY. IN THE MOMENT THEY DRAW BREATH, I WILL BE THERE TO SNATCH IT BACK. THIS IS MY WORLD, NOW, IN THE DEEPS AND THE DARK. KEEP TO YOUR HALF, SPOILED BY LIGHT. GO, GET OUT, GOBBLE UP THE WHOLE WORLD IF YOU CAN, BUT COME NEAR MY COUNTRY AGAIN AND I WILL BURN YOU, BELLY-OUT, AS YOU BURNED ME.”

  Izanagi scrambled back from the gales of the voice, which stank of putrefaction: mushrooms and oversweet fruit, spoilt fat and dried blood.

  “I would not come into your disgusting country again for any price,” he sputtered, trying to scoop the offal from his eyes, scrape it from his tongue, “and I can sire worlds faster than you can lay them waste! You will see how many sons, how many islands, how many blazing boys will come tumbling out of me! You can’t take them all, and for every thousand you claw to pieces I will bring fifteen hundred out of the ground. You should not have been made, there is no need for you—you are a leech-child like that monstrosity you spawned, and you have as little strength, as little beauty. You cannot banish me from the dark—I banish you from the light, and no one will care that you are gone, when the world is as full of my children as the beaches of Onogoro with jellyfish!”

  The stones said nothing, but rolled back into place like sliding screens. The voice was gone. The earth glared back at him, baleful and silent.

  Izanagi turned from Ne no Kuni, half-blinded, and ran from the soundlessness of the cleft—he followed the green smell of water to a babbling stream and finally cooled his eyes, his nose, his throat, and his burnt hands. He dropped the comb into the water, and cleaned first his left eye, dropping a clump of dust and dried flesh from his lid into the cold river.

  He could not be sure, but he swore that the clump glittered, and shone, not at all like rotted flesh, but like gold, and fire.

  He cleaned then his right eye, dropping a clump of dust and dried blood into the cold river.

  He could not be sure, but he swore that the clump glittered, and shone, not at all like dried blood, but like silver, and light moving on still water.

  He cleaned then his nose, and with a great breath blew a clump of dust and pulverized lung into the cold river.

  He could not be sure, but he swore that the clump darkened, and thundered, not at all like the terrible cry, but like rain approaching from far off.

  And in the water three things opened their eyes: the first clump flared out in a spiral, with hair red as the flames which ate the house on Onogoro, and she was Ama-Terasu, and she was the sun, and her eyes seemed to both rise and set at once. The second pooled out in a slow circle, and his skin was the color of the river, and it was difficult to tell where he ended and it began, for he was all over silver light, and he was Tsuki-Yomi, and he was the moon, and his hair was grey as clouds. The third clump seemed to fall apart and come together several times, a dervish whipping the water into foam, and its hair was storm-black, wet with salt seas, and his feet were ringed by jellyfish like newborn diamonds, and he was Susanoo-no-Mikoto, and he was the storm-and-wind, and he was me.

  FIFTH HEAD

  It is sad, that this part never lasts | It is sad, that this part never lasts | the held gasp before events tumble towards the base of my belly | when you do not know whether becoming no-longer-a-maiden will be terrible or marvelous, whether it will be all whiteness and the smell of clean skin, the way it has been in your heart | When she is lovely and young and her flesh is full as a moon, the soft snort of a horse in the first morning of winter, | whether it will be different for you, when so many sisters have gone ahead of you, and you are plain, and not like them, who had faces like winter fruits | the smell of her heart beating, of the sweat beading on her throat, | whether he will whisper in your ear:

  “Kyoko, Kyoko, I love you,” | Kyoko, Kyoko, I love you | “I do not care that you are plain.” | I do not care that you are plain.

