A Dirge for Preston John

by Catherynne M. Valente

  The gryphon read aloud: “‘The long bones are found in the limbs, and each consists of a body or shaft and two extremities. The body, or diaphysis, is cylindrical, with a central cavity termed the medullary canal.’”

  The presbyter cloistered with his companion: cross-sections of satyr and blemmye inked in delicate, costly brown inks lay spread out on a low desk of sethym wood, the male blemmye with limbs outstretched, encircled with diagrammatic symbols as though pinioned to a wheel, showing the compact perfection of his four extremities, which correspond to the elements. The satyr was bent double, clutching her hooves, a goat-haired ouroboros.

  “Please concentrate, John,” begged Fortunatus, his conscripted tutor, “if you do not learn our anatomies how will you live among us? How will you help portion the harvest if you do not know that the phoenix require cassia and cardamom for their nests, while the satyr cannot eat the pepper plants that the rest of us prize? How will you build, brick upon brick, if you do not know that the blemmyae orient their houses in clusters of four, facing outward, while the sciopods have no houses at all, but lie beneath their own feet, like mice beneath toadstools? How will you sell your goods at the quarter-moon market if you do not know that the lamia especially love honeycomb still clung with lethargic bees, while the dervishes eat nothing but their dead?”

  “Where I come from, all men have the same shape,” grumbled the priest, his eyes bloodshot from reading, unwilling to acknowledge me, who all in secret had become the best of his own students—his discipuli. I had done my scribe’s work and translated each of those illuminated anatomicals into Latin so that John would believe them true—for he told us that Latin was the language of truth, and the vulgar tongues are the dialects of lies. Still he would not thank me for it.

  “That is a sad country, and you should give thanks to your God that you need not return there, where every face is another’s twin,” the gryphon said with a long sigh.

  “All the same I long for it, and wish myself there, where nothing is strange,” John murmured to himself, and stared past me. I made myself appear busy, copying out my own scroll concerning the accounting rituals of centaurs, under the long, candle-thin windows. But out of one eye I watched him. His hair still showed scalp in patches, but the scalp itself not so scorched and peeling as it has been. And I thought: Yes, he must be homesick. He must be sad. He must wish to not be a stranger somewhere. He must still long for his Ap-oss-el. John shook himself and concentrated again on the wheels of flesh before him.

  “I do not understand the blemmyae,” he announced, without turning his head to me, as though I were not even in the room. “They carry their faces in their chests and have no head—I suppose the brain is just behind the heart then, in the chest cavity—but how,” the Priest blushed, and shifted in his seat so that it was clear that he did not address the indecorous question to me, “how would she nurse a child, Fortunatus?”

  The gryphon twitched his dark wings—once, twice.

  “Why, she would but weep.”

  At home, Astolfo was lost in his own dreams and thoughts, his eyes often glazed and happy over some distant thing I knew nothing of. He prayed often to Vishuddha, the eleven-mouthed god of his people. He carved an altar in eleven stones and spent much of his love there. Vishuddha’s worship, so full of harmonic chanting and poems in eleven parts, always made my head spin. I attended the amyctryae’s holiday services politely, for Astolfo’s sake, but could never quite embrace it. I learned the antiphonals and agons but I could not find the faith. I suppose that is something of a habit with me.

  My husband could not speak to me, only to his god and his trees. I ate my soup in the silence that had become our third mate.

  [Long fingers of scarlet obliterated any further mention of the husband, or John’s wonderful conversion of the lamia, or even a further discussion of anatomy—You see how I dreamed what might have been on those pages, how I guessed that it must have been wonderful, because it was invisible to me? The text turned liquid, and when it cleared again, the whole city had gathered to cast judgment on the priest.]

  Fortunatus clawed the sand of our crumbling amphitheater, where the nations of our nation gathered—as much as the nations are inclined to gather, which is to say lazily and without much intent of discussing anything. The gryphon was nervous; the color in his tail low and banked, his throat dry. The hulking beast did not love speaking, and he loved less that his size bought him respect he did not feel he had earned. So everyone listened, and he hated them for listening.

