done, without a wave of blink before the God. The point then circled on each breast, a circumference a little larger than each small erect nipple. The palms were cut, then the knife held two handed; its iron point drenched of blood, pointed straight to the slay. An appearance of an amputated rose.
She standing rigid. Swaying. Life blood clothing her legs, her arms, her belly in a crimson sheen, dark and light in beginning swirls of congealing flow. She chanted in a high pitching reach as delirium became more and more, and even the convulse of prophesy began faint. She swayed in tiny circles from the ankles, the knife blade moving in a small continuous revolution. Still, the eyes remained open to her larger soul hung in a sky gorged by the fire to pure glass.
"She is the god. I am she. She is the god. I am god. Worship child. I am child. Blood is she. I am blood. I am the blood things. Blood of I. Knife and Cunt. Instruments of god. Knife and Cunt.I am Knife. I am Cunt. blood is ..... knife
..... she ..... God ...........................I.
The swaying was faltering in rythum as the knife circles grew larger. Her eyes no longer were full open, the eyelids began struggling to close over the heat of her vision. All around her was the blood smell. Two vultures had scented it and circled between her and the sun.
Her mind gathered their moving specks. Her lips had ceased any chant, the blood had slowed a little, death hovered in the air closer and closer.
Her mind welcomed the reach of these hands, the soft black fingers of Sun-Mother. Downward to her, to seek the touch of her flesh, to lift her into the womb drenched in living and cool away the death air upon her skin. Closer came the hands; she had no fear only a stance of will to hold eyes, body open that she may welcome the Mother as a worthy child. Courage of knife and womb for the journey back to her.
The combined flail of the twin vultures, talons would have torn her face, throat to shreds on impact. But in the split second before impale, two jackals streaked from under stone. One leaped at the vultures to falter their intent, one collided full into the girl's back. The blow sprawled her out of claw's grasp only a wing spread slapped her face. She spun and landed upon the sand prostrate. The caking of it upon her wounds slowed the blood flow even as the jackals persisted in driving the frustrated screeching of ravenous away.
Unconscious for a hour or so, she awoke in a fierce throb of heat and head. Barely alive for blood loss and thirst, she managed to raise up to a squat and open her eyes.
Lucid had returned and doubted the small vague forms circled around her on the sand. As the shadows grew clearer, apprehension tightened at her waist.
Ten jackals sat in a haunched stillness, their eyes fixated on her face, their ears poised forward, only the long hair tufts at their ears stirred gently in the moving air.
Her eyes moved to the sand where the knife layed a yard away, cast out from her sprawl. Her hand began an inch towards it, without a tremor for perception, as if the wind was bending a stalk, a flex without unnatural intent.
But small hunters have an eye keen upon the minute. The jackal closest to the knife rose and trotted to it. A flick of jaw downward and it held the knife, turned to the girl. Their eyes gathered between each, the girl felt a strange sense of homage came stir at her heart. The jackal came to her and dropped the knife at her hand before returning to its rank.
The meaning borne in this seemed beyond even a Desert Child's comprehendsion. An unnatural faith or a supernatural force; hunters kneeled as if at prayer upon prey; yet something of it brushed at her soul in the wide horizons opened by her near death.
Some response, some acknowledgment drifted to her mind, something to break the haunt of greedy open look above closed jaws. Even in the abnormal, the normal attempts intercourse; as if to stall for a time of adjust or retreat.
She tried to ask 'what do you want' but the words issued only as a croak dried in the long parch of her throat. She wavered for strength, lost its grasp and slumped faint again. Three jackals left the circle, the rest remained.
A few minutes passed, the sun inching in the sky as a like a fire hovers in its full rage. A damp nose prodded her cheek, stirred her eyelids to fight endless collapse; they dragged her shallow breath back around the veiled darkness.
The jackal sat very close, its eyes hinting, taunting of some message that could not be spoken outside a language of body, of unspoken movement.
Another jackal barked, startled her. It rose and came to the closer jackal. Its snout close to the first, as if a kiss, its tongue darted to the lips of the first. It was then she saw the drops dewed of the lower lips, below eyes almost shouting the secret it held.
Comprehending, she cupped her hands and held them before the jackal.