  | I made the soup best of all, and I only wanted to keep making the soup until I was old and bent over the pot like a letter. The fifth daughter cannot ask for more. | Your hair was matted under the poor, beleaguered veil | My hands always—do you know how eyes smell? | yes, yes, like copper filings, and green stems stuck upright in salt | —smell of eyes, of burnt iris. It made me happy, to breathe that smell in my bed at night. I covered my face with my fragrant hands. My mother gave me the bed closest to the fire. | I want the poise of this to last, when I stood over her, flashing violet and scarlet | she gave birth to me in the storage room, among all the grass jars of eyes, pupils peeping between the woven reeds, watched, watching, and all those fishy, sweet things watched my dark head emerge from my mother, watched her first milk fall into my mouth, and they applauded with their feathery lids | before she has looked up from her shamed posture to see that I am beautiful after all, beautiful enough for both of us.

  | The sound of blinking was so soft, softer than my mother’s hand smoothing my wet hair. | Kyoko, Kyoko, you are so quiet within me, and closed, like a crocus, like a candle. O smooth wax heart, this is marriage, meat and maiden, and me around you like a closed hand, and me bleeding from the belly like a new wife, slit open, oozing blood onto the earth like a bedsheet | She said when the man who was neither sallow nor dark returned with that same veil dangling from his broken hands that this was enough, he had had four of her daughters, he would have no more of us. I hid behind the screen and was relieved; I could stay and wash eyes and boil water, I could stay with my mother and all the grass-jars would watch me while I moved through summers like water slowly through a canyon. | marry me, marry me, Kyoko, and I will rock you to sleep through a thousand thousand summers and you will sleep on a bed of my body, our bodies, sister to sister like a ladder into the earth | But he was penitent, he was sorry, he was bereft, widowed four times over, and give him but the plainest of the daughters left to her and he would not take that road again, but stay in this very house, dedicate his fortune to theirs, and they would all be safe, safe together, and they would burn incense on four graves forever, and there would be sons, yes, and the pot would keep bubbling in its way. | I want to hold the swelling of your body in my own coils, to circumnavigate your tiny limbs.

  | She frowned, my mother, and her hand fluttered to her belly like a memory. She led me quietly from behind the screen, and tucked my unruly hair behind my ears. She patted my cheek. She told me to try to be a good girl, and with thin and bloodless lips whispered that marriage was a joy, a joy and a wonder. She put my hand in the hand of the man who neither laughed nor wept.

  “Kyoko, Kyoko, marry me,” he said. | Kyoko, Kyoko, marry me | “Marriage is a joy, a joy and a wonder, and I will put honey under your tongue.” | I will put you under my tongue | Will it be all whiteness and the smell of clean skin, the way it has been in my heart | it will be all whiteness and the smell of clean skin, and you will be clothed in me like a dress, and I will hush you to sleep, plain little Kyoko | you will hush me to sleep | I will sing you to sleep. | I dreamed through my wedding-blood, you know | I know. You | I | were | was | waiting for me | you. |

  I came whistling down the way | down the way, down the way | I came whistling down the way to my true love’s door | I
left the window open and the wind was warm | My colors came filtering through rice paper, and touched | my face, woke me from my husband’s arms, | softly as a woman’s fingers. | I could not move, could not breathe, | could only widen your soft black eyes and try to take all of me in, | the shimmer of a thousand rainbows across your breast, | the dark promise of my blue-black stomach, heaving and swelling for its promised Kyoko. I have eradicated all human women from this bed | already I was confused, I could not tell if those colors were snake or sister | already it was becoming confused, the voice of my throat of my belly of my lungs of my tongue was not my own, was becoming (ours) was becoming theirs, | the rooster screamed once, but not again. | I am the truly pure, and your mock marriage dissolved into love when faced with the multitude of my skin.

  | Serpent! | Oh, Kyoko, when you raised up your arms! | Monster! | Oh, Kyoko, when your hair fell over his cheek! | Oh, Monster, your eyes were so bright, so bright, as if they glowed from within a jar of grass! | If he could touch the part of you that first glimpsed my flesh, | moons within moons moving under that silver-green skin | flesh you should have abhorred but cannot | how could you | I | think I | you | would abhor | this body of bodies | myself? | he might be able to crush it, wrap it in seaweed and boil it into something sweet and small. | I have always been sweet and small. | But even if he could tear you from my ruby flanks and run back to the fire-lit hall with you under his arm, how could he live, knowing that for a flashing instant you had loved a Monster? I sometimes wonder if he let me take you, Kyoko | after Kaya | after Kiyomi | after Kameko | after Kazuyo, because it was easier than suffering that humiliation. | After all, there are always more of us left to take. And I had never seen such eyes, such living eyes, staring at me as though they were all the eyes I had ever stirred into salt. |

