The Godling: A Novel of Masalay

by CK Collins

  “I know it well. An excellent institution. But you chose a different course?”

  She flushes. “Wasn’t a lot of ‘choice’ in it.”

  “Interesting.”

  “Not really, no. Politics is all.”

  “Well, you can’t leave it at that, Miss Vidaayit.”

  “Ugly mess. It was when Mrs. Daar lost her coalition. Started with the Jaya building-permit scandals, if you remember all that. Then that rampage of igmaki in Patchil-Kinaat. Then the garbage strikes in South Masalay. Then the Liashe resolution, which I’m sure you remember. Etcetera, etcetera, and the government fell.”

  “I recall, yes.”

  “So the Talid bloc takes over. And for six months it’s a hive in a bonnet. They cram through the ‘Academic Accountability Act’ and their other rubbish. One morning I wake up and my place at Queen’s Mission is rescinded. Just like that.”

  “That couldn’t have seemed fair.”

  “Not something you can expect from that lot, ‘fairness.’ More unfair the better, twist the knife. They pailed tuition remittance for civil servants too — so we couldn’t have afforded Queen’s Mission anyway. Mrs. Daar got the government back, started penning the hogs, but all too late for me. Only choices were the Sagaro schools, Ashma spare me, or Middle Academy.”

  “At that late date, you were able to submit for exam?”

  “My uncle knew someone. Connections, it’s all about connections.”

  Brother doesn’t like her saying that, but it’s the sorry truth of this country. And there was still the need to pass the exam. The academic portion was no concern, but she’d not had a day of religious education in her life, and the section on Ashmanist History and Faith would account for half the score.

  Her mother hastily arranged twice-weekly tutoring from Brother Mikel, who’d recently come to Sutcliffe Estates on first orders. No theologian but knowledgeable enough — and unbothered at being used for test prep. Without evident judgment, he asked a week before the exam how she would respond if she got a question asking about the role of Jesus and Ashma in guiding her life. Eager to return to her lesson on the Av Udaan, she assured him that she’d come up with something.

  Brother Carodai extinguishes his cigarette on the wet grass and deposits the stub in his cigarette case. “Shall we?”

  They set off again and are silent for several minutes, Tchori working hard to match her dean’s pace.

  “A question, dove,” he says as they step over a stream of run-off that’s crossing the path. “Can you tell me how many Ancient Talidic editions of the Av Udaan exist? Original editions, pre-Empire.”

  “Eight. The Kinaat Stele of course, in the High Archive. And seven other fragments.”

  “And the Kinaat Stele is how complete, by best estimate?”

  “Recovered and readable: approximately 70%.”

  “Very good. And composed when, our eight extant fragments?”

  “Anarthaka 1 dated to 1400 BCE, the earliest. The Ghaatasira Stele, other end of the range, 1100 to 1050 BCE. Or 850 BCE if one accepts Tord Sorenson’s dating.”

  “And Sorenson’s dating is . . . ?”

  “Rubbish.”

  “Indeed. Now, we believe, do we not, that the poem existed in oral form for at least a thousand years before the writing of Anarthaka 1? And there is strong evidence of several other editions that did not survive the aeons.”

  “Yes.”

  “It is not fanciful, then, to believe that other editions lie somewhere in Masalay, as yet undiscovered?”

  “One can dream.”

  The sun presses blurry on the thin muslin sky. The day will be hot, but for now the damp chill remains. As they mount the next hill, Tchori feels the clamminess of internal heat meeting cold skin.

  “The discovery of a new Av Udaan,” Brother continues, clearly building toward something, “it would be a great discovery of course. But it would also be an incendiary one, do you agree?”

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “Given the political situation in the country. We live at the equator but are a people at poles. A nation that comes to blows over the wording on street signs. We’ve had teachers lynched over school syllabi. A new Av Udaan with new revelations about the past — it would be exploited, would it not? So many people would approach it not as a source of enlightenment but as a source of ammunition, do you not agree?”

  “I do agree.”

  “And the fights over ownership, can you imagine? Does it belong to the Church? The government? The ‘Talid People,’ the ‘Runai People,’ this or that sect of Que’ist monks? There would have to be violence — could we avoid violence? At the end, what would we have? A transcendent gift perverted, perhaps destroyed, perhaps stolen, perhaps locked in a bureaucrat’s vault. Am I quite mistaken?”

  Carodai’s ire drives him up the current hill with long strides, and Tchori has fallen several paces behind. “No,” she huffs. “This being Masalay, no.”

  “Clearly then: Someone with the great fortune of finding a ninth Av Udaan would need to exercise the utmost care. Not rush headlong but be patient. Take the long view, don’t you agree?”

  “A bit beyond my depth, this.”

  “Better to secure it for another, saner generation than to have it kicked about like a football in this one. Deals must be struck, no matter how distasteful.”

  Tchori halts and waits for him to halt as well. All fine to play with hypotheticals — what Carodai always likes to do, explore what ifs, lament the culture, poke at orthodoxy — but this is something more.

