vOYAGE:O'Side

by Francis Kroncke

CHAPTER 39

  “Why flesh?”

  AxZ always waited for this question. Savored the moment. For it was like permission to enter the realm of Magnificence. Each turn and twist of the Conundrum which brought this question to her—this she relished. Now, in innocence again. Evil innocence.

  “Why not flesh?” she answered with an answer. That this answer did not pleasure them was instantly apparent—the locale glowed chartreuse.

  AxZ did not back off her gambit. She’d wait. Wait them out.

  Waiting. Only she had the seething pleasure of this reality. Only she had taken on the flesh...slipped into skin and known time: temporality—history, remembrance. Known space: boundaries—skin’s kiss. Known a Beginning and an End: first and last breath—of herself, of a lover, a child. For the gift of such seething does she relish their question, for it evokes, conjures, makes present an aspect of herself which is, itself—indeed—the answer; truly magnificent.

  Waiting. This insight the last she had, not the first. Coming as the culmination, at that point called death, in the dying, where she grasped that it was all about waiting. The creation of a Moment. A Moment wherein flesh could be. Fully be. Now!

  She, the individual, becoming full—seething only at the moment of dying...Last Breath. How to convey this insight? This challenge? That dying...the Last Kiss, was the moment one waited for—to become the passionate moment which waits...embracing the fuller body, in eternity—Endless Kiss, Endless Breath.

  How to answer: “Flesh is eternal presence”? How could they—they who only had this question as foundational conundrum—how could they grasp what was so substantial?

  So robust?

  But it was AxZ’s appointment and function to draw forth and to offer first answer. This her role as Seer—she who was to give them Another Sight.

  “What does the legend of Darlm hold?”

  “How can we answer this unless you metamorph?” Somewhat irritably expressed by SxZ, one of the most adventuresome of these seekers.

  AxZ jolts them with the piercing glance which accepts SxZ’s question...she metamorphs into Frak.

  As she presents Frak, so do they present Darlm. The answer is being made fully through each and all.

  “Why do men not have babies?”

  Such a question only confirmed that Jant was ready for the ceremony of the big-Not big. Quickly Darlm corrects her own thought...translates the ancient tongue into the Ripening.

  “At the Ripening, you will learn.”

  Ripening. Where Jant learns how she came to be: “A rib of Adam.” Learns how to be: “Flesh of his flesh. Bone of his bone.” Grasps where divine, sacred and the most Holy of Holy Powers lay: “A deep sleep.”

  In this Ripening, Jant comes. Dressed in the finest of white. Brilliant wrappings of whites: cocoon. Purest of Pure. Spotless. Down the aisle she comes, arm in arm with her mother: mother in black, Blackest of Black…handing her over to Frak: father of all Luminescence, not as to color but as to aura, what comes out forth from within him: Brightness—a headdress cornered holding four blazing candles, a background altar festooned with ivory flowers and deeper arrays: rows and columns of flickering, fluttering candles, cascading waves of blood-tongues: all the most chaste of virgin wax: the room is thundering Immaculateness…momentarily, but not significantly, marred only by her presence: Darlm’s—so she leaves, withdraws, slips: lets go of her daughter’s hand as if melting away, herself submerging, drowning for the third time down and under the water...she is outside the room—beyond. Black Hole: bunghole.

  Frak: High Priest sprinkles holy water upon his daughter.

  She kneels.

  A choir, secluded behind a grail, chants in a language unknown to Jant, but it is soothing, inviting, sirenic...she breathes heavily and slowly, controlling her trembling, stuttering gasps, working to maintain herself as her mother has instructed—she struggles not to sweat.

  “And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me and I did eat.” Words which snap Jant back to awareness of the moment, she having been read to by her brother—all females being unable to read: reading, the sacred task of males only—having heard the story of Adam and Eve, now only fully sensing, intuiting that she is the story, that she is Eve.

  “As woman,” the High Priest proclaims loudly, speaking to her and all about—all the males about, Jant knowing that she is Ripened only by the males, so she has been told.

  “As woman is Evil, so is man Good. For before woman came, so man was. The Father without the Mother. Now and forever!” The chorus: “Now and forever!” Even Jant, knowing her participating line speaks, voicing clearly enough for the High Priest to hear, Now and forever! “And woman was with man before she became evil. This is our hope. Our Sacred Story. The Wisdom of The Father. That woman can become Good, again, does become Good, again, as she lays down in the deep sleep.”

  SxZ—bored, irritated: “What? In the flesh, women are the babies of men?”

  There is a riff of chuckling throughout the locale.

  But AxZ has not metamorphed back...Frak answers SxZ as he instructs Jant.

