In the Night Garden

by Catherynne M. Valente

  It was then that Sigrid saw it, and her mouth hung open like a broken door in dismay and wonder.

  The Griffin were deformed, misshapen. The larger of the two blue lion-birds had no eyes where they ought to shine—they blinked instead from his downy chest. The chest of the smaller creature bore two tiny holes: the ears of an eagle. And the white had no beak. Sigrid gently touched the pale bird’s breast, in which a human mouth opened and closed weakly, its pink lips shining with golden tears.

  “What’s wrong with them?” Oluwafunmike asked, creeping forward to study the bizarre arrangement of their features. Tomomo inched tentatively forward beside her friend.

  Sigrid shook her head softly, and for a moment, she seemed almost an Arimaspian, so coated was her long hair in golden yolk. She spoke in hushed tones, almost in the tenor of a prayer. “They are the Sorella. The new Sorella. Don’t you see? When Giota carried the Griffin within her, she must have passed her sisters, and some sliver of herself, into the White Beast. And now the last Griffin are bound to the last Sorella—and Griffin are bound to humans.”

  The birds mewled helplessly and climbed into Sigrid’s lap. The blue siblings began to pick at her vest, pulling at the rough stitches with their beaks. They tore at the cloth eagerly, in a fury, and soon Sigrid was left in the dead Griffin’s nest with no more to hide her nakedness than the leather wrappings she had used to bind her breasts. She began to cry in shame, tears trickling down her sand-spattered face, trying to cover her deformity with her thin arms. But the Griffin were not satisfied. The white infant pushed her head under Sigrid’s arms—patiently, without violence—and severed the leather straps with a single pass of her glittering talon.

  Sigrid suppressed a wracking sob; her three breasts were suddenly exposed, and all the unfortunate spectators of the Griffin’s beach were witness to her freakish body. There was nowhere she could look where she did not meet the eyes of a near-stranger gawking at her bare flesh. She pulled at the ruined wrappings uselessly. Yet even then, she was not afraid of the clustered birds. They pressed nearer to her, cooing affectionately, even purring with pleasure. Her breasts were suddenly heavy, and she could feel the skin which had never seen the sun stretch and tighten strangely.

  The white Griffin laid itself against her and nuzzled her ear, clucking and chirruping gently. She wrapped her long neck around Sigrid’s, and with infinite gentleness, her human mouth opened to suckle at the rightmost breast. Her blue brothers hungrily followed suit, fastening their beaks onto the second and third breasts. They were too rough at first, unused to human women, and bit her tender skin with their greedy beaks.

  Sigrid put her arms around the three infants in awe, her tears flowing like streams from hidden mountains, falling to mingle with the blood the starving beasts had drawn, and finally with the milk which rushed freely from her body to feed the last of all Griffin.

  Quietly, like a clock beginning to chime, Saint Sigrid of the Nest began to laugh.

  “THAT WAS THE FIRST MIRACLE OF SAINT SIGRID,” the great bald woman said as the last red rays of the sun faded like drying blood into the horizon. The light seemed to slide along her tattoos and puddle on her broad face. “The others you will learn as you ascend the Tower—the Miracle of the Beard, the Miracle of the Waterless Sea, the Miracle of the Sacking of Amberabad.”

  “What?” I cried. “How can you tell me only part of a story? Did Sigrid stay to mother the Griffin or return to the ship with Long-Eared Tomomo and live her life as a pirate? Did Oluwafumike keep the Ocular? Was there war? Did the Griffin survive? I have heard they are extinct—are they not? Are they hidden in some aerie no man has seen?”

  “Stories,” the green-eyed Sigrid said, unperturbed, “are like prayers. It does not matter when you begin, or when you end, only that you bend a knee and say the words. And when we tell Saint Sigrid’s story, we open ourselves to her—we cannot close ourselves, even if the story must continue on another day. Each miracle of the Saint is guarded by the women on one floor of the Tower. Should you choose to study with us, you will ascend physically as you become enlightened by the example of Sigrid.” The great woman rose then and snuffed out the lantern at the door of the Tower.

  “At least tell me how she died. Was it a very heroic death? Did she die saving the Griffin, or her shipmates? Surely a woman’s death is a thing which all may know.”

