A Dirge for Preston John

  I kneaded the ground with my paws. “Love is like that, you know. It’s easy to arouse a person or make them dream. That’s nothing. Permanence is fiendishly hard. Bodies are made up of fluids, as you say. They sizzle and they ache. Loving is aching with your eyes open. You take in all the bitterness and sweetness and remembering and depth of the thing you love and your body crushes it, distills it into a kind of lightning that keeps you living. It passes through your heart and up through your mouth and the machine of you churns along. And that’s fine, as far as it goes. When your lover opens his body to you so sweetly, or your child sleeps in your arms, or your comrades tell you their secrets, or your work comes easily. Love is easy when love is easy. What is difficult is when the machine slips, or when other machines refuse to make the fluids you wish them to, or when your lover runs off with a minotaur, or when your child has two mouths and one of them hates you. You can practice love for all your days and still, it will be hard when it is hard. Love is an unhappy beast who only smiles when it is full of meat, of hearts. You could have raised the girl true. But they hoped I would teach her left-hand mouth to love. Her left-hand heart.”

  “Do you love the princess?”

  “No,” answered I. “Not yet. I am only obsessed with her. There is a difference.”

  “I don’t think you really know what you’re talking about,” frowned Grisalba, and shook her iridescent hair like a horse.

  “Probably not,” I agreed. “It’s only that when people come to you for a thousand years asking you what love means, eventually, you’ve got to come up with an answer for them.”

  Sefalet would not leave the treebed. She called it mother and father. She slept there, curled up beneath Hagia’s woody mouth, which had a burl beneath it like a mole. When Gahmureen determined that the center of the cathedral should be precisely where the tree marked, according to whatever arcane geomancy she practiced, Sefalet shrieked and wept and her left-hand mouth snapped and bit at anyone who came near. She clung to the trunk, her arms stretched in a wide half-circle around its girth, digging in with her fingernails. Her palms kissed the wood.

  Gahmureen retired to her tent, a tall, narrow affair of yellow and orange silks with the ceramic face who guarded her house mounted at its apex. If its eyes opened, she was within, if they closed, she had left for the building site. She napped. When she emerged she announced that they would build the cathedral around the tree, preserving it, and the sun would enter through a maze of glass holes, finding its way eventually down to a soft silver pool wherein the tree would grow forever.

  Sefalet looked at her feet, and then at her tree, somewhat mollified, though still eager to bite anyone who came near her. I sat a short distance away, and we made a tableaux, the three of us: the child, the leafy parent, and the lion, half-drowsy in the hot sun.

  Gahmureen and the cathedral loved each other. The horned woman, so tall and lithe, her hands always still, but with the impression that they moved so fast they only appeared still to us. She was full of her cathedral, the panes of its windows were her eyes, the heights of its spires her spiral horns. It loomed so great inside her that she could hardly speak to anyone about it, or she would weep with the beauty of it that only she could see. It took her a week to explain that the foundations should be laid out in the shape of a star. Another to direct the clutch of six-armed hexakyk in the sculpting of the gates, which should depict a tree bursting with fruit—every people of Pentexore should hang happy and serene from a branch, all of us together on the black sethym wood. I found her presence peaceful. She owned purpose, even her blood owned it, and love is purpose. She loved that church even if she did not care that it was a church or had to have a certain number of crosses in it. I knew she didn’t care because she called the crosses compasses, as if they merely showed the directions, and Fortunatus had to tell her many times not to tilt them all so that they pointed north together.

  Once, at night, when the moon fell on everyone sleeping and the glistening stones of the foundations, she said to me: “When I slept, I dreamed of my mother Gahmural, and every time she laughed, a cathedral came out of her mouth, and I wore them all around my neck like jewels. I will never make anything else so huge and perfect as this, but no one will know it, for it will belong to a god who has never come to court me.”

  After we had been hauling rocks for a fortnight, out of the tangled briar-wood a little creature came toddling, creaking and squeaking as he went. Finally it accomplished the long plain and clasped Gahmureen’s pale bluish hand in his. The architect looked down, surprised, and beheld a little knight made of pieces of cradle: rocking runners and good red wood and a carved canopy and bits of swaddling to keep his joints together, looking up at her with adoring yellow wood eyes. The cradle-knight she had made to protect her long-gone mother had returned, and it remembered her. She smiled and squeezed its hand. I thought the tiny warrior might shake himself apart with joy.

  The tree spoke often. The Hagia trunk said things like:

  You are so beautiful and clever. I think you will grow up to be like a gourd, hard on the outside, for hungry elephants are always about, but on the inside soft and orange and sweet. I love you, my gourd-girl. It was so thoughtful of you to visit me.

  Do you have brothers and sisters?

  I am not a monster. Now I am divine, like the Ophanim, and God is a kiss.

  Did the Hagia who is not a tree teach you this song? All the blemmyae sing it. It is about the hero Guro, who had shoulders so big they gave her the Axle of Heaven to hold up so it could steal a kiss from the sun.

