“Perhaps in another year, when the Constellations have removed their veils of black and gray…” Gunde wanted only to comfort me, but I could hear the lie in his tender growls—the Stars never stop grieving. They had denied me my bride once and for all. Never would they be moved in their judgment. As we were taught long ago, the Stars cannot retrace their orbits.
“I care nothing for the death of the serpent-god.” The Versammlung gasped at my blasphemy. No one but I in my rage would have dared to show a callused paw to their names. “If you will not grant me my mate, I will take her and we will travel to another sea, where the snakes and stars do not command.”
A soft step sounded behind me, and I could smell her icy fur before I could see her, those clear black eyes looking down at me with pity.
“No,” she whispered, and her voice was like the slide of a cub’s belly on the ice. “Did you think I spent all my days looking down at the ice? I see the sky like any bear, and better than most. I saw that the sign of the Fox-That-Is-Hard-to-Catch dipped below the horizon out of season, and that the Moon darkened like whale’s blood on the glacier. Then, when the Hunter’s Knife rose in the South, I knew that the clouds were full of grief. It is not meant to be, Eyvind. And more—the Molted-Antler is in the Third House—you will have no mate, not now, and not ever. Not I nor any other. What is written you cannot un-write. Smile as best you can and hunt with me, fish with me, but do not ask me to your den. You can curse the Stars, but I will not.”
“Beautiful beast, choice of my heart!” I wept openly in the sight of all my warriors, unable to believe that I would be denied something so obviously fated. “No,” I suddenly cried, “I will not smile. I will travel to the forest of the South and avenge the death of the Star-sister, the serpent-god. I will right the wrong done to her sacred flesh and I will win the favor of the Harpoon-Star, He-Who-Pierces-the-Underfur-with-His-Light. He will give me my bride. I have fought a thousand battles against fierce tribes of wolves. So, too, will I win this battle and call her my victory.”
My love just shook her great white head and padded heavily away across the snow.
I left the rest shuffling on the ice. I went immediately. I took nothing. I did not once look up at the Stars for guidance. I heard none of my brothers’ protests, nor my bright-tailed bear’s tears falling like first snow on the frozen earth. I thought then that I knew the right path, that it stretched out before me so sure, so sure and straight that I could not help but follow it. My paws would find it easily, since this must all have been written long before. Why else would the snake-god have died, except to be avenged by me?
As you can see, I was a very stupid bear.
I journeyed south from the glaciers no one of my kind had ever left. I ate salmon from the stream, I bandaged my paws when they bled from the incessant walking, I spoke to nothing, since there was nothing to speak to. In the deep nights I watched the Mother’s-Milk glow white against the sky, winding through the Stars like an unspooled thread.
The world is wider than any one bear can fathom. It gobbles distance like a hungry cub. I could not, after a full cycle of the moon, understand why the land had not yet become the burning jungles of the Southern Kingdoms, why the sun did not glower red, why the Stars had not shifted into Constellations of which I had only heard legends: the Scorpion, the Lion, the Serpent. I still moved through a landscape of cold wind and mountains like broken teeth. At this rate my love would be a grandmother, gray in fur and tooth, before I could have her.
When the moon had become full for the third time since I set out, and rode the sky like a great whale, full-finned and gleaming, the earth did, abruptly, change. It became wet and full of green things; water ran freely here, in sluggish streams there, grass-colored and strung through with amber. I did not match the world anymore. My white fur stood out like a tear in the green hills. Tall reeds sprang up everywhere, thin and golden, and eels snapped their long bodies in the water. I could see great copses of tamarind trees with their red roots gnarling, cypresses bruising the sky with their branches, briars and brambles like a human woman’s long hair. Waterbirds dipped their beaks into the glistening creeks, their feathers shining like untrammeled snow.
All I had known was the pure and unbroken white of my home, the pale horizon going on and on forever. The Dismal Marshes were beyond my heart’s experience. I could smell the thickness of the air, the dank smell of growing things twisting in the earth, the softness of rain and fruit on the trees. My fur rippled, both afraid and awakened.