  “I think,” he began, his beak glittering gold in the glare of the sun, “that we ought to let him cast his chit in the Abir with us.”

  “Why?” shouted Grisalba, trying to wrangle a slab of honeycomb from her sister, who had thought she was invited to a festival, and not a makeshift parliament. “He has not asked to.”

  “And what if he drew the monarch’s piece?” said Hadulph, his red muzzle lifting in concern. “He would rule us. I cannot think that would go well.”

  Fortunatus frowned, and the glare went out of his gold. “What if he did? Would it be worse than any of us? If Oro drew it, or Qaspiel? The Priest, at least, would not be partial—there are no other creatures like him among us, no faction for him to favor.” The gryphon cast his yellow eyes to the sand, speaking softly, “And he must be lonely. There is no one here for him, no one of his kind who understands his passion for the Ap-oss-el, no one to speak his trilled language and look him in the eye without reflecting their own strangeness back to him. A king has a thousand friends; he cannot be excluded from social events or sniffed at in disdain. I pity him—do you not?”

  “If he stays, he will make us convert!” cried the sciopods, snapping their stockings in consternation. “He wants to make the al-Qasr into a church and we will all crawl around begging forgiveness for who knows what!”

  Fortunatus shrugged his great, shaggy shoulders. “And when Gamaliel the Phoenix was queen, she called the al-Qasr an aerie, and set it aflame every hundred years. We rebuilt it, and called it what we pleased. This is the way of government. That is the way of the governed. How could John ask for more than Gamaliel did? Besides, the Lottery is a strange god, and he will likely end up a shoemaker or a lettuce-grocer. You cannot deny a man for what he might do, in circumstances that will almost certainly never occur.”

  I held a long green canopy over my torso with both hands to keep out the sun; a pair of rooks alighted on it, and their weight dragged the warm cloth to my shoulders. I said nothing, but scowled and practiced my verbs silently.

  Regno, regnas, regnat. Regnamus, regnatis, regnant.

  I reign, you reign, he or she reigns over.

  “He cannot take part in the Abir because he has not drunk from the Fountain,” I said loudly and clearly. Ignore me now, I thought, looking at his patchy, wretched head down there on the lower benches. Ignore that.

  A murmur rippled among our folk, and Fortunatus appeared to honestly never have considered that point. He turned to John, who really needed new clothes; his habit looked worse than a cobweb.

  “Are you willing to make the journey?” the gryphon said, his voice clarion in the amphitheater. “You would call it a sacrament. If you drink from the Fountain you would be wholly one of us, bound to our fortunes. You say life in your world is brief—would you reject eternity?”

  John said nothing. Finally: “Life everlasting can come only through God. There is no life but in Christ. I cannot, Fortunatus. I can never repay your kindness to me, but that is too much. My God could never forgive me.”

  “Then it’s settled,” I said, not bothering to hide the blade in my voice. “He will die in forty years or so. No need for an Abir.”

  Fortunatus had no answer to that, but looked at me with grave, sorry eyes. We were not close in those days, not like Hadulph and I, or even Qaspiel. He thought me bitter and vicious, and perhaps I was.

  Forgive me, husband. I love you now, but then you were so cruel to me.

  “Wa
it,” called John, and held up his hands, still scarred and pink from the desert. Grisalba chewed a vanilla bean, bored. It jutted smartly out of her mouth. “Wait,” he said again. “I came here seeking the tomb of St. Thomas, and I have not found it. My memory is still sore, but I remember that. I wish to go out into the wilds of Pentexore and find it still—I cannot truly answer any question put to me until I am satisfied that it is or is not here. Let me go, give me a sack of food, a wineskin of water, perhaps even a companion or two, and when I return ask me again. Too much newness makes a man dizzy. I cannot think.”

  Qaspiel folded and unfolded its long bluish hands in distress. Its wing-tips flicked back and forth.

