The Habitation of the Blessed

by Catherynne M. Valente

  “Do you think because I do not mate, because I fly and gestated within a plant, that I am so different? I hope to be loved. I hope that in sharing your road you will be kind to me, and love me, not because you think I am an angel, but because you know I am Qaspiel, and see my heart, and protect me, when it comes to that. Fortunatus wishes to be loved, too, to be loved as his wife and his child loved him, and fill their absence with us, with you. Hadulph wants Hagia to think him brave and fair-minded, that he would stand even with one who insulted her and showed no very great liking for anything our country offers if she asked it. And Hajji—well, she hopes that you will love her for herself alone, and for that reason she learns your Latin and follows you like a hound—you are new, and the only person whose love she might believe. It’s all love, John. Even you—if your Thomas loves you and calls you worthy, you will be free, will you not? Free and released and unburdened, and worthy and safe. In the history of the world, no one has done a thing that was not done for love. You must only train yourself to see it—the canny emerald strand that connects a soul to its desire, and all the kinks and snarls in it, that might seem as though they tend toward wealth or power, but mean only: love me, love me back, love me despite everything.”

  “God is love,” I said weakly, and the moon flickered through black branches. I believed then that it was so.

  “When you say that, and I say that,” said Qaspiel, “I do not think we mean the same thing. You mean it only as a metaphor.”

  I brooded on that, and the angel walked beside me, the hematite in its hair like black tears.

  The wood yielded abruptly to pale sand and wiry green grasses tipped in black blossoms, their exposed roots caked in salt. The dawn showed bony and thin over these and also a great number of broken stones, blue-black against the pearly earth, veined with quartz. An arched doorway, leading to nothing, still stood, and cairns of stones, and not a few bronze shards, crusted in green age, were strewn over the ruins. The stones lay haphazard and crumbling over all the land I could see, no end to them, repeated over and over.

  I want to say I felt a profundity there, a sense of… what? The echo of God. But the truth is I felt nothing at all but a mild curiosity and the tingle of my sunburn.

  The others, however, went instantly silent and still. I believe no one expected to stumble upon that place, except perhaps Hajji, whom nothing surprised. They began to gather from among their various packs a number of items: some salted yak, some mango blossoms, a flask of water, a scrap of silk from the wood. These they piled up near the doorway, and I saw that many other dried flowers and foodstuffs had been left there, too. When I inquired, there seemed to be some confusion among them as to who would tell me the tale—they encouraged Hajji, but she bared her teeth and gnashed them. Finally, Qaspiel took up the task. The sun beat its bluish skin to grey.

  “This is a very holy place, John. Long before any of us were born it was here, long before even the Ship of Bones or the Abir. This was a tower, so high you could not see the top of it, and for generations folk labored to build it—children were born on the heights whose feet never touched earth, who ate seabirds they could shoot from the clouds, and fruit might be passed up hand to hand all the way to the top, the latest and youngest of the great work, and the great workers. They built this tower hoping to reach the nearest of the crystalline spheres, John, which is the Benevolent Silver of the Sphere of the Moon.”

  “Why? Was the world then so wicked they wished to escape it?”

  “You ask this? Who stand before us a relic of a world none of us have seen, extraordinary for that, the fascination of every soul in Nural and more? They wanted to touch the heavens. They yearned for the world to be bigger than it was, for it all to be open and welcoming, for it to welcome them. To touch the great silver belly of the moon and know the smell of the winds there, and know whether there is water, whether some beautiful, rare monsters walk and love and give birth and eat vegetables there. Just to know, John. Just to see.”

  As Qaspiel spoke I felt the borders of its tale and the borders of my own knowledge kiss and join.

  “Some say they scraped the bottom of it and some say they never came close. Some say the tower stood so long that the children born at the top looked nothing like the children born at the bottom—they were small and thin, to breathe the stranger air, and their eyes saw perfectly by darkness, and their ribs grew and their stomachs shrank, for little enough food could reach the top. Their language changed so that no boy repairing the holes in the ancient foundation could understand a syllable of the girls mortaring the newest bricks at the top. Some say the moon rejected them, and some say the tower became a tunnel, connecting the Sphere of the Moon to the Sphere of the Earth and that folk did pass between them, before the great winds between Spheres destroyed the tower. Some say sabotage brought it down, from above or below, that the whole nation lived within the tower, and great-grandmothers had never seen their great-grandchildren, and this grew intolerable, or the folk at the top envied the bounty of the earth. Some say the moon offered nothing of interest, and they all went home disappointed and dismantled it all. Some say they never ought to have tried, that the Spheres are not to be bridged. Some say we ought to try again, now that we are better at architecture, and have winged folk to carry it along faster. But however it occurred, the tower fell. A great number of folk died, falling.”