As I stood with my paws gathering mud, one of the massive waterbirds broke off from the flock and leapt towards me, half walking on his thready legs, half flying. He was bright green, the color of the grasses around him; some of his feathers were such a rich shade of it they were nearly black. His eyes were flashes of sudden rainstorms. His beak curved earthward like a scimitar, and quite as sharp. He was so bright I had to squint, my eyes already weary of so much color. He was clothed in the colors of the sky after the Sun has fled, rimmed in light.
The bird stopped up short very near to me, flaring his great wings and stamping his feet. I could smell his flesh, like salt fish and rich soils.
“Well, I say,” he began in a svelte voice, “this is an oddity. I shall have to call upon Beast at once! One does not keep such a thing to oneself; it is quite rude. Come then, don’t stand there gawking like a hatchling! You may come to luncheon and discuss what, exactly, we are going to do with you.”
Spluttering, I moved to catch up with him, splashing in silt and green water up to my knees, as he was already sprinting far ahead in his peculiar half-flight across the marshes.
“Wait!” I called, and my voice boomed out over the swamp, scattering cicadas and kingfishers in its wake.
“Waiting, waiting, lady-in, gentlemen-out, wait for water and meet the drought!” the great heron sang out over his emerald shoulder, and ran even faster. He was a blur of green and blue, and I could not keep up.
But as I stopped, panting, fur soaked in sweat, I saw a massive, gnarled hall of tamarinds which arched up to make a thatched roof of leaves, and the bird leaning against the doorpost.
“How do you hunt even the smallest mouse, Eyvind? Really!” And he ducked inside, leaving me to be stunned at the sound of my own name from this bizarre creature’s mouth.
A little lunch service carved from cattails and willow roots sat on a small table in a room any gentleman would be proud to call his. The tamarinds had coiled around each other to make three chairs and an array of cabinets, tables, and twisting staircases that vanished into a filmy mist, which hung over the room like a well-apportioned ceiling. I could not believe that I would fit in the little hall, but it seemed to suit me exactly, and as I watched, the red-tinged branches shifted and sighed to make a long ridge on which I could rest.
“They are so considerate, my tammies,” the Heron said fondly, as he dipped his beak into a small cup and slurped with relish. I sank onto the fragrant bed with a heavy sigh, my muscles burning like lamp oil. Only then did I notice that we were not alone.
A huge creature the color of dried blood stood calmly in a corner, drinking from a large bowl of oak leaves. The rear of the hall had swelled tall and wide to accommodate him. His red antlers tangled rather horribly around themselves, and as he slurped at his tea, I could see that his teeth were not teeth at all, but a bright ridge of solid bone.
“Beast! This is the one of whom our Brother spoke! Is it not thrilling that he has come directly to my Marsh?”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” the scarlet beast replied in a musical voice. His eyes twinkled with laughter like the fall of leaves on the water. “We do so rarely get such… august guests.”
“Majesty?” I asked, unsure of what impossible kingdom the Heron could rule.
“Of course. I am the Marsh King. This is Beast, who is a kind of courtier of mine, you might say. It is a sad state for a King to have but one courtier, but he is quite a good one.”
“How kind of
you, Eminence,” the beast intoned, with the slightest flavor of gentle mockery in his voice.
“Think nothing of it, my good friend! Now, we must to business, for there is not much time.”
I was so bewildered at this point I could say nothing at all. But I forced my tongue to work in the dry cavern of my mouth. “How can you know my name? Who is this Brother of which you speak? I do not understand you.”
“Oh, no one expects you to, dear chap!” the Marsh King assured me in a tenderly condescending voice. Beast winked at me with one crimson eye. The Heron continued, “You keep your counsel and the gods keep theirs. My Brother is the Harpoon-Star, who came to visit us some months ago and announced your coming. Sit still and I shall tell you of his audience.”
LAAKEA THE HARPOON-STAR BURNED BLACK THE marsh grass as he came. The smell of it, scorched bread and copper filings, heralded him long before his light appeared over one of the hills. In great circles it scalded, crisped, sizzled. Each step sent up hisses of steam as he walked through the Great Marsh, frogs and eels yelping in wordless terror as the fire of his heels lapped at their oily bodies. I felt the song of the grass steaming before I could see him—it had been many years since my brother had left his hermitage where he hunted moons like quick pale stags.