The mouth opened showing a sheen of damp pin sharp teeth, behind those a pink tongue pooled in a water held by the mouthful. The jaw tilted downward and the liquid flowed to her hands.
She sucked at her hands till parch dry again.
To be refreshed again, again by a second a third jackal.
Then another came with the fresh blood carcass of a desert bird. This she devoured, before her accompaniment of serving audience; entrails and flesh; blood colouring her lips; bits of down flowering her breasts.
Thus in that brief time of blood and illusion of natural and unnatural speech, of mystic riding the winds of desolate, of service bloody in endless wounded eyes and womb that the woman defined her conflagration of self-worship, of faith to the Blood-God of Creation. Of Death, the merciless and her creator gave her blessing of life and of the jaws of frozen in the black shine of jaws descending. Born by hawks, dark, fetid and endless from its starve, painted from the night's breath. A breath but this worship was to be fed, the faith of woman-god was the endless vision canted through the red pools.
To chisel of stone the blood words of love, of child, of hate, of loss pain tearing as an umbilical cord attached, dragged endless by the beast furies of death. Such that a woman moves ever the very earth itself, a great stone wrenching to the roots of her womb as she wanders purpose; calls with vision into the hollow of retracting footsteps, bemoaning but unshedding this last Secret no man can know.
To smash the poems upon the earth dust or contorted brows of death, of anti-god where Child is ravished where love is not passed like a blessed cup filled with sun.
She would kill. Kill the transgressors, the two limbed snakes who dared rear from the cities shadow and spit into the sacred alter of Desert.
She would save. Save the gazelles, the broken nosed herds who had plucked themselves from the ring before the knifes of fat hands could drink of their cries. Who had wandered to Desert as a Child gropes for the alley beyond the heels of wine slobbered rage. She found them and huddled their bleeding into the mountains; a garden very high in the mountains where flowered much hope, a new village of people...not just men. Where a greater humanity flowered.
Yet, also, flowers have a cycle too.
He spoke into the end of her story just as the foothills were rounded at their feet "So this haven of village has gathered a more gracious limb than the usual grasp of man in a cramped melee?"
She halted and turned her tears into his gaze "It was so a time yet abomination is not sole of a thing rotten in the night's arms but goes deep deep into even the most delicate of eye like the
stamen drenched in honey. Even the most brilliant fire has a shimmer of shadow above it, even the purest candle of heart-kind bears the wick of man darkly in its center."
"But why is it so? What breeds such impossibility that men cannot shed from their mirrors all skins of fear and harbour uniqueness into a vessel of change?"
She shook her strands of hair in a slight tremble of wind and turned to their aim. Her hand gestured for his follow as she replied "I do not know. Years of this hunt yet I do not know. Perhaps it is that they die. And know the intimacy of that death. And drag it behind their will the way an oxcart wheel squeaks a haunt of pursue behind the slumbering sway of dumb. Knowing they cannot flee its harness, perhaps
they hold eternity in folded ears.
Or perhaps in their believe, they first did find Worship. Worship of Self but their ears pained to its continuous roar of sacrifice, as if like a trumpet they dwelled too long at its mouthing glories not to the task of a small throat
out the belly of wisdom. And thus, fell to the mumblings of faith, as all faith is the mere blind of gropings lost to worship but lingered of believing memories. The present prostrate as a faint past. Faith is to worship as stone is to vain. Those who fear the bleed, those who hesitate at the banks of flood become only the faithful. Their sprinkles of absolution mock the immersions of worship.
Believers. Perhaps there are no true or false believers. Only believers. Those who scurry only in faith have no throat large for wild drench song but rather remain a dry whisper; a hollow skin weekly watered and easily scattered by the heel of the Sun."
He replied "But it has been said that faith alone will move mountains."
She stopped again, her hands groped his two shoulders, her voice spoke from her belly drawing inward. "Indeed, Man-Beggar, so it is so! But what pray are the mountains the faithful humble to, turn to in eyes beseeching against lives stumbling into wide earths. Worship is the mountain. We, who worship we, we are their mountains! They pray and we come upon them, dwell and move among them. That faith, that faint cry
The Seven Days of Wander Page 75