  The Sigrid laughed. “A woman’s death is the most precious thing she owns. But I will tell you, if you have decided that our Tower is to be your home and your mother for all your days.”

  “I have,” I answered breathlessly. Surely these women who possessed such tales were the strongest and wisest of all possible women.

  “Saint Sigrid of the Nest disappeared in her fiftieth year. Tomomo, though an excellent Captain, was not indefatigable. She eventually retired and passed the helm of her ship to Sigrid, her most beloved monster. Yet, some years hence, the Maidenhead was lost at sea, devoured by the Echeneis, a sea monster whose sheer size beggars the mind. It is said that whole cities could fit within its belly, and that its hide is like the shell of a turtle, impervious to all spears. It is the color of the sea itself, so that a ship may be swallowed before her captain is even alerted to the presence of the beast, though its girth mocks even the Griffin. This is the thing that swallowed the Saint of the Boiling Sea. All hands were lost.”

  I stood in the blue twilight, aghast. How could such a woman as Sigrid not have died crossing swords or defending the innocent?

  I was very young.

  The Sigrid rubbed her bald head thoughtfully, frowning at me, as if struggling with a secret. “Some in the Tower believe in a prophecy we refer to as the Heresy of the Lost. It is said by these women that Sigrid is not dead, but only lost, adrift within the cavernous belly of the Echeneis-whale, and that she lives still.” She coughed, clearly thinking this particular tale nonsense not fit for the ears of novices. “They fasten their hopes to a fragment of an ancient song which was passed from mother to child in the north of the world, where the Maidenhead was lost.”

  She closed her eyes and sang softly:

  O, sing of the ship with the mast of leaves

  And the maiden who stood at her wheel!

  Long ago, it is said, she was drowned until dead

  And her red ship was split at the keel!

  But she never went under, the old mothers know

  And she’ll sail the brine another day

  An orphan will find her, a bear-cub will bind her

  And the wolf will lead them astray.

  And hand in hand they’ll come whistling home

  The maiden, the bear, and the girl in gray

  Through the shining white foam,

  The red ship will roam

  And the wolf shall lead them astray.

  And the wolf will lead her astray.

  The Sigrid’s voice was rough and low, like an oar pulling through dark water. When she opened her eyes, there seemed to be an odd light glimmering there, gentle and sad. I understood then that this Sigrid was a secret heretic, and I smiled to myself. But then, too, I began to believe the heresy, and worse, I began to believe that I was the one destined to find her—did not The Book of Carrion contain the same lines, and did not the dog-men whisper them as though they must refer to me?

  Nothing in my life has birthed more pain than the faith I conceived in that moment.

  There was no light left, then, and the Sigrid was silently replaced by another woman, as slender as she was muscular, but equally bald. The guard thus changed, the spice-skinned Sigrid took my hand in her huge palm, and I entered the Tower of St. Sigrid for the first time.

  I did not leave it again for seven years.

  “AND THAT IS ALL I CAN TELL YOU OF MY FIRST years in Al-a-Nur,” Sigrid said, fingering dark patterns on the tavern table where decades of mugs had left their marks. “The rest is secret, the province of the Sigrids, and I could no more tell an uninitiated soul of the joys I suffered and the terrors I adored wit
hin those walls than I could tell a deaf woman how the sea sounds before a storm. I was accepted into the Sainthood—I received a name. We are all Sigrids, but we have our own titles. The Saint who is the Mother of us all is Saint Sigrid of the Nest. The woman who told me that tale on the steps of the Tower was Saint Sigrid of the Shallow Keel. I am Saint Sigrid of the Ways.”

  “Wait!” cried Snow. “That cannot be the end of the story! What about the Black Papess? How did you leave the city? Did you truly not see Bagdemagus for seven years? How can you stop a tale when so much of it remains, a meal half-eaten?” She was almost out of her chair with excitement—Snow had never known so many words laid next to each other at once, and all laid out for her. Sigrid laughed her languid, rough-hewn laugh.

  “No, no, you’re right. How impolite of me—there is a bit more to tell. But when I speak of the Mother and the Mast, I tend to drown in her story until I forget all the others. It is the way of religion. But Eyvind must fill up our cups again, and give us a plate of sweet bread and blackberry jam to strengthen the tale. I am not a small woman, and the stringing of stories like pearls on fishing line is not a task for the faint of belly.”