  “How will you find it, John?” The anthropteron said. Its voice quivered with such intense desire, a desire I knew so well: to give no offense. This is one of our chief motivations, and I realized then that John did not at all understand why we behaved in such unfailingly kind fashion toward him, no matter what bizarre rituals he encouraged us to practice. Among the immortal, good manners are as important as bread and water. When we cannot forget anything, courtesy behooves us all.

  “The Lord will guide me, Qaspiel. He will show me the way through the mountains, through the desert, through any trial.”

  A murmur passed through the throng. It was all well and good to learn Latin, but to trust one’s precious body to those mountains, those deserts, with only John’s alien God who very manifestly did not speak or appear or do much of anything? I am not faithless. My mother taught me the secret hymns of the Navel of Heaven, which connects us all. I believe, on good days when it does not rain or freeze, that in my very need that connection will shine, and preserve me. But I also believe in maps, and cartography, and magnetic north, and a good, not too ornery, camel to carry me along. John stood firm, but we saw for the first time that he might not have come from the Rimal unscathed, that his mind might be bruised, half-jellied. The priest could not go alone. He would be killed, immediately.

  Hadulph yawned. Fortunatus held still, a rictus of concentration. Grisalba belched. And I saw my chance. I would not be left out again. He could not ignore me anymore.

  I stood up, so there could be no mistake, and called out clear as prayer: “I will go with you, John. I will protect you and keep you living on this road.” And I will bring a map, I added silently.

  The priest scowled, and I had won. He could not reject me in front of everyone—how small and mean he would look! But Astolfo beside me, my husband of the voiceless love and jaw like a barrel, looked up at me, his eyes filled with loss. “I will come back for you,” I said softly, and brushed the hair from my love’s brow. But we had learned too well to converse in silence. He would not hold me to it.

  Hadulph, in the end, agreed to go as well, and of course Fortunatus. Qaspiel, too, and the little panoti, though many protested that she would be no help and should stay where she could be loved and cared for. She hissed through her perfect, tiny teeth. I looked at Grisalba, but she brayed in laughter. “Not on your life, my decapitated love,” she said, shaking her head.

  All our talk done, the sun threw its golden arms up and surrendered behind the far hills, where we would go, all of us, together, and return nothing like ourselves.

  THE SCARLET NURSERY

  Once, Lamis came to me when the night rung like an old, empty jar, almost dry of dregs. She held out her huge hand, her lip trembling, wanting closeness, afraid to ask, as she was not supposed to be awake, not supposed to trouble her Butterfly when the stars were tucking themselves into bed.

  Lamis, Who Was Only Lonely: Tell me a story, Butterfly. One only for me. Tell me where you come from.

  You ought to be asleep, my lambfleece love.

  Lamis, Who Wanted Something Her Siblings Did Not Have, Something All Her Own: If you tell me, I shall fall asleep.

  A child in need is the worst trap the world can lay.

  Well, I began, here is the truth of it: I am not like you. I was made of other things than street-dust and spices, other things than cities can forge in their endless and wending hearts. My people did not come with the rest upon the Ship of Bones. We dwelt here in the years before bread and salt, dwelt in honeycombed snow, frozen bees crawling in the rafters of the world. You are all foreigners here, even your mother, even those stone men Catacalon dreamed of, but this is my home.

  I am not like you. I sleep curled on the floor of the nursery. I hear the sounds of the palace moving all around me, every one of them: onions chopping in the kitchens, and limes, too, crocus-hearts drying into orange saffron in the scullery. I hear your fathers, all twelve of them, dreaming and snoring. I hear lovemaking above me, the body of the queen moving in the dark. I hear the stones of the walls breathing, the wind slowly wearing them to dust, too slowly to ever see, but I hear it. I hear the lamps being snuffed out, for dawn is coming, and I hear the sound of dawn coming too. It’s like a bell ringing, very long and very low. I know everything that happens in this valley, because I hear it, all the time, every night, every day.

  Listen to me, now. The panotii learned to listen; it is this gift we brought to the city. My sacrifice for those children, the sign of how dearly I loved them and their mother, too—was that all those evenings, all those days, I spoke more than I listened.