  The crosses with their mouths that spoke in John’s voice, clinking against each other in the wind, said things like:

  You are so beautiful! Why, you look just like me, with all your mouths! Who could doubt you are my daughter?

  My sweetest, the Logos is the Word and God is a Word, and the Logos is light, and when Christ was a boy he suffered fits, too, because his body was not big enough to hold the light. There is no shame in it. Perhaps you will grow up to be a saint. What an addition to the family crest that would make.

  This is Eden, Sefalet. This is the navel of the world. Somewhere, somewhere here, I promise you, there is a gate of gold, and a sword thrust through it, blackened and burnt, its flames long since gone out. Somewhere there is an apple no one was ever meant to eat.

  I love you, my child. I will never leave you.

  No wonder Sefalet could not part herself from it. This is what every child dreams of—a parent who cannot leave them, who loves only them, who knows songs and rhymes and tells them they are wonderful over and over. The tree was not John nor Hagia—it was their love, it grew out of love, it was only their loving portions, only the parts of them that made a child. What they gave her was not mammal love but tree love—permanent, unchanging, growing but slowly, asking for nothing but a bit of water in return. But it sounds like mammal love, and it binds like love, and by the time you notice it is bitter, it’s the only kind of love you can hear or see.

  I wanted to get the girl free of it. But what could I offer against her parents, come home to her, kinder and simpler than they ever were?

  Her left mouth had said nothing for days. She was happy. But she did not eat, she did not call for water, she did not even speak back to the tree. She only listened, and wept, and ate all the love they could drop from their boughs, asking for more all the while.

  THE VIRTUE OF THINGS

  IS IN THE MIDST OF THEM

  7. Some Questions I Was Asked in Pentexore

  by Phoenix, Salamanders, and Hexakyk

  Are you a Christian man?

  Do you understand Christ to be more like an ox (excuse us, three oxen) or more like a door?

  Do you find our country pleasant?

  Do you think the world, having had a beginning, must have an end?

  Do you need help to build your nest?

  Do you believe in the holy apostolic Church?

  Are you the male or female of your kind?

>   How long will you stay?

  Do you have any dark secrets or crimes in your past? They are our favorite, tell us immediately.

  What is an England?

  Are you immune to any common poisons or weak against fire or perhaps lightning?

  Do you have any peculiar talents?

  What can your body do?

  Do you think it is as moral to destroy things as to create them?

  Are you lonely here?

  Do you know how to fertilize an egg? It’s easy; it can be taught.

  How long will you stay?

  Will you sing us a bawdy song of your country?

  Is everyone in your country named John?

  Is everyone in your country a liar?

  What will you tell your people about us?

  Will you remember how green and pretty my skin was?

  Will you tell them we are good or that we are wicked?

  Have you ever come back from the dead?

  What did your father do?

  How long will you stay?

  Do you think the earth goes around the sun or do you think the sun goes around the earth?

  Are any of your countrymen blood-drinkers or eaters of offal?

  Have you ever fallen asleep and woken up a hundred years later?

  Have you ever had three daughters, two of whom were wicked, one of whom was fair and good?

  How did you punish the fair one?

  Have you been to see the Wall?

  Do you think your soul is sufficient to approach it?

  How long will you stay?

  How long will you stay?

  How long will you stay?

  8. Some Answers I Gave

  Inasmuch as a man from England is an Englishman and the son of a thatcher is also a thatcher, I am a Christian man. By which I mean I was born so and not consulted on the matter, and therefore not as hardworking or dedicated a thatcher as I might have been if I had my choice of a dozen or so professions.

  An ox plows the earth uncomplainingly, so that others may eat and grow. He applies his individual strength to the benefit of the group. But really I have found scripture to be rather full of complaining and the group plowing the earth for the benefit of the individual, so if those are my only choices I will say: a door, for he leads into the world after this one.

  Most pleasant, and extraordinary, for I have discovered a tree in the courtyard which bears as fruit nothing but the most extraordinary shoes, in motley silks and with bells or ribbons upon them. I cannot see a good purpose to this, but a certain lady’s slipper tasted marvelously of orange blossom cake.

  Certainly, though may the saints grant that we do not live long enough to witness what is certain to be a disturbing event.

  It will be some years before I have need to conflagrate, but you are most thoughtful.

  One answers that in the positive when within earshot of the Church, but when out of sight and mind, well, one cares rather less.

  That certainly depends upon whether you are the goose or the gander of your kind.

  As long as I am fed and amused.

