A Dirge for Preston John

  “I’ll wager it’s a ‘he,’” the snake-creature smirked, and pawed at my clothes. I shrieked a little, and immediately felt ridiculous.

  “Don’t make assumptions, Grisalba,” the red lion scolded her. “We know nothing about its people. It could be female, or hermaphrodite, like the tensevetes. If it wants to tell us, it will. Until then, use your manners, and the neuter pronoun.”

  “Who will look after it?” said the gryphon—for my sodden brain could at least recall that, swirling with old pictures drawn in delicate detail in margins, wings of gold paint, eyes of red. “Someone has to claim it.”

  I tried to slow my breath, but my body pounded and shuddered horribly. I needn’t have worried. No one spoke up for me.

  “It will have to be me then,” the gryphon sighed with a pert nod of his great head. “I claim this lost beast as my foster until such time as it can take care of its own damned affairs. Witnessed?”

  The others acclaimed, and it was done. I belonged to a gryphon.

  “Thomas,” I whispered. It was all I could hold onto, the terrible vision of him beneath the sphere. “Take me to St. Thomas, I know he is here! Leave me be, demons, I want no traffic with you!”

  The snake, whom the others called Grisalba, sidled up to me and draped the tip of her tail over my waist, easing lower, as her wanton nature dictated, for I could already tell she had an irredeemably lascivious aspect. She lifted her finger and I watched as a drop of liquid formed on it, like a raindrop. It glistened green, then gold, then rosy as it shifted through the rainbow, searching for the right shade. The succubus looked thoughtful, as if it cost her great effort. Then she seized my mouth as if I were a babe refusing to take his medicine and thrust her finger into it. The liquid coursed into me and I groaned—the pleasure of its taste took me fiercely, and I could not help but suckle greedily at her, ashamed, but overwhelmed by the thickness of it, the milky richness. This is my body, I thought wildly, this is my blood.

  And then the drug struck my brain like a fist wrapped in rose petals and I knew no more. Her laughter chased me down the black stair of sleep.

  I woke in a warm darkness, with savory smells around me. As my eyes crinkled open, I saw that I lay on a long plinth within a cavern whose ceiling soared up into the distance. Some clever mason had carved shelves and alcoves all through the cave, up to its highest cranny, and many surfaces were laid about with rich furs and piles of scrolls and books. As my vision cleared I gasped, for the walls of the cave were all of gold, and the sheer wealth of those humble steps could have purchased a papacy. Over a pleasant fire the hulking gryphon stood sentinel, stirring a pot with an iron spoon clapped in his beak. I smelt onions and wild beets, harsh, bitter herbs, and even pepper—priceless pepper, for an invalid’s supper! Dimly, I remembered collapsing into fields of the precious stuff, but then I had been too sun-maddened to marvel.

  “I can’t hold your head and let you sip it like a baby,” the gryphon growled. “Anatomy is unkind. You will have to feed yourself.”

  And so I did, ravenous, desperate. The beast directed me, still shaky, to a pot of yoghurty beerish stuff, and my gratitude swelled so great I could not give it voice. He introduced himself as Fortunatus, and the name seemed to me Latin and home enough to bring tears to my eyes. I ventured some words:

  “We have tales of creatures like you, where I come from.”

  His barrel chest lifted a bit in leonine pride. “Is that so? Well, I am a fascinating individual. I suppose that is understandable. What do they say?”

  I considered. My duty to minister and witness warred with my desire for more soup, and shelter against the demon with eyes on her breasts. I felt stronger already, and the nightmare of the sandy sea receded in the face of my own name, my own self returning.

  “We say that you are like Our Lord Jesus Christ, part strong earthly lion, which is like the flesh, part soaring eagle, which is the divine soul. You are a symbol of the mystery of God.”

  The gryphon blinked at me, his limpid golden eyes gleaming with concern in the firelight. “I am Fortunatus. I am not a symbol of anything.”

  “No, what I mean to say is, God’s wisdom dwells in every living thing, and in your people He has chosen to illustrate His Divine Nature.”

  “My people are gryphons. Not illustrations or symbols. It is not a simple thing to be a gryphon, but you are over-complicating it.”