  “This place was called Babel, John,” said Hagia softly. I felt my belly drop out from me then, my heart quicken, and I felt I understood in a flood how their language was so familiar to me. They spoke the language. The language, the only true tongue. They were Babelites, only they did not even understand their hubris, to build that tower so high, did not even understand that God had cast their ambitions down. They were naked, and innocent, so innocent I felt their purity might burn me.

  “We honor them, who strove so hard, and all before the Fountain which ransomed us from death,” Fortunatus said, nosing the boughs of dried blossoms with his beak to arrange them. “I have myself often thought of flying up and up, so high that I might glimpse that silver Sphere—but I would starve before I reached it, I would tire, and I am not so brave as they, who had only a few years to lose.”

  I sat down heavily on the broad sands. A stone lay near me; I spread my palm on its warm surface, so old I could not begin to imagine its quarry. How I wished I could show this to Kostas, to my fellow priests—to Nikos, the linguist, who would delight in it, to Anastorus, the flagellant, who would be horrified. I wanted then only to share it with someone for whom it was not familiar and known, someone to share my wonder. To laugh with, for there is nothing else to do when confronted, at the end of the world, with the ruins of Babel.

  That day, I felt as though I walked on the Sphere of the Moon, and the folk of that place simply stared at me, saying: Why do you gawk? Nothing could be more usual.

  But for all their familiarity with it, no one seemed to want to leave. Though the morning barely showed through the orange clouds like birds along the horizon, everyone dallied, touched the stones, sifted the sand through their fingers. I saw Hajji press her lips to the doorway arch and shut her eyes in a rictus of reverence. Hadulph rolled on his back, his paws in the air, growling deep in his chest. Qaspiel walked through the remnants of the tower, its steps like a dance, scratching sweeping patterns in the sand, smiling to itself, its blue teeth gleaming. I watched them all, and I felt my separateness like a body. I knew this place, too, but I could not bring myself to tell them the truth of it, to interrupt their familial connection to those dark, dark stones—the canny emerald strands, as Qaspiel put it, that tied them here. I could not interrupt this joy with a story about God’s wrath.

  You see how they took me, sin by tiny sin.

  But they were so happy in the ruins.

  Hagia set out a picnic, and we all ate dates and silk-berries from the cloth wood; they were rough on the tongue but tangy and sweet. We ate yet the last of Hajji’s dried yak. The panoti made small ulula
ting noises at the sky, as if calling the Sphere of the Moon to herself. Hadulph snoozed, with his eyes open as I grasped now how he always slept, and Fortunatus leaned against him, flank to flank.

  “You understand, don’t you?” Hagia said to me as the day drew down and without speaking they all agreed to sleep there, with those tall shadows growing long. “This is home. The whole nation of Pentexore lived here once. So it’s home for all of us.”

  “No,” I said softly, lying next to her, my body tense, for nothing could convince my flesh she meant any virtuous thing. “It’s Eden.”

  “You told Fortunatus that word. You said it was where men sinned. But I am not a man, nor a woman, so I feel it has nothing to do with me.”

  “But it does,” I said, eager. “I understand now. This is where Eden was, in the beginning of the world. The earth is fertile here as it could never be in Constantinople or any other city of men; there is a magic here we know nothing of, wealth and jewels that you do not even see, so workaday is their glittering to you. Those trees, those silken trees, and the tree of eyes, and the tree of sheep—could the Tree of Knowledge have been anything other than that breed? And you, and all of them—if the Nephilim could have four faces, and the Ophanim live as burning wheels set with eyes, then who is to say you could not exist?”

  “I appreciate your permission.”

  But I did not even hear her. Not her bitter sarcasm, not her warning. “This is Eden, Hagia. 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. Just because you have never found them does not mean they are not there. This is the country God kept for men, before we fell.”

  And I kissed her, so full of the joy of it was I. An innocence like desire in me, so big and pale I could not contain it. I lay so that my mouth could clap the mouth in her belly, and my hand found her waist.

  “I am not a monster, John,” she said gently, and not without affection, I imagined, her words dropping into the darkness between us.

  “Didn’t you hear me? I know you’re not.”

  “I did hear you. Now you think I am divine, like your Ophanim, and so your God might permit a kiss. That is no different. It is just another way of saying: this thing is not like me, and so does not deserve what I deserve, nor need what I need.”

  “That’s not—”

  “I am happy for you, that you have found a way to fit us into your story, John. But you do not fit into ours, and I fear what you will do when you discover that.”

  And she turned away from me. The stars over her shoulder were so bright and warm that they seemed to grow out of her skin, all that light within her, hidden, secret. She turned away from me, but when the night grew full, and I moved toward her again, the blemmye said nothing, but arched against my desire, and she tasted like sand as I shut my eyes against her skin, moving together, as innocent as an apple, whole, untouched, unseen, not even dreamed of.

