Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 104

by Kressel, Matthew

  “If you really, truly wanted to dig holes and eat dirt, it wouldn’t be so hard, now, would it?” the tiger retorted. Then it looked up at me, and said, “Well, I can’t eat someone I’ve had a conversation with, so you go on back, now. I saw some starving people climbing up the mountain: if you follow them, you might even learn how to survive out here . . . ”

  Then he departed through the trees, blending into the background until his silhouette suddenly disappeared from view.

  I rose from the ground.

  After following the mountain ridge for a while, I encountered the group of climbers the tiger had described. I joined them, blending in as best I could; not a soul in the group addressed me, or even seemed to notice me—or pay attention to one another, for that matter. Nobody even commented on my indigo skin or my xanthous eyes. Among them were folk with folded spines, twisted faces, legless or armless, carapaced like sea-creatures, or crawling upon four feet.

  The climbers eventually split into threes and fives and entered a series of caves. When I followed them inside, I found people lying asleep in one anothers’ arms. They seemed to have chosen to hibernate through the cold, barren years, rather than starve. Some spun cocoons, silkworm-like, and others grew thin membraneous coverings, like the diaphanous skin that bundles fishes’ eggs together. There were also people covered with coats of white fur. Those who couldn’t change so quickly, or handle such a rapid metamorphosis, died and became prey to the ants, joining the cycle of digestion and nutriment to live on in a different form within that cycle. I tried to find a spot empty of people, and finally settled between the roots at the foot of a great tree. I gathered grass around me and fashioned a bed from it, and then I rolled myself around and attempted to hibernate.

  Winter came, and my starvation continued. Struggling, I attempted to subsist on soil alone, but I couldn’t do it. I tried to hibernate, but always woke; now sleeping, now waking again. Eventually, I was able to sleep for a few days in a row, then four, and finally I was able to slumber for a week to ten days at a time.

  During the winter I shed my skin. My body, failing under the hardships of my new environment, seemed of its own accord to have decided that some sort of “adjustment” was necessary: radical changes occurred in my skeletal structure and the placement of my vital organs. I passed out and woke again several times more, as my skin fell from my flesh. When I finally climbed out from my moult, and looked back, the ghastly husk still looked all too horribly human. As for me, I found I had grown a smooth, serpent-like skin and a long lizard’s tail. I wept briefly for my lost humanity, but soon I regained my calm. My body had taken this reptilian form in order to best ensure my survival, I supposed: the wisdom of the flesh outweighs all the reason of the human mind. It understands that survival is more crucial than a man’s dignity or pride. I turned and devoured my abandoned human skin, a feast of precious nutriment for my new body.

  When spring arrived, and edible grass began to sprout at the mouth of the cave, I woke up from my slumber and crept outside. Then, I realized that I was the only one who had survived from this long, terrible winter. A few others had perished outside, taking the form of human-shaped rocks and trees, all entangled together in a solemn tableau. Respectfully, I performed a ceremony before them: they, at least, were noble enough to prefer becoming soil to losing their human shape.

  After that, I dwelled in the forest, crawling upon the ground and eating grass. My jaw soon became powerful, the better to chew on the tough grass, and I developed a sort of jutting snout, as well. My ears grew pointed, because of how I pricked them up at every swaying of the brush nearby, and my palms hardened as my limbs shortened to suit my body. When I could no longer use my fingers, horns sprouted from my skull; they began as small nubs on my head, but soon it branched out like the antlers of a male deer. These horns were invaluable in the battles I fought with other beasts over food, and for striking trees to coax them into reluctantly letting drop their ripe fruit.

  In the winter of that year, I shed my skin once more. I discovered my entire body to have completely changed to the dull greenish color of the forest. I wondered whether living in a desert, or on a rocky mountain, might perhaps help me to maintain my human pigmentation, but the proposition seemed useless to me. My desire to go unseen was so great that my body would surely be inscribed with the camouflaging patterns of the pebbles, if I lived upon a rocky mountain.