  I held up my hands. “Let me begin again. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” Fortunatus settled himself by the fire, kneading the fur rugs on the floor and after a long feline stretch, dropping his hindquarters abruptly down.

  “Which word?” the gryphon purred pleasantly.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, there are many words. Which one is God? Love? Joy? Quince? Sandal? Blue? This is very interesting!”

  “Christ is the Word of God, but Christ is God, and God is Christ. But Christ was also a man.”

  “Like you?”

  “Not like me. Christ was the Son of God. God incarnate, born of a virgin, died of crucifixion, ransoming us all from death.”

  Fortunatus bent his feathered head. “Forgive me, John. I do not quite see how death can ransom death.”

  “Your questions make me tell it all backwards! Before Christ comes Eden and Eve and the serpent, and Abraham and Sarah and Isaiah and many other very important things. The whole history of the world.”

  “Please tell me about it, John. I enjoy stories.”

  I sweated in the cave. I was not meant for such practice. Books and quiet prayer, study, reflection. I have never seen conversion come from words alone, and I have not the heart for those other tools. “God… God dwelt in the Void, until he made all the beasts of the field and the fruits of the earth, and he caused the water to be separate from the land, and great mountains to rise, and oceans to swell, and set the stars in their firmament.”

  “Why?” The beast had a heart like a child, never able to let a sentence lie unworried.

  “What?”

  “Why did God make the… beasts,” the word seemed bitter in Fortunatus’ mouth. “In your opinion. Why did he make the water and the mountains? Why did he do it then and not at another time? Was the Void unsatisfactory in some way?”

  “I… I could not say. I could not possibly say.” I was accustomed to wrangling my faith with men who all knew the same things I did, who shared a kind of tribal knowledge, a common table, and no one of them would have asked if the Void was not good enough for God. Yet he required an answer, and no older priest would appear and save me. “Perhaps He was lonely.”

  For a moment I could not continue—a dreadful sorrow came over me, in this place, this golden hovel, without a friend or a face anything like my own. When I continued on, I felt the roughness of my voice in my throat. “Finally, He created Man, in his own image, and called him Adam, and this was the greatest of His endeavors. He breathed the living soul of His Divine Love into Adam, and set him in a wonderful garden full of every good thing, every green and growing plant, every proud and noble beast, and gave him dominion over all of them, and made his son to name each flower and beast according to their nature. This place He called Eden. Out of Adam’s rib He fashioned Woman, and called her Eve, and bade them eat and drink and enjoy every thing in the garden, save one tree, which was the Tree of Knowledge, and that God said was His and His alone.”

  “What kind of tree was it?”

  “Some say apple; some say fig. It isn’t important.”

  “I’m sorry, but I must disagree. The Tree of Knowledge sounds like an astonishing thing. I would give very much to know its botanical properties. Did it speak? What sort of knowledge did it own? Was it a book that gave it life, a stone, a corpse? Was it perhaps some earlier attempt of your God’s to incarnate, and upon his death, did he become the tree you speak of? Or perhaps one of his lieutenants—I assume your God has them?”

  “Angels,” I said numbly. “Like men, but pure,
sexless, winged.”

  Fortunatus furrowed his owlish brows. “I think you must meet my friend Qaspiel. It is also sexless and winged.”

  I admit it, I snorted in disbelief. The spices of the soup pricked my nose.

  Fortunatus hurried on, warming to his topic. “Perhaps one of these angels perished and from its body a tree of perfect, sexless apples grew, garlanded with wings and leaves, the most beautiful tree!”

  I thought of the sheep-tree, the siege-elms. “Fortunatus, I am afraid that where I come from, a dead thing planted remains dead. There are no living trees like the ones you speak.”

  “Oh, your pardon, John. I did not mean to be prideful or boast of my land over yours. But you cannot deny the tragedy of your home. I must take you to see my wife’s tree, and my daughter’s. Then you would know how death may be ransomed.”