  “No, no.” Her tone is impertinent, but the emotion clenching her throat needs escape. “A new Av Udaan — and conspiring with that monster — to hide — no, no . . .”

  “Try to understand,” he says sadly, “Sidaarik was different then.”

  “Brother . . .”

  “That’s difficult to believe, I realise. But he was a great partner. For a time, truly great. And we had, I’ve told you, astounding luck. We discovered much more than that Av Udaan.”

  “You ought not be telling me these things, Brother.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s treason. You oughtn’t trust me like that.”

  “I see. I see.”

  “It’s . . .”

  “Should we continue walking then?”

  “I prefer to sit at the moment, thanks much.”

  “Very well.” His expression, which she catches at a glance, is unaccountably fond. “There were three of us. I’ve not mentioned Viv yet; she was integral. I am going to tell you, you see.”

  “As you wish.”

  “We were a brilliant team.”

  “Yes, I believe you.”

  “So many discoveries in so short a period. It was difficult, hard work, but so much simply fell into place. And then, gradually, Aarum began to disengage. Viv recognised the implications before I did, she saw where he was heading. I told myself that it was hyperbole, that it was a phase, that he didn’t truly mean the things he was saying. Eventually, though, Viv convinced me that we had to undertake a divorce. And make uncomfortable bargains.

  “Tchori, there is no one in Masalay who detests more profoundly the horror that Aarum has brought to this island. And there is no one with a greater loathing for the ideology of Hilm Hivaa. But I will give Aarum this one credit: he has, these many years, kept his side of the bargain. He possesses some items. We possess others. And we’ve both sides respected certain boundaries. And now — well, I should like to tell you why we’ve come here. And ask your thoughts.”

  “Brother,” she answers with discomfort, “my thoughts are not important.”

  “If I believed that, Miss Vidaayit, we would not be talking. Now, we know from every instance of the Av Udaan that at the dawn of the world, Ashma breathed into a human womb. We know that Oblivion sensed the change. And reacted, as it must always do. Equal and opposite reaction — Newton was right about more than math. And Oblivion became an infection in the minds
of the people. They came to envy the child of Ashma, to feel resentment and hate. And they slew him. We have references to the event in the Kinaat Stele, Anarthaka 1 and 2, and the Ghaatasira Stele, yes?”

  “Right,” she answers without bothering to consult her memory.

  “Now, imagine a ninth version of the Av Udaan. Not perfect. Clearly composed many decades after the Kinaat Stele and the other editions. And with some puzzling inconsistencies in voice. But complete, or nearly so. And in the new text, we have: a description of the death of the divine child. What the fragments only hint at, this version describes. In powerful detail. Concluding with this phrase: Isht akaasht amikuun ataal misthin, in irkaast vaadu bi, ast Ashma kal. Care to have a go at translating that?”

  “No,” she answers, irritated, unable to think. “I’ve only had one year of Ancient Talidic — your seminar.”

  “I understand. Well, you know what akaasht means.”

  “Yes: earth.”

  “Indeed. Between the teeth of the earth, below a dying sky, the blood of Ashma’s son soaked the soil. Perhaps not the most eloquent line in the poem, but there you have it. That phrase, ‘teeth of the earth’ — peculiar, yes? It refers to hills. They are elsewhere described as ‘red.’ And we’re to understand that they numbered three. Further along, we read that the soil became ‘forever barren’ in the field where the child’s blood was shed. Nothing would grow. And not the least vermin or insect could bear to tread that ground.

  “Now imagine a second discovery. In addition to that Av Udaan, but every bit as important.”

  This is too much. She stands and paces.

  “Composed 800 years later in an entirely different tongue. Describing a different event that also takes place at the base of three red, teeth-like hills. That also involves a ‘forever barren’ field and terrible event.”

  A fat worm made homeless by the night’s downpour wriggles over a root. The sun has burst through bright. Tchori folds her arms, avoiding Carodai’s eyes.

  “Now imagine a pair of university students driving in East Anartha when their truck breaks down. In the rain because vehicles always break down in the rain. The two students are hours hiking before someone picks them up. An itinerant dentist, of all things. Try to picture climbing into the back seat of a Ford, soaked through, and then spending hours pressed against a great plaster tooth. Peculiar fellow. He used it as an attraction, for advertising. Imagine that one of these students, the one in the front, has a knack for engaging people in conversation. And that the dentist happens at some point to recall visiting a village in the Far Karsk — distant, very distant — where there are three jagged red hills and a field where nothing, not the least sprout or saldish, will grow.”

  “So that’s why you and Sidaarik came to Rith Idiiye?” Tchori asks, impatient with all the coy language. “You believed it was the place written about in the Av Udaan?” Trying not to sneer and failing in the effort: “You thought you were going to the exact spot where Ashma’s child was murdered however many millennia ago?”