  Eyvind appeared more gracefully and with less commotion than Snow would have thought possible for a man of his size, and furnished them with fresh food and drink. To her surprise, he then dragged a heavy chair to the table and sat down himself to hear Sigrid speak, fixing her with his tired, drooping eyes. She seemed suddenly discomfited, like a bear caught scooping honey from a hive. But she drank deeply and swallowed a few mouthfuls of bread, and, eyes darting like fireflies between Eyvind and Snow, began again.

  “It is the custom for novices, once their hair is shorn, not to leave the Tower for a full seven years. When they step outside it for the first time, it is not onto the soft grass but onto the deck of a small boat, and the acolyte then spends a circuit of seasons plying the river with her craft, never walking on dry land. Only after this is she allowed to venture into the Dreaming City itself. But I was not in seclusion for more than a few months when Bags begged an exception for me. I was not allowed to cross the threshold of the Tower, but he came to the gate, and I sat within it, my skull newly bare, and we talked, like old friends in need of succor. For the Black Papess had entered the Gates of Al-a-Nur…”

  “I SUPPOSE IT’S SIGRID NOW, IS IT?” BAGS ASKED, scratching his great furry ear.

  I sat, legs crossed serenely, determined to act every inch the devout novice. “Of course,” I intoned, as sagely as I could manage.

  Bags smiled at me, his grin all teeth and silky muzzle. He leaned over the threshold and whispered huskily: “I’ve always thought it was a beautiful name.”

  I giggled, and held out my arms to be embraced over the awkward liminal law of the door I could not exit and he could not enter. He clapped me on the back several times and rubbed my shorn head gently where all my lovely hair had once been.

  “And the sea-dog look suits you!”

  “Oh, Bags, I’ve missed you!”

  “No fear, lass, we’ve all missed you. We’d have looked after you in our own Tower, but we are glad for you here—sometimes a woman needs to be with her own. But I haven’t come to tell you how pretty you look or dote on you like an old wolf nosing one of his favorite pups! Great things are afoot in the City, things you couldn’t know about, cloistered away in your sail-slung Tower. I came to tell you how things fared with the Papess!”

  “Fared? I’ve missed the battle?” I was furious, of course.

  “In a manner of speaking.” Bags nodded, suppressing a giggle himself. “But don’t worry yourself, little whelp—I’ve come to tell you of the great contest, the great duel that Yashna fought with Ragnhild in the center of the City.”

  I remembered myself then, and took a step backward into the familiar shadows of my Tower. “But why should I know these things, Bags, when the other girls are at their studies and not called to the door like a princess to meet her suitor? If I am to know it, oughtn’t I to wait until the Saints tell me in their own way, in their own time?” I dropped my voice to a whisper. “I’m a good girl; I don’t want them to think I’m not.”

  Bags’s brown eyes glittered. “You are a good girl, my young Sigrid. I would never doubt it. I have spoken to Shallow Keel and you are mine for the afternoon. And as for your right to know above all the other girls—if you were a worse student, you would likely know already, for the story has spread through the Towers like fire through a village of thatched roofs. But you earn the right to hear it firsthand because you came to the City with us, on the wings of our terrible errand. You are already part of this story—and you will be a part of its ending, before long.”

  Bags settled himself into the corner of the door frame and took my hands in his. He nuzzled my face a little with his sleek snout and growled slightly with the pleasure of a father who sees his litter grown, hunting swift and strong.

  “Just listen, love, for I have a tale to tell which will be repeated in the alleys of Al-a-Nur as long as there are Towers to shadow the streets…”

  OF COURSE WE KNEW SHE WOULD COME, SOONER OR later. We knew she would come leading all the hordes of Shadukiam, all the horrors the Rose Dome could produce. She did not disappoint us, and came riding a great black antelope, whose slender legs were hooved in fire, and whose baleful eyes seemed to look in all directions at once. Behind her came her legions, Djinn with beards of smoke and spells in their saddlebags, Monopods drafted out of their ghettoes, their feet armored and bristling with iron spikes, Centaurs and archers with a dozen arms, even a few Manticore bred in who knows what foul cage. And the humans screaming their war cries like frenzied ravens, all those men with swords flashing, drunk on hatred of the Golden City, and adoration of the pale-haired Papess.