  I looked down at the little nub that remained, down below my belly button, and wondered whether I could even still have sex with a human being. The thought made me laugh and laugh. Even though my bestial transformation was past the point of no return, still I couldn’t abjure this strange wistfulness for my own long-lost form. But someday my brain, too, would undergo its own transformation in capacity and structure. How much longer would I retain my very consciousness, my memories and human intellect? That night, I counted the number of scales that had grown upon my body, and found them—counting both the great and the small ones together—to number eighty-one. The square of nine, I thought: That’s a lucky number.

  After that thought, I began to laugh once more.

  I think it was probably autumn.

  While crawling through the forest as always in search of food, I heard the distant din of horseshoes and barking hounds. When I looked up in surprise, a group of hunting dogs was chasing a small group of purple roe deer toward me. I fled as swiftly as I could, amid the rushing deer, but the hunters mistook me for one of them, on account of my antlers and loosed their arrows at me. One poor deer, struck by an arrow beside me, rolled on the ground and screamed piteously. Its voice was so very human that my heart all but failed me.

  Although I ran myself half-dead, I was neither so fleet nor so clever as the rest of the herd. Eventually, I ended up surrounded by hunting hounds, at the foot of a great tree and unable to move. As I stood there, buffeted by the baying and barking of the hounds, the bushes split apart and people armed with arrows and spears appeared. I stood frozen as I watched a man on horseback leading them forward.

  His face had haunted me everywhere but in my dreams: it was my own uncle. But that wasn’t the reason that I couldn’t move or speak. That was because of his incredible appearance, which had changed so drastically that he was unrecognizable.

  He looked like a giant hunk of meat.

  His bulging pink gut shone with his gluttony, and his peaked nose signified a lifetime with his face buried in food. His almost-shut eyes reflected a near-absolute lack of moral discernment within, and the upward curve of his earlobes, covering his ears completely, reflected his desire to hear nothing at all. The spaces between his fingers had disappeared, because his hands and feet had atrophied, meaning he had attended to none of his royal tasks. Considering how my late father had retained his human appearance even during his prolonged sickness in bed, my uncle’s transformation was truly outrageous. I was simply too shocked and outraged to fear him.

  My uncle directed them to lower their arrows from me, and examined me from snout to tail.

  “What is this beast? Because of the antlers, I thought it was a deer, but its body is such a nasty shade of green. The thing has the tail of a lizard and is covered with scales like a snake’s . . . its arms and legs are like a human’s, but its yellow eyes look like a cat’s. What kind of an omen might this be?”

  A servant hurried forth to his side. His back was bent, as if he were slumped upon on a horse’s back, and his neck bent groundward, as if we were about to topple over at any moment. His appearance had undergone a profound transformation, but I recognized him then as the samu who had once been my true friend. I sensed that he recognized me, too, though he was fighting to look away from me.

  “It’s not unusual to encounter new kinds of creatures, since animals constantly change, adjusting to their environment. However, the reason lineage is so very unstable is because of the instability of this world in which the subjects of Your Majesty live. Nature presents us with monstrosities like this because it
cannot communicate its earnest mind with words . . . which is to renew itself by filling the king with fear and regret. But, if the king cultivates his virtue, this unfortunate omen can be transformed to a lucky one.”

  The listening king’s face quietly turned scarlet.

  “If it’s unpropitious, just tell me that. Or if it is propitious, then tell me that. Telling me it’s an ill omen, but then claiming it could be a good one . . . what sort of a lie is that?”

  Before anyone around could stop the king, he drew the sword at his waist. The sword swayed about, lopping off the heads of the samu and the others near him. Just then, I turned tail and fled. Behind me, innumerable arrows fell amid the barking of the hounds, and I scrambled up the mountain for dear life. When I finally reached a cliff, I looked down at the mighty, meandering river and leaped from the precipice.

  When I struck the water from such a height, I found it as hard as the ground would have been. The river gulped me down whole.

  I learned several facts. One cannot gain wings by jumping down from a cliff only once, and one can’t die easily when one’s body is covered with unexpectedly hard reptilian skin.