  Not knowing how to reply to this madness, I continued my scripture as though he had not interrupted me. “But Eve was a woman and therefore possessed within her the seed of wickedness, and the serpent, who was Satan, also dwelt in the Garden, came to her and tempted her to eat of the forbidden tree. Because of her weakness, she did so, and with her skills of seduction convinced Adam to eat as well.”

  Fortunatus worried at his feathers in distress, his beak clicking. “What ugly things you think,” he whispered. “How sorry I feel for you.”

  I cleared my throat. My hands shook slightly. “God cast them out in punishment, and made them ashamed of their nakedness, and thrust a flaming sword in the gates of Eden, so that they could never return. Thus sin entered the world, and this trespass is the reason for all terrible things we must endure, for we live in the fallen lands that were the punishment of Adam and Eve, and outside the kingdom of God there can be no perfect peace.” I coughed and reached for more of the milky, acidic beer. “But the Lord Our God did not abandon His people.”

  “It rather seems he did. Why did he not forgive them? A parent who does not forgive a child’s first offense is a tyrant. If I did not clap up my girl and cuddle her the first time—or even the seventh!—she pulled my tail or ate my portion of cameltail soup as well as her own, what sort of father would I be? If she spoiled her coat with mud and instead of dropping her in a clear pool and laughing while she splashed I cast her out of my house and called her… all those things you called Eve that I am too polite a beast to repeat? How could I forgive myself? And if she suffered, out there, because I did not yield, how could I live?”

  “God’s ways are not the ways of mortals,” I said weakly. The great gryphon started some other protest, but I held up my hands; I prayed for the space to finish. I felt it best to skip over the many generations of Israel, since the Creation found so little audience with him.

  “Much later, He sent to us His Son, whose very existence is a mystery no human can fathom. The Child’s being was part Flesh of his Holy Virgin Mother, and part Divinity, the Word of God. God walked among us, incarnated.” I smiled ruefully. “Where I come from we do little but argue about that last. I came here fleeing a war over it, seeking something holier, more direct, than scriptural debate on the point of a sword.” I shook my head, trying to get back on course. “Our Lord, who was called the Christ, had twelve disciples, who were great men, but not divine. But the earthly powers did not understand Him, and what they did not understand, they feared. He was crucified, and died in agony for all of us. In His death He redeemed us from the sin of Eve, and three days later He rose again, to break bread and promise the coming of the end of earthly life and the beginning of the kingdom of Heaven. He purchased for us Paradise and life everlasting at the right hand of God.” My heart quieted, as it had in the chapel when I first took my vows. As I finished my witness, I felt the long shadows of those summer windows grow within me, and a gentle calm. “Perhaps God could not forgive Himself,” I said softly, “and suffered for His own sins as well.” This was heresy, no doubt and no argument, but I was moved to utter it.

  Fortunatus said nothing. He flicked his tail back and forth.

  I pressed forward. “It is the tomb of one of those twelve disciples I seek. Thomas the Doubter, Thomas the Twin.”

  The gryphon frowned deeply. His pelt quivered. “John, I do not wish to offend you. I have little experience with foreigners, nor their religions. But you are wrong.”

  I laughed. Never had a heathen presented me such a firm and simple rejection. Fortunatus laughed a little himself, a throaty, purring thing.

  I felt my balance return to me. “Christ did not come among you, and that makes things difficult. That is the nature of faith, to believe what you did not directly experience.”

  “Oh, no, that’s not what I mean. I believe you, about Christ and his twelve brothers, and crucifixion and all that. But I already possess life everlasting.”

  “Impossible. You spoke of a dead wife.”

  The gryphon shrugged, a rippling of his broad muscles. He cocked his head as a bird will do, and thought for a moment. “Come with me,” he said abruptly, and snatched my collar, tossing me onto his broad back like a doll. I held onto his coarse bristles, and he left his cave, stepping into starlight and leaping up into the air. I squeezed my eyes shut; I could not breathe. I could not look down. It was not a long flight, but I felt I might vomit my heart onto the gryphon’s back. I shook when he set me on the ground again, my whole self trembling, trying to fold into my heart the singular experience of flight.