You’ll forgive the flowery talk, won’t you? Our family does so love to be told they are beautiful. Vanity is an old and venerable habit.
He was white, of course; his sort of Stars—the small and hot-burning ones—are always white. His hair fell like a newly washed sheet, long and flat to his waist, and his skin faded into the pale horizon, the shade of paper turned to ash. A great spear was slung over his shoulder by a strap of white serpent-hide; golden eyes panted beneath colorless lashes. He was barefoot; in fact, he wore no clothing but a bleached cloth over his angular hips, and his thighs were covered in arcane tattoos, the symbols of the Star-tongue. Yet even the ink of these markings was a strange silver that showed only when touched by the trailing marsh mist.
I embraced my brother awkwardly as he entered my hall, sending twigs into tiny conflagrations. I did not, of course, wish to burn my tammies, but the proper affection must always be shown to visiting family. I tried to make the usual pleasantries and invitations to drink, but he would not have it.
“I have news. It cannot wait. Will you for once allow me to speak my piece without interruption?”
I blushed with great dignity and abashed grace. Settling myself to listen, I gratefully mused that Beast was out engaging one of the Princes that come into our realm occasionally, and so there would be nothing to disturb Laakea in his tale. He was not overfond of Beast—Stars care only for their kin. At any rate, they are dreadfully formal creatures, and Beast would be bored.
Removing his spear from his shoulders he sighed heavily, and his voice echoed through the trees like clouds across the face of the moon. “A terrible thing has occurred—a man has killed our sister, the Snake-Star of the South.” He waited for my reaction, but the black Ibis-Emir had already winged north to tell me of her death, to weep his great sapphire tears into my hands. Seeing that I was not surprised, Laakea pressed on.
“I did not realize she had tarried so long in that damned kingdom, that blighted land of festering winds and towers that bruise the sky with iron fingertips…”
I CONFESS THAT I WAS MUCH CONSUMED WITH MY hunt, for I pursued a great rarity—a Firebird, as a wed ding present for my poor, wretched sister—and I tracked him over many a hill and river-carved valley. You know how we can be about things which sparkle and shine. We imagine they will put back something of what has been lost.
Firebirds are overfond of red fruits, and I had hoped to lure him with crimson seeds gathered from the Ixora, the Torch-Trees of the desert—very difficult to harvest, but the Firebird’s favorite delicacy, bright and soft as a cherry, with a pit cased in flint and iron, to light the new tree aflame. Some Firebirds, it is said, even nest among the trees, and return there to lay their eggs in the ash like salmon swimming upriver.
I waited in the salt flats that border the Tinderbox Desert, and the Ixora that fire the night to keep the sky warm for the sun when it has gone below the earth. In the twilight I could see their orange branches flickering, snapping, sparking up like the camp of a thousand soldiers. I saw no Firebirds, but I was not concerned. They are secretive, and the forest of Torch-Trees is wide. I spent weeks searching out the guttering, dying ones, and collecting the juice-filled rubies as they dropped. I combed the ash of those already dead, but found no flaming eggs.
Finally, I had strewn the salt with cherry seeds—they were bright as drops of blood; surely the Firebird would swoop down to snatch them up in his bronze beak.
I waited for three nights, and the Firebird did not come. But on the third night I forgot him entirely. An appalling phantasm caught me on the flats and all thought of my quarry vanished.
Three of our sister’s handmaidens—you know them, of course; sweet little serpent-girls they are, their hair all flowered with jade grass-snakes and emerald vipers—stumbled through the sand, clutching each other for the strength to stand. Their holy vestments were torn as if by a great claw, hanging from their thin bodies like curls of new paper. I turned my head aside to give them modesty, for they were as near to naked as makes no difference, and their pale leaf-light skin was desert-scalded to scarlet. They moaned and screamed in such pitiful tones—a choir of anguish echoing in the desert canyons. I took this at first for simple cries of pain, but it was a lament, a lament and a requiem. They clutched me by my face and turned me towards them, forced me to witness their shame.