  I had hoped so fervently to live without being discovered by people, but when that happened, again someone had died.

  After that, I stayed in the river. My skin, after soaking in the water for so long, festered and began to grow limp, freezing in the cold of the night. This almost killed me several times, but I didn’t dare go back up and onto land. I sincerely hoped that the last strand of my human will might break. I hoped to become a fish or a water snake, and prayed that my human consciousness might be finally drawn out from me completely.

  In the middle of the night, while I lay in the glacially-cold shallows, two turtles poked their heads out from the water simultaneously. When they finally surfaced, I realized they weren’t two creatures, but one turtle with two heads. It must have burrowed into the muddy bed of the river, because it was almost two cheok tall, all told. Fish with red wings flopped and scooted away from it.

  “Why does this land creature shove its head into the water this cold night? It should go back to where it came from,” the turtle said, its voice seeming to echo as the two heads spoke out in unison.

  I opened my frozen mouth to reply: “I have nowhere to go. If I’ve intruded on your territory, I sincerely apologize, but please don’t cast me out.”

  “Every creature has its territory . . . but why would a four-legged beast try to live by breathing water?”

  “If we’re arguing about origins, there are no strict boundaries in lineage. If you’ll admit that your own form and character includes setting foot in both soil and water, then you of all creatures will recognize that all land-creatures once dwelt in water. Recall: every creature derives from a single origin. If dolphins and sea lions are blameless, then how is it that I warrant criticism, even if I’m simply trying to retrace my way back to our origins?”

  “Well, there might be no borders, but a weirdo like you wandering around here is sure to make my prey panic and flee . . . ”

  “I didn’t mean to . . . I only sought to escape discovery by others, but that seems hopeless. But I am anxious to discuss this tendency of creatures to develop an appearance contrary to their desires . . . to share a few days’ discussion on the subject, perhaps . . . ”

  “There’s no need for a few days’ discussion. It’s simple: you just don’t really want what you think you want.” The turtle thrust its two heads toward me, crossing them, and snapped, “Now, scram. If you don’t, I’ll eat you up.”

  “Go ahead and eat me,” I replied. “After I die, I’ll become a water-ghost, and never walk on land again.” Then I shut my eyes.

  When I opened them again a while later, the turtle was gone. Perhaps it hadn’t killed me out of sympathy, or because it wasn’t worth the effort . . . or maybe I just didn’t look very appetizing? I braced myself to bear the watery chill throughout the remainder of the night.

  After some more time passed, the scales upon my skin grew affixed to their places, and my arms and legs diminished gradually, growing tiny. However, somehow they didn’t become fins, but ceased their transformation when they had assumed an avian shape. (I suspected this might have resulted from my leaping into the air from the precipice.) When my arms and legs ceased functioning, my spine and tail stretched longer. It is said that every stage you pass through leaves its indelible mark. Well, the antlers sprouting from my skull didn’t atrophy, and remained; and so did the cat’s-eyes I’d developed so early in my youth, unchanged even now. To learn to breathe water was insuperable, but I did learn to dive for extended periods. And as my arms and legs atrophied further, my beard grew longer and developed a sensitivity like that of insects’ feelers. I lived by feeding on small fish and water plants. I sank to the bottom of the river for days at a time, and lingered in the lake for several months.

  One day, as I rose to the surface to breathe, I came upon a woman doing her laundry. Aside from her nine white tails, she retained a wholly human appearance. I looked at her, uncertain what to do because it had been so long since I’d seen a human being, or worn a human form myself. Seeing her gaze upon me vacantly, I waited for her to scream, to call me a monster and begin to hurl stones at me, but instead she clasped her hands together and bowed deeply before me.

  “What’re you doing?” I asked her.

  I realized my mistake as I opened my mouth. Just as with the tiger, this woman would realize that somewhere in my lineage, there lay hidden a human stage.

  “When the Mystical One came out from the water,” she said, “I saw that It ruled these waters, so I bowed.”

  “You saw wrong. I’m just a profane thing, a parasite in these waters, hiding scared of the human world. Forgive me, I didn’t mean to surprise you.”