  A tree stood stately and tall before us. It possessed a thick black trunk, twisted and looped, and many fringed, furry leaves of some indeterminate color—starlight turns all things silver. Among the leaves, dozens upon dozens of golden eyes opened and blinked like fireflies, some small, some large and clear.

  “This is my wife,” said Fortunatus thickly. He nuzzled the tree with his feathery forehead. The eyes closed in warm recognition. “I hoped for a face, a mouth to speak to me and give me comfort. But sometimes the world treats us without grace. Certainly death may occur, if one is uncareful, or fate unkind. But it is easily gotten over, and so long as I am lucky enough not to crack my skull, I will live forever. So can you, if you stay here, without any recourse to your Christ. I think that more or less spoils your whole story, and in truth I am not sorry, for it had rough and ungenerous aspects.” He stretched his paws and regarded them with interest, avoiding my shocked gaze. His voice grew infinitely gentle. “John, you must see that there is no place for me in your story. At best, I would be a beast of the field, would I not? And never given a choice to obey or defy? Never presented with temptation, only part of a dominion. And so I know you think you speak the truth, but it cannot be so. I refute it with my very being. I breathe, I speak, I think, I dream. I grieve, and love. And I live forever. My mate, who was my body and self, died in a storm that ripped whole forests into dust, and I will never cease mourning her until the end of everything that is me, nor for our cub who died with her. Am I less than you, who you say stand master over me?”

  My mind raced itself and got nowhere. I could not stop looking at the tree of eyes, the evidence of a life far beyond my comprehension. Now, I can admit it: I was looking for the trick, the mechanism by which the beast had fooled me. I could believe in a gryphon, but not in this tree, not in life everlasting on earth, without God.

  “I… I cannot say. I did not know such things as you lived, before now. Am truly I to believe there is no death here, or simply that demons will lie, after their nature?”

  “I am not a demon. We love our religions, John, just as you do, and it is such a pleasure to convert a friend to one’s own faith, isn’t it? But I think you will find few buyers here, when your story needs such work, being ignorant of more or less everything important in the history of the world.”

  It came clear to me in that moment, like a seed of light sending out leaves within me. I was not lost. God had sent me here, to complete the work of his saints, and show these marvelous creatures the glory of God, to lead them to salvation and joy. I nearly gasped with the strengt
h of my revelation. The beer came up in my throat, in such turmoil dwelt my flesh. I would simply have to rise up, become the missionary I had never been, find somewhere in this kingdom so full of miracles the golden tongue I never possessed. I would learn their ways and fit them into Scripture. Like Paul, I would interpret the Word for them, so that they could come to God.

  You may smile at me now, you who read this, who know how it all came out. Who know what a fool I was.

  I began, as my Greek teachers would have, questioning and learning, learning so as to teach: “You tell me, then, how was the world made?”

  Fortunatus rolled his tongue in his beak and clacked it twice.

  “A gryphon’s heart beats at the center of the world…”

  THE CONFESSIONS OF

  HIOB VON LUZERN, 1699

  I cried out in protest, in agony; the sound ripped from me. No, no, no!

  The page below the gryphon’s last words had gone brown and soggy, all its text rotted away. My fingers came away stained with the mush of the book, rich-smelling and soft. Lord, why would you punish me so? Why did you give me these riches and snatch them away so cruelly? What did I do to offend You? I admit, I am old; I am not fast enough, I cannot outrun putrefaction. But have I not been a good man, Your servant?

  If what John recorded was so, and this strange country possessed all things without corruption and in their fullness, it certainly did no longer, for the rot veined through Hagia’s beautiful letters even as I watched.

  It would have been heresy. Of course. How could it be anything else, the foundational myth of a gryphon? But I felt a hole form in my heart where that tale might have been. Did I believe that Prester John had held discourse with a gryphon? I could not say. I certainly countenanced that such beasts might exist, or have existed, though it is preposterous to think they possessed human reason, any more than the pigs of the yard. It was not impossible that allegory ruled the text, and that dialogue passed between John and a foreign man with great personal strength and some brand of spiritual wisdom, after his way and not being a Christian, and John chose to represent him with the symbol of the gryphon. Perhaps some further key to the metaphor lay in that ruined page, but I would never find it, or know.