Brother, they were so horrible to see I can hardly tell you of their faces—their wounds were a tapestry of broken flesh. And yet even this had not sated the men who dared lay hands on their sacred bodies, but their tongues had been cut out by rough knives, and only ragged stumps remained to form words. One took a strange object from her sister and pressed it miserably into her parched mouth.
“Sssspear-brother,” she hissed, “our mistresssss is ssslain, dead, dead and gone. Thisss is what the men who took her did to ussss. They were pig-demonsss, they mauled our bodiesss with cloven hoovesss. We have walked all this way from her grave to find some part of her family. Pray put usss to death so we may not sssuffer longer than it was necessssary to deliver our messssage.”
I looked on, nauseated, as the second of our sister’s maidens took the object from her sister’s mouth and pushed it into her own. “We have traveled far to find one of our kin to take the burden of knowledge from usss. We are not sssuicidesss; you have to help ussss. But in return we will help you. We are sssseerss, we know what isss to come, we sssee the flux of time like water poured from one cup to another. You mussst go now, to the North, and prevent vengeance from falling into the handsss of one who would pervert what our missstresss has already done in her own name, one who would erase her holy work only to ssscribble over it with his own. Ssshe has died; ssshe has risssen—in his bumbling he will rob her of those things, all a ssshade can own.” She took the lump of pink flesh from her mouth and gave it to the last of the sisters.
“Holy seers, what is this misshapen thing you pass from mouth to mouth?” I asked with trepidation—such terrible magic was at work here I hardly dared speak. The Stars leave divination to those tied to the earth; we do not dabble in the future. Why would my sister have broken with tradition so?
“We ssstole it from the Basssilissk,” whispered the third oracle pitifully, “it isss a tongue, ssso that we may ssspeak to grant you thisss warning. Were we to hunt down three monssssterss? We are sssiblingss; we ssshare among usss.”
The third sister was clearly the eldest, and the bearer of the clearest vision. She closed the one eye that remained to her and spoke without inflection the prophecy they had journeyed so far to disclose.
“You must sssee the Marsssh King. A creature of sssnow and claw will come to him, begging to avenge our missstress in order to incur your favor. He mussst no
t be allowed to pursssue thisss. Sssnakes sssee to their own; ssshe doesss not require thisss animal’sss assssistance. If he should stand in her place, her death will be wasssted—his path musst divert from herss in our sssight. He will only cause her death to be wassssted. Her coilsss are still in motion, and the Quessst of the creature will bring ruin on her plansss. Do you underssstand, Sssspear-Brother?”
I nodded my assent in the traditional manner, pressing my forehead to hers and accepting their burden. With this, the three of them in one movement collapsed onto the soundless sand, their fall as silent as snake-skin on the dunes. They were quite faint, hunger and sun and burning forests having leached all but the last of their light from them. The Basilisk’s tongue rolled out of the third sister’s mouth and onto the hot gold of the earth. Their eyes rolled up in their heads, and their mouths formed pleas I could not hear, but understood well enough.
But I could not do what they asked—even a bird must know that. Death is the wall we dare not look behind, and no Star has ever killed another. I would not be the first murderer of my kind.
Instead, I gathered up the blood-drop cherries from the sand. What good could they be now? My sister could not marvel at the color and the light of the Firebird. One by one, I carried woman and fruit into the Tinderbox true, and laid them out beneath the Torch-Trees. In their blazing light, the maidens seemed to glow as they must have when my sister took them in.
I cut deep into the Torch-Trees’ ashen trunks with my harpoon. The bark is quite black and hard, calcified into iron by the constant fire. But within, within there is nothing but ash and a thin vein of boiling sap, as the trees consume themselves from the inside out. Only when they have burnt themselves to nothing will they drop a seed, the precious seed, and the clever gardener will catch it as it falls, while the tree crumbles into white ash and nothing more, so that the seed will not burst and flare the moment it cracks on the hard desert stones.