  Close your eyes. I can make you like me.

  Once a child was lost in the crags of the mountain which was once called the Axle of Heaven, and also Chomolungma, and also Sagarmatha. She had grey hair though she was a child, not the grey of age but the grey of stone, and her eyes were colorless, prismed like hard crystal. Her name is recorded, and though all things written down are flawed, we believe this: the child without pigment in her eyes was called Panya. Her family loved her, we think. We hope that she was loved, that she slept near a warm yellow horse with a soft nose that nuzzled her when she dreamt of fire. It is pleasant to think so.

  But the snow took her mother and the ice took her father and the child clutched the stones with blue fingernails, her milk-teeth chattering, her lips wracked white. And yet she climbed upward, for the child listened, and in listening she heard a music the color of bridal flowers—the closer you get to the heavens, the more jumbled are all things of earth. Music has color, stones have voices, smells have weight and taste. Having no one to scold her and tell her to come down like a good girl, Panya clawed from crag to crag. The music played to her, and only to her, who could listen so well in the white shadows cast by death.

  By the time she finally reached the lip of the world and the peak of the great mountain, Panya had grown up. But she had eaten only twelve frozen rice stalks in all her years of growing, so only her eyes had grown large. She was pale as a diamond worm, and wound her arms around the stone spires of that place that are not unlike the copper spires of this place—and she found there the source of the music, still fainter than whispering, and it covered her with love the color of a horse in the darkness.

  Panya had found a Stair.

  The Stair was neither violet nor golden, neither green nor black. It yawned up, taller than she could ever hope to reach, carved for a giant’s stride, and clouds clung to the top. The Stair wound out from the mountain’s peak in a long spiral, and if she squinted in the terrible, freezing sun, she could see the next Stair beginning. At the foot of the Stair Panya stayed, and listened to its music until it filled her up. In time, she gave birth to a son whose eyes had no color, and a daughter, and a son again, until the village of her children dwelt at the base of the Stair, and ate the frozen milk of her body, and listened.

  They listened for so long that their ears grew wide and flowing as sails to catch the quiet, reluctant music of the Stair, and they wrapped themselves in those ears to keep warm, but also to listen to their own hearts. They began to learn, and in learning they began to understand that the Stair is the place where the First Moveable Sphere of the heavens touches the Sphere of Gross Earth. Where the two join nestles our village, which is truly a monastery, and all of us who are brothe
rs and sisters listen there, to the music of that meeting, and to each other, and to ourselves.

  I was born there, in the village of Nimat, which contains the Stair as some villages contain a lovely little square with a statue or two, and I supped at the sound of snow falling.

  And as she fell down into sleep I told Lamis, the smallest of them, that in the morning I would wake her and her siblings and give them bread brushed with cream and yellow fruit because Lamis liked yellow best, even though Houd preferred violet. I would light the red tapers in the evening, and set out roasted meat and celery-leaves and salty soup, so that they would grow strong and clever. And I would tell them all the things I knew, so that they would learn to listen like Panya, like me. We lived in a city full of spangles and distractions. I opened their ears and curled into your palms.

  I sang the story of myself, which is also their story. Listen, I whispered to her. Become like the panotii, who alone have heard the evening ablutions of the stars.

  Lamis, Who Was Nearly Sleeping: You are so light, Butterfly. I can hardly feel you on my hand. It’s like you’re made of wind.

  THE WORD IN THE QUINCE

  Chapter the Sixth: in Which Three Tales Are Told Concerning the Nature of Love, and a Very Lovely Country Is Crossed.

  A parade of well-wishers followed us onto the long, thin road out of Nural, tossing tortoise-flowers and guava-seeds and wet green rice over our heads in blessing, ringing copper bells, stamping hooves and hands and feet and singing traveling songs, lascivious songs, any song of which they all knew the chorus. Once a throng of jangling dervishes spun so fast their bells flew off like sparkling blossoms. They sang my name: John, John, John. It sounded foreign and lovely in their mouths. Finally, all had gone still and they all stood, simply waving goodbye until we vanished over the rills.