  The Mouth quaked for you, | I quaked for you | it did not wish to wait for contemplation, as though the man were an altar and I, penitent on knees I do not possess. | I bent my knees for both of us, on the thin bed-roll, and your eyes, | open to bursting, and as I took you into me you cried out, | Serpent! | ripping the leaves from the trees. | Monster! | filled with you, | swallowed into myself | writhing, | your eyes were so great above me, multiplied, floating, | floating | floating over | you | me, | in | you | me, and there was nothing else, only me, | us | in the dark, and four strange hands reaching out through the | meat-and-maiden, | four pale hands drawing a mouth | Mouth | over me like a veil and helping me to step up, | step up, | into the fold.

  It was all whiteness, | and the smell of clean skin,

  | just as I had thought it might be. |

  VI

  HONSHU

  When Izanagi had cleaned himself of children and, dragging them behind him like quails, run from the cleft of Ne no Kuni, the face of the world had changed. The Heaven-Spanning Bridge was not even a shadow in the sky, and the way to Onogoro had been lost in the churning sea. Even the jellyfish had gone far below, helpless to avoid the great islands’ motion—for the children of Izanami groaned with her rage and moved together to huddle their heads against their shoulders, all in a line, like mourners, and hide away from her cry.

  It was because of this that Kagu-tsuchi and his sisters had been able to step from the silver beaches of Onogoro onto Honshu, and Kyushu, and Awazi. They grew quickly, and Kagu-tsuchi became so bright that the islands could not bear him, and taking stick-limbed, stone-browed Hani-yama-hime who rarely smiled as his wife, he hid himself away in her, and was seen after only in flare and flame, sparkling fleetingly on the face of the world like an eye opening, then closing again. Closed up in each other, they had a wonderful child, who was called Waka-musubi, and in her hair grew the first silkworms, and the first mulberries, and out of her navel sprouted five grains like secret flowers. Midzu-ha-no-me, pleasant and laughing, laid herself out over the body of her sister, and glittered in pond and lake, stream and pool, golden in the light of Ama-Terasu, who had lifted her yellow skirts and climbed up to take possession of Takamagahara, the high celestial plain. Her brother the moon kept to himself, and took peacefully the lesser part of Takamagahara, which was black and filthy with stars.

  Izanagi washed deities off of himself like dirt. The children of his children began to double and triple themselves like jellyfish thrown up onto the sand. The world was becoming filled, and only I remembered Onogoro; only I remembered Izanami.

  Of course, Mother kept her word: in the midst of all that birth, things died quietly, in shadows, and went down to her, settled in huts of the dead, nestled in her belly, her sternum, her kneecaps. And for everything that died, Izanagi caused more to spring up. In this way their marriage went on and on.

  I wept. In my clouds like cups I wept. The waves swelled up to meet me, eager, adoring, and I did not think they were beautiful; they stank of salt and fish guts. I looked at the earth, merrily rutting with itself, and I hated it, I hated its green and the light that made it green and the laughter that came from well-gods and bucket-gods and cloud-gods and spider-gods and mouse-gods and cicada-gods and cut-wood-gods and whole-wood-gods and seed-gods shaking in ecstasy as one topped the other topped the other, producing maggot-gods and mushroom-gods and seawall-gods and market-gods and gambling-gods and sulfur-gods. In none of them had the name of Izanami created even the slightest vibration, a bee’s wing or gooseflesh rising.

  Izanami! Poor Mother so wronged and so burned by wild and ungrateful children. Midzu was not enough—but I would have put out her flames, had I been born first. I could have rained down water of any sort she wanted. And I made Father tell me about her, over and over as I grew and the clouds around my wrist became more and more black. He did not want to speak of it—he could make children without her, didn’t I see, it didn’t matter where she rotted like a fat fungus, green and horrid. But little by little, like knotted rope pulled from his mouth snag by snarl, he gave me my Mother, couched in curses.