  Oh, many. Once, in Turkey, I came upon a man called Odoric. He was uncommonly handsome, with a large and prominent nose, blazing eyes, and skin like good tea. I made his acquaintance easily, for he loved to speak of his many travels, to the north and south of the world, across the four seas and the seven deserts, how he had been feted at the courts of no less than nine emperors including the Japanese, the Holy Roman, and the Matanitu, been sacrificed bodily to a sun god with green palms and found himself wholly restored upon the morning, and possessed of no less than twelve wives, one for each Apostle, each ample of hip and excellent cooks, and each of them named so: Matthew, Mark, Simon, Judas, Peter and so forth. At this time I was but a callow and inexperienced youth, and Odoric asked if I should like to see some of the world, and if I would travel with him to Cappadocia, where he had heard that Death was hearing cases on a pale bench, and Odoric planned to plead for at least another fifty years, having used his previous time on earth so well. Death, he said, was in fact a young girl, very plain of face and quite short, but a fierce one at the joust, despite her appearance. Well of course I went with him as squire, and endeavored to learn all I could about Odoric’s favorite arts, which were jousting, marrying, juggling, and lying. When we reached Cappadocia, to my great surprise we did come upon a court in the midst of a lilac field, where a high marble bench stood, brushed with pollen, as if it had galloped ahead and forgotten its courthouse behind it. Men and women gathered all around it with their hands outstretched to a girl with hair of no particular color, and she had on a black curling wig over that colorless, and a black cravat.

  Odoric and I waited our turn at the docket, and shared a lunch of cheese and bread with some of the other plaintiffs, who had on rags and shoes which were little more than sackcloth bound to their feet with rope. When his name was called by the bailiff, Odoric plead his case eloquently, telling all his best tales: how he had fought pirates side by side with his wife Peter; how he had rescued an Italian girl from the depredations of a duke who was also a black magician, and not even taken her virginity in exchange; how he had circled the globe in a Greek ship rowed by Gnostics who escaped the purge, and when they passed through the Sirens’ country, he sang the harmony’s part and danced upon the crow’s nest. I felt myself near tears in admiration. All he asked of Death was another fifty years, a hundred at the outmost, having shown his ability to spend time as daringly and gorgeously as any man.

  “My sentence is as follows,” said Death, who had a crone’s voice in her girl’s mouth, “you may take your fifty years, but the coin I take will be equal to the coin I give. The coin is fifty years. Your fifty years well spent I shall take, and give unto this boy at your side, and you shall have his plain and uninteresting life, for only beginning from nothing may a man make a true fortune. Fair warning, however, he has a count’s vengeance on his head.”

  From then on Odoric recalled nothing of his former life, not his adventures nor his wives, but I knew it all in its smallest detail, such that when I happened to find myself in Thrace, I came home to James the Lesser, Odoric’s sixth wife, and she guessed nothing amiss.

  An island where counts have elephants’ memories, ruled over by dragons and barristers.

  I am immune to shame, boredom, and cholera, but I confess fire and lightning will do me quite in.

  I daresay my talents are common to all men, it is only that I use them, while most stuff them in a cupboard to lure mice.

  Anything you ask of it, my dear.

  It seems to me that the world creates things all the time: children, castles, hereditary monarchies, apple trees, stockings. With such a great quantity of things being made every day, surely some things must be destroyed simply to make room. What morality can be attached to such balance?

  I shall be your most humble servant, my fiery friend.

  As long as the twins are content to have me.

  All the men of my country are virtuous and know nothing of bawd—I, alone among them a man of appetite, have cut a swath. I shall sing to you of the bread of my wife Matthew, and how round and firm it was, and also of the pink fruits hid within.

  Everyone of any importance. My wife John dwells yet in Spain, where she weaves a tapestry showing the Acts of my wives, and when it is complete I shall return to here, and all my wives shall live in one house together, and all our children, too, under one roof, made of gold, for there shall be a new roof and a new tapestry, and all my wives will ride upon beasts with ten heads, who are quite docile and enjoy the spearmint and heather of the fields.

  All men are liars.

  I will tell them it is a rich and gentle land, though much obsessed with fire.

  Forever and always, and how blue your eyes as well.

  I will say that on the whole you assayed against the wicked when you could see it, and against the good when you could not.

  It so happens that I journeyed awhile in France, w
here is hid the capstone of the underworld. Some winemakers discovered it when digging for their cellars, and told no one, but kept their best reds near to the stone disc. Of course someone must have blabbed, for I had heard even in Sicily: If you want to wrestle the three-headed dog and pledge a troth to the great red queen, high ye to a certain French valley, and quote ye Virgil to a black rock.

  When I grew bored of both Macedonia and my wife Judas Iscariot, who betrayed my eggs to my bread, my wine to my water, my horse to my cow, and my intellect to my other regions, I journeyed with a circus of some reputation through the countryside to France, where we performed the Passion (complete with peacocks, a sword dance, and four somersaulting fools) for wide-eyed, smudge-nosed children whose parents gave us two chickens on the bargain. After boiling the birds and sucking their bones I took a constitutional walk, whereupon I discovered a cave, in which I discovered a number of wine caskets which, when tapped, issued forth a black vintage which to my tongue tasted of licorice and quicksilver and time. Deeper into the cave I ventured, for it was well-lit by torches, until I came upon a huge black stone upon the ground, wholly flat and chiseled, and writ upon with many pictures and couplets. I remembered my Sicilian friends and summoned up a line or two of Virgil—my Latin has always been so-so—and the stone cracked down the middle, showing me a staircase straight into the earth.