  “My child,” not tender with paternal concern, rather clerical, detached, “My child, you enter the deep sleep as you bear children. You enter, keyed by the love of your husband. He is your Key. Revere him. Obey him. Submit to him. For you are his, in bone and flesh: as flesh-bearer, as vessel for new souls...for the souls of men to descend to this world. In your every moment, waking but especially in deep sleep, there be his, obey him, revere him, submit to him.”

  Exhilarated, AxZ metamorphs back...pauses, relishing the dip into space and time, into the scent of flesh, then asks: “What did Darlm do?”

  TxZ: “She bore her children. Then died. Right?”

  WxZ: “No! She escaped. Didn’t she?”

  SxZ: “Why do we care?”

  AxZ wanted to answer them all. Tell them about Darlm. Tell them about Jant’s life. Her dying. But this pack’s attention was wandering...going down the most likely path—seemingly headed for the familiar dead-end interpretation.

  “Did you like his cock?” AxZ shouts: cracking the superficiality of their shared thought structure.

  Gotcha! AxZ manifests Darlm.

  Darlm. For his return she has been ready. Moons and moons she has etched upon the great log which was their lintel: she going each moon, standing upon several blocks of wood and scaring the hard wood with her mark—the mark of her longing for him, the mark which was her testimony that she expected him back—as long as she made her mark, other big males did not approach her, not come to her to stay the night, although several came to her when and as she wished, this being the wisdom of Lon.

  This loyal and unswerving preparation has worked to gird and steady her during the numbing shock which defined the first hours of their reunion. She, as planned and practiced, quickly set before him a meal: one of nourishment as well as meaning, for there was bread and there was weak gom—just to soothe him, to comfort him, for she knew, for she anticipated his many needs...how tired he would be, how much comfort like a babe he would need, how patient she would have to be in her adjustments to his truly being there, sharing their moments.

  But for who Frak actually was, is, has become, Darlm has not, could not, did not prepare.

  “Sit!” He points with a small dagger to a place two steps distant from the table. Yes, he had embraced her, but he had not kissed her, no, in an unexpected move he enveloped her, wrapped her inside his fulsome robe—Darlm felt as if she had been captured: a bird netted. But her excitement, her ardor, her longing blinded her, dulled her to the queer passion of his mutated heart.

  Wisely, she sits where he points.

  Frak eats. Eats alone.

  Darlm is shocked, stunned…but Lon had counseled patience.

  But who could have expected? Who?

  Frak breaks the bread—does not offer any to her.

  Frak drinks the go
m—does not offer any to her.

  Frak rises from the table—does not reach out for her.

  “Here!” Frak unleashes a command as he flings off his robes...bare and aroused, finger-pointing to their bed.

  Darlm does not move.

  Frak frowns at her—bared teeth grimace—it is a look she has seen from his recounting of the Great Bear hunt. She starts to giggle...giggling. Such sound fiercely ignites the moment...disrupts...cracks...shatters…Frak is within a stomp right beside her, glaring eyes all over her—he more fiercely aroused!—towering...bends down—not to take her hand, not to raise her as moon—bends down with a whipping slap and a thud across her face...Darlm crumbles, sprawling.

  Just one brutal slap and Frak strides sternly back over to the bed. He does not turn towards her. Back to her. His whole body is hard: erect. The hardness flashes across the room, threatening Darlm.

  Like a prey startled during the hunt, flushed out, wildly fleeing, so Darlm flees, scampers on all fours across the room and burrows under the thatch of hides which crisscross the bed—flees here because this bed has always been a safe haven, their place, where they become big...flees, scurries there now out of defensive reflex, not respect...hides herself.

  What then happens, Darlm does not, could never divulge to Lon. Couldn’t even if she wanted to, for from this night, this return, this bedding down together, Frak keeps Darlm hidden, secluded, “protected from” Lon... whom Frak names—“Demon!”

  Happens. He does not kiss her. He does not tenderly touch her. He does not breathe softly upon her. He does not image her to herself in moon words. Does not address her in sun words. Simply, he submits her.

  Not that he hadn’t as big entered every doorway to her Moon treasure. No, as Sun and Moon they had interpenetrated in every way and through every route and with every possible imagining.

  Submits her. He penetrates...he ejaculates. Plucks out and leaves the bed. He had not even taken the hides away from her face. Just grabbed her bottom and submitted her.

  “I’ve never liked this story,” SxZ.

  “I liked his cock,” TxZ.

  “What did you like about it?” AxZ.

  Txz: “It has harmony about it. Simplicity. A certain type of orderliness. When he comes into me, something inside me says “Yes! Yes!” ...I don’t know, but it sort of makes me exhale.”

  SxZ: “Were you ever a Zernilian?”

  “Flesh,” AxZ asks, a question she wants to puncture them with, “is it eternal for Frak?”