  “That is what Aarum believed. Viv and I had a different theory. It seems more likely that people in this area centuries ago were unnerved by the presence of raw red hills and by a strangely barren field. And, as people will do, they invented a story. The story was a good one. It evolved and migrated. Centuries later, a different people incorporated it into their own story. It is how these things work.”

  “And?”

  “And what, dear?”

  “Brother, why are we here?”

  “Well, evidently that barren field has very suddenly bloomed.”

  “And what might that mean?”

  “Probably nothing. A quirk of botany.”

  “But according to the story?”

  “According to the story — something extraordinary. And something hideous.”

  “As in what?”

  Carodai halts on the hill and raises a hand — the hostile bark of dogs, near but not seen. At the crest, they find themselves looking on a valley of sheep and chimney smoke and three raw hills thrusting jagged from the earth.

  Morning

  Patchil-Kinaat, Masalay

  I can blame Masalay for a lot. But not for all my urges — those bugs were in me before.

  Same with Rika. It wasn’t me that drove him crazy (nice as that would be). The urges got into him and they drove him to a collision and the collision was me.

  With me, there wasn’t much collateral damage to my weirdness. Me and Marcus, what we had was fine, but there wasn’t anything “destiny” about it. The way we met: I was playing pool and eating potato skins at this bar, it’s called the Twelve Spot, and somebody (can’t remember who) introduced us. We found out we worked at the same hospital. We shared more skins, traded whiskey shots, and I kicked his butt at nine-ball. He wasn’t at Todd’s level as far as being a catch. But he was sweet, and he liked me the way I was.

  The shame for him was that I didn’t stay that way.

  * * *

  I shouldn’t have even told him.

  It just didn’t seem like a big deal. Just something to make conversation over. He was always making fun of me for thinking my dreams were more interesting than they actually were. So it was funny to tell him that my dreams had gone away.

  First he thought I was joking. Then he thought I was exaggerating. But I was like, no I haven’t dreamt anything for weeks. Zero. His theory then was that I was still having dreams, I just wasn’t remembering them. But that wasn’t it, and it just kept getting worse. It wasn’t just not-dreaming, it was sinking to this all-dark place where life can’t get.

  Getting therapy is not really me, but I started getting so freaked. My insurance gave me some preferred-provider psychologists to choose between. There was one guy who was right on Bryn Mawr Avenue, just like ten minutes from the hospital. So I went. God what a schmuck.

  The vibe I got from him was just total boredom. “There can be any number of causes for sleep disruption,” he goes in this Boston accent that bugged the crap out of me because, you know, we weren’t in Boston. I tried explaining it wasn’t a “sleep disruption” — I was sleeping just fine. The problem, I told him, was that falling asleep felt like dying. He clicked his pen and said to try soft music and melatonin.

  That was late January or so. Then came Valentine’s Day. Marcus — he was so good to me — he got us a place in the Poconos, skiing and all that. Me on skis should be illegal, but it was fun.

  On the ski lift with Marcus was the first time I smelled it. The first time I was aware of it, at least (I think it probably was with me before). This intense, really intense, feeling of familiarity. Marcus said he couldn’t smell anything. It pissed me off. I told him there must be something wrong with his nose. I was kind of a bitch about it.

  I’ve always thought how smells can be more powerful than anything else. You pick up a whiff of something and it takes you so fast back to a time in your life — you’re right back in the locker room at that YMCA camp, you’re right back in the cafeteria at middle school and the smell of peanut butter and bananas.

  It can be overpowering. Then it fades. You go on with your day. Maybe you remember the smell, but it doesn’t follow you. It doesn’t stalk you around the ski slope and back to the lodge. It doesn’t follow you home so that you smell it all the way through the sauna, all the way through dinner and the shower and into bed, the smell heavier than your boyfriend on top of you.

  In the morning, the abyss spits you out and the smell is stronger than before. There’s nowhere it’s coming from. It doesn’t smell like anything else has ever smelled. It’s not even a “smell” at all — or an “aroma” or an “odor” or any of those words. Pinching your nose does nothing, nothing does anything. It stalks you all day, it’s stronger than coffee and sweat and the blowing snow on the mountain top. It’s in your lungs and parts of your brain that you didn’t know you had. Then comes the second night and Marcus can’t understand what your deal is. Why you’re shoving him like that. W
hy you’re hitting him like that and scratching him like that, why you’re thrusting so hard and hating him so much for not smelling right.

  I controlled myself better after that night. But the smell didn’t go away. And what it put into me, those urges, just got more fierce. Marcus tried to like it — his girlfriend the sudden nympho. He said I was turning into a dominatrix and we joked about that. I made myself joke about that.

  It got to be that the smell was a noise too and had cutting edges. Like a bird trapped inside me. A flock of flapping birds pecking to get out.

  Me and Marcus on the bed, me and Marcus in the parking lot, me and Marcus every place I could trap him — me trying to squeeze enough milk from Marcus to feed the birds.