  And I wept. I sent my clouds over the giggling, groping ground and flooded out the well-gods with my tears. I made the land dry up in great grey patches, where I would not let the rain fall—no rain should fall while the Mother of rain is a bed of spoiled flesh under the stones. I dashed the bucket-gods against their wells, and whipped the back of the cloud-gods, I chased the spider-gods and the mouse-gods and the cicada-gods into cracks and crevices, trembling in the wet and sudden cold. I cut the whole-wood-gods and sealed up the cut-wood-gods, and I scattered the seed-gods on barren rock. I drowned the maggot-gods and smashed the seawall-gods with my ugly, dog-earnest waves, I bankrupted the market-gods with washed-out crops, spoiled the games of the gambling-gods, dowsed the yellow fumes of the sulfur-gods with freezing mist. The mushroom-gods took no notice; springing svelte and sidelong from the grey flesh of the Mother-below, they were blind to rain or sun, and cared for nothing.

  The land blighted, and that, that I thought beautiful, as holes opened up and fruit rotted on the ground, as green went to ashen and the smell of meat left to flies wafted through the wind, as the stupid, mewling, crowding earth began to look less like the greedy, gorged Father-face and more like the beautiful, ascetic Mother-corpse, then, oh, then I found it beautiful.

  And while I sat cross-legged in the center of this new, tenebrous wasteland, while I sat happy for the first time since I opened my eyes in that murky stream, seeing all around me reflecting Mother, always Mother, her blight and her blear, Father came striding ford by fallow, and as Fathers will do, he slapped my face with the flat of his palm, called me child and woman, blubbering and weak as worms. My cheeks burned and I tried to be ashamed of my grief, but could not find reproach within me.

  “You didn’t even know her,” he hissed, “you’re nothing but her shit and my snot spat out into a dirty little creek. You’re no one’s son. If you love that dead cunt, go after her. Go to Honshu and push the stones aside until you can clamber inside her—isn’t that where you want to be? The place that would never abide you? Go to it then, and if she doesn’t chew your eyes from your head, rule
there and never come out of the dark again. Leave us, leave us alone, no one here can stand the sight of you, not the well-gods nor bucket-gods, not the cloud-gods nor the spider-gods, not the mouse-gods, the cicada-gods, the cut-wood-gods nor the whole-wood-gods, not even the seed-gods, nor their children, the maggot-gods and mushroom-gods, the seawall-gods, the market-gods, the gambling-gods and the sulfur-gods. If you cannot manage to find a camphor tree to lie beneath you and squeeze brats out of her bark, go under the earth—at least we will not hear your wailing there.”

  I was proud, and I would not let him see me bolt for the sea and for Honshu—but when he turned to go and scrape another god from the sole of his foot, I ran for the strand and the surf, and the waves panted with joy, padding up to me with their foam dancing. The sun of my sister shone on them, and her gold skirts trailing on the water made me pause—if a man can be said to be worthy of his Mother, he cannot shun his sister, and Ama-Terasu was more truly my sister, herself scooped from Mother-detritus, than any of the god-rutting multitude. Should I not go myself to Takamagahara and see her blazing face for the last time on this side of the sky? Her fiery sleeves stirred me—I cannot say why, nothing she has done before or since has stirred me so much as a spoon would—and I resolved instead to ascend the stair to the high celestial plain, and be a brother to her before I went down to the dead, down to the dead and the dear.

  The pale-headed monks trembled; the night had grown cold and they shivered in their idiot-skins.

  SIXTH HEAD

  Look on my colors, the vermillion and the cobalt, the oxblood and the saffron, the ripple emerald cutting through orchid musculature, silver scales hissing over tangerine, fuchsia streaks and peacock underbelly, the jade and ultramarine of my tail-tip. Look at the blood, at the leak of me, how wide it has become, a wound like a womb [Have I then no colors? Is there no obscene blue to the haunch and heft of Koto] your blue is my blue is my blood is your blood [is my blue my own, still, the blooming blue of my hip against the carnelian waist] we are all so bright with each other. We shine through skin, through skin, and through my [our] mouth comes all this many-daughtered light.