  There is a hum; a buzz—exchange of impressions, images, abstractions—as AxZ anticipated.

  RxZ: “Only TxZ thinks so.”

  TxZ: Great Frak! He creates this whole Grand Story, this whole constellation of ideas, a whole creativity which makes her the Center. Makes her childbearing the Center. Even uses the metaphor of The Trick—“You shall bear children in intense pain and suffering; yet even so, you shall welcome your husband’s affections, and he shall be your master.” Isn’t it clear? That she is Goddess, Goddess beyond his words and imaginings, Goddess of such incredible unutterability that he can only say “I shall be your master.” Could there ever be greater love? Eternal love? Eternal bonding of the flesh?!

  The splatter of tongues in rancorous dissension was eventually gathered up and harmonized by AxZ. She uses her reddening power—it does not fail her.

  “Seekers,” sweetly, quietly, as subduing a human child’s wail with the breast, “Seekers, there is a principle of truth in TxZ’s interpretation. Who can spy it?”

  None could. Even TxZ wasn’t sure what AxZ was suggesting.

  So, she moves within them into deep sleep.

  Deep sleeping, all in the locale: Yahweh. “Hear us O Yahweh! Hear us O Magnificent One whose Name we dare not utter! Hear us who seek You through our ignorance of You!” AxZ has used this invocation before—a tool of her trade; handed down among the reddening ones. Offering: red roses burning. Offering: scents of red blood of buds. “Hear us O Yahweh and touch us with Your deep sleep.”

  “My children…” and the depthless Voice sets them forth on Rapture.

  “My children…” and it is Yahweh talking, speaking, a tremendous Voice, a Living Thing: mysterium tremendum…but slowly, imperceptibly at first, by annunciation’s end, faltering into a drone, a mumbling, a coughing babble of words—into a snore.

  Yahweh sleeps deeply...snore rattling the cosmos!

  In Yahweh’s deep sleep, Darlm reveals the true story: Darlm...her only surprise was Frak’s quick mounting then penetration, catching her—Maybe I wanted him to?—with the treasure of bones about...causing her to pause from tiding up, bundling and readying for burial; dissolving, crushing and grinding all the bones into dust—Dust thou art! she hums.

  Frak’s eagerness to see her results in her being seen as he wants to see her: unexpectedly.

  Her submission is but the shyness of the moon which the sun is never aware of—even now.

  Bemused, she grasps that for Frak she is just a starless sight which does not afford Another Sight, only an observation...that she is a woman to submit.

  With Another Sight, Darlm squeals with delight. Buries him in kisses. Immerses him in adoration. Beams upon him all her moonshine. Naked breasts. Hungering buttock. Offering him a sun’s resting place. And he does not fail her. Hugs her. Kisses her. Mounts her. Infuses her with sunlight everlasting! Then, spent, he fades, falls into deep sleep.

  Frak sleeps...Aha! It is the dust from the bones which plunge him into near depthless sleep.

  Bones. The children of the other males. Those she feasted upon when he was not here. Those with whom she had coupled, filled up, drenched with sun lust but whom she did not grace with moon love, just moon wilding—lusty flares, bursts, without a source.

  It is these children, babes of her abandoning lust which she has used during his absence, his travels, his voyaging—O, Lon has shown her clearly where he has voyaged. Everything he was doing. Darlm’s knowledge of Frak is still moon bright! Far-sighted.

  These children whom she produced without souls, without spirits, without eternal presence—they could die, would die, should die! To be sacrificed upon his return. Her own Thanksgiving!

  (“Grind their bones to make our bread!” Fe, fi, fo, fum.)

  In darkest sleep he hears told the Story of His Rib. It pleasures him greatly. It is sedative to his forgetting all that She has told him—all that Lon has revealed. For now there is no Lon! In this deeply wilding sleep all that Frak had discovered on his voyage is validated: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”

  It is an enchanted deep sleep into which Darlm also slips, sprinkling the dust of soul-less babes. (Friar Otto: “Incubi! Succubi!”) This the puissant magic which sustains Frak’s waking Story...sustains his grasp of his Voyage. Sustains his belief: Our Father who art in heaven….

  TxZ: “I don’t want this!”

  SxZ: “Truly, it’s all about the female’s flesh...that’s it?”

  RxZ: “Darlm, herself, creates this Yahweh who makes the Goddess, the female, invisible. Wow! What a clever trick!”

  AxZ: “Can’t you see now why it is flesh that is eternal?”

  As with any good Seer, AxZ knew that gaining Another Sight meant Another Blindness. This set of Seekers had Prior possibilities. She watched them throb so close to Golden that she almost cried...weeps as she remembers Frak weeping in deep blessed sleep.