  But she did not bring her damned army through the silver spires of the Salmon Gate. She bade them halt in the green fields outside the ringed Towers, and they halted. They quieted their cries and laid themselves out on the clover as though they had come to a country picnic—so completely were they in her power.

  And Ragnhild, First and Second of her Name, the Black Papess of Shadukiam, entered the Holy City alone, without even a knife at her belt. She entered it like a postulant, with nothing but her torn dress fluttering in the wind, and her pale hair streaming behind her like a battle standard.

  And alone she walked to the center of the City, to the Tower of the Papess, and no one dared to stop her, but all who could lay down their duties followed in her wake like a wave of flesh. Slowly, and without a sound, she seemed to glide over the blue-pebbled streets to the plain Tower with its deer-skin-slung windows, and strode through the door as if no one could contest her right to do so—as if it were her own house.

  We were closeted with Yashna, in conference as we so often are these days. My brothers and I immediately growled; our hackles rose, ready to defend our Papess from whatever dank, filthy magic Ragnhild had brought with her into that sacred place. But the Apostate, her face as fair and terrible as it had been in the depths of our dreams, raised up her hands in a gesture of amity.

  “Peace, my children! I have not come to fight with you, or to molest your poor Yashna. Smooth your venerable furs, and cool the blood in your veins. I have come on an errand of friendship. And we have seen, brave dogs, that you have no power over me. So I will say it again: Calm yourselves.”

  Yashna said nothing, but smiled imperceptibly, like a leaf rustling in a faint autumn wind. Bartholomew snarled in her stead: “An errand of friendship? With that band of creatures at your back?”

  Ragnhild smiled coolly. “I have brought them for my own defense. Surely you do not expect me to breach the Gates of Al-a-Nur with nothing but my own skin to protect me against the Draghi. I know too well the fate of innocent maids when the ire of the Towers is raised.” She lifted her delicate wrists and shook the golden manacles that still hung there like a dancer’s bracelets. The high, thin sound echoed in the chamber.

  Balthazar’s
fiery eyes narrowed into slits. “She cannot be trusted, Mother. You must call on the Draghi now, before she has unleashed whatever magic she is hiding.”

  Ragnhild laughed, a sound like glass breaking, or ice shattering over a running river. “Surely you do not think I could hide much in this, dear wolf,” she said, gesturing to the wide tears in her violet gown. “But enough—I did not come to speak with those I have already welcomed in my own hall. I came to treat with my sister, and put all this misunderstanding behind us.”

  Yashna stirred in her chair and peered out at the Black Papess, whose smile seemed to glow with forgiveness and kindness.

  “Very well, my child. Speak with me,” she said, her voice steady and deep.

  “The Caliph has declared me the rightful Papess, not once, but twice. He has declared Al-a-Nur a territory of the Caliphate and demands tribute. You cannot refuse these things—even a City of Heaven must bow to the Laws of Earth. Indeed, I was anointed long before you, sweet lady, in the days when Cveti performed her heresy. By rights this City is mine. I will take it by force, if I must, but I do not wish to. Abdicate in my favor and I will allow you to go into seclusion in the Tower of the Dead, your home. All will be peaceful, and the City will go on as it always has. Surely you must see how greatly I have been wronged by Al-a-Nur, and understand that I am not a wicked woman—I only ask for what is mine by the hand of the Caliph and the hand of Heaven.”

  Yashna rose from her seat, her yellow robes sighing behind her, and put out her hands to Ragnhild, taking those slim white forearms in her own withered brown palms.

  “No one would deny that in your youth and innocence, you were wronged terribly, not only by Ghyfran, but by the Caliph himself. We know your sad tale, and we grieve for the gentle and bright-hearted girl you once were. If we could restore your life to you, please believe that we would do so, without a moment’s hesitation. But it is not in our power—it would not even have been in our power to restore what strange and alien life you have taken for yourself in this body.” Yashna paused, her eyes as full of pity as a well with water after a storm. “But you cannot believe I will simply hand this City to you. You know, in that stranger’s heart, that what you ask is wrong. The child who came to Shadukiam innocent of the schemes around her is still within you, and she knows I will not give you what you want.”