  Then I sank down again to the bottom of the lake.

  Several days later, I opened my eyes and discovered some rice-cakes and fruit, water-logged in the depths before me. Little fish rose toward each sinking rice-cake, nibbling upon them. I rose to the surface once more. The nine-tailed woman I’d met before remained by the lake, but glancing about, I saw that she had set blessed water, incense, and a plate of rice-cakes upon a little wooden table, performing an earnest little ceremony while offering devout prayers. Red papers inscribed with petitions drooped from the table, and several more people, perhaps her neighbors, were gathered around her. When she saw me, she leaped up like a thief caught red-handed.

  I balked, stupefied. “What’s all this shit? Didn’t I tell you with my own mouth? I’m nothing more than a mongrel! If you have nowhere to hold your ceremony, go to another lake, or a mountain instead!”

  She said, “The trees are desiccated, and the drought has gone on so long; the grassroots folk have barely any way to find themselves food. Everything is growing and changing so strangely, our farms are falling apart, and our harvests no longer suit the people’s diets. And the king can’t hear us: his ears and eyes have atrophied.”

  “So what do you want from me? I have no power. How can a beast get involved in human affairs?”

  “There must be some reason why nature has allowed you such a sacred appearance . . . but, are you saying everything we humans have hoped for is in vain?”

  I shut my mouth for a moment, before saying, “What you say is correct.”

  I swung my tail, which sent a blast of wind and raised a spray of water, knocking down the incense and sending the bowl of holy water tumbling, to break upon the ground.

  Then I said, “Oh, how long I have lived . . . and every time anyone discovers me, I bring trouble. It’s better I never show myself again.”

  I sank down into the depths once more. When I looked back up, I saw the nine-tailed woman weeping. Cold-bloodedly, I turned my head away, nestling myself into the bottom of the lake, and began to hibernate. The frigid water began to freeze my body, its functions slowing gradually, paralyzing me, until I could feel each of my cells passing into a kind of sl
umber. I no longer felt the passage of time, and my thoughts slowed. I thought, if I was lucky, I might transmute into rock, or soil—like the giants of ancient days.

  At first, it felt like someone knocking on a distant door, but then it became a voice, trying to stir me: “Wake up.”

  I opened my eyes. It was difficult to do so: a host of water plants and marsh snails had attached themselves to my body. But then I saw the two-headed turtle, whom I’d met before, swimming before my own eyes. Somehow he looked much smaller than before.

  “Leave. Soon. The king’s army is here to catch you.”

  I needed a moment to comprehend his words. Then, I recalled that I’d once, long ago, been a human being . . . and a prince . . . and I recalled my blood-relation to the king then, too.

  “Why would the king bother to come and catch me?”

  “Even after you began to sleep, the people continued their ceremonies here. They were praying to you to expel the king and bring them a new one, so he decided to fill in the lake and dig you out from the bottom. Your mind is so slow now; your brain must have metamorphosed. Get out of here, now.”

  In fact, I was surrounded by a din of noise. When I raised my head up, clod after clod of soil fell upon my head. From somewhere came the revolting stink of blood, and a murder of crows were coming and going in a chaos over the lake.

  “Why the crows are squawking like that?”

  “It’s really dreadful. Better you don’t see it,” the turtle said, and then he burrowed into the mud.

  I rose to the surface, in an ominous mood. Even my slightest movement stirred up a whirlpool, sending fish fleeing in surprise. A multitude of water plants and marsh snails dropped from my body. Then, I realized that the turtle hadn’t become smaller; perhaps because of my long slumber, I had become bigger.

  A band of soldiers were gathered near the lakeshore, dumping soil into the water. When they saw me they fell into shocked silence, and ceased shoveling. I also lost my words, and looked at the things embedded in the mud around them: the dead bodies of the villagers who’d held the ceremonies, and the woman lay in a terrible row beside the lake. The nine-tailed woman’s white underskirts flapped back and forth in the breeze, and with each flap of the fabric my reason fell away a little, until finally my mind had gone blank.