  THE BOOK OF THE FOUNTAIN

  I had decided not to love him. I felt certain in those days that it was possible to decide this. Somewhere between kisses and promises, there is a small space where such acts of will may be performed, between a field of red silk flowers and the ruins of a tower. I could enjoy him and not love him. I could preen before Grisalba, who hadn’t managed it. I decided. There would be no more discussion, nor would I waste my heart worrying over nights secluded away from the others, with a moon too full, shadows too deep.

  I hung back, let the priest and Hajji range forward over the broad Babel stones, and I hated a little that I could not have come to that place alone, known it for myself, without having to explain it to a stranger as though I were a book he read in a pleasant old chair. It is possible to close every door that once lay open, to check the locks, to pull down the hatches and stand sentinels. I did all these things. I would not love him—love cannot exist between an animal and an angel. With his kisses still fresh on my shoulders, for he had not yet been able to bear the sight of my front half while he loved me, I knew how the country lay, in his heart.

  “I wish that I had visited your mother,” I said to Hadulph, astride his back, my cheek against his mane.

  “She is not infallible, Hagia. She would say that if you must have him, you must. It is the only way to rid yourself of love. And if you have had him twice, you will have him a third time.”

  “He is cruel and hard, and he thinks I am an animal.”

  “You are. So am I. Only he thinks sourly of it. I like being an animal. It means eating and mating and living and light. I don’t know what he thinks he is, if not an animal.”

  “Hadulph, I have done with him. I will only tolerate so much talk of God and my own ugliness. We will go where we are going and I hope to leave him there. He can worship a grave till he dies. I have no more patience for sneering in the daylight and ardor by moon. That is a child’s game.”

  “He is a child. Only forty! Can you imagine? Can you even remember forty? At forty I still had my mother’s milk for breakfast! No wonder he is so rude; no wonder he believes uncivilized things.”

  “I remember forty. Astolfo could still speak; we made love in the sun and he did not avert his eyes from me.”

  “I do not avert my eyes,” growled Hadulph kindly. “But I forget, you have had only one Abir, you are still young yourself. The coming Lottery will be exciting for you—do you think we will still go into the pepper fields together, afterward?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, turning my gaze to the blue sky so deep, and dusted with green leaves flying. “I cannot imagine life on the other side of the Abir. That is the point of it, I suppose. A door the other side of which is unfathomable.” My eyes grew heavy; the clouds wisped apart above me, joining again, and drowsily moving apart. “Do you suppose, Hadulph, that the world itself has Abirs? A day when everything spins around and comes out backwards, inside out, mixed up, and when it is all done, nothing is as it was? Do you suppose we could all keep living on the other side of those doors as we had before?”

  Well do I remember now, in these shadowy hours I spend in my minaret, the last thing I said before Hadulph’s steady, thumping gait sent me entirely into dreams:

  “I am only thankful John will have no chit in the barrel, and no poor soul will be saddled with him.”

  I guessed that we actually walked parallel to the Fountain road, though a long way west of it, since I knew these spiky, fragrant weeds, and the flecks of snow that drifted aimlessly through the bright sun, portending, but not yet threatening a far-off cold. No markets sprang up here, no hyena-woman with a bauble for my penny. No draughts to refresh, no tables draped with fantastic cloth to dress my waist. It was lonely, though six of us walked that other road, that shadow road, leading not to life but to death, to tombs and graves. For many days I had suspected that we drew near the Gates of Alisaunder, near the high mountains that kept those old ghosts back. The map said so—my history lessons said so. I longed to question Hajji about the snowy lands ahead, where the panotii lived, where she must have lived. But I kept my peace.

  We saw a glimmer, finally, far ahead, some weeks out of the ruins, which had stretched further than even I could have imagined. A long plain stretched out, full of black sand—not rich nor scorched, but simply colorless, lightless, dark as a sky. On one side of the vale icy mountains rose up sharply, without foothills, as if dropped there by a careless child. And in a cleft, the sunlight shone through such diamonds that rainbow prisms fell on every stone, and on our skin, and on Hajji’s ears, and on John’s half-bald pate, and on Fortunatus’ beak. Qaspiel spread its wings as if to drink the light, and the glittering refractions played a jittery chase over its feathers.

  No one had carved or shaped the gems to be pleasant to visiting eyes; no one had smoothed them and chipped them into intricate designs, but only piled them loosely, crudely, and made them fast. Yet if I had not known
its purpose, I would have thought the Gates more lovely than anything I had yet seen in my days. Their rough, strange grandeur outshone entirely the city that spread out below them, the lights of candles and fires sparkling already in the young evening that brought us to the mountains, huts and houses, even estates—no camp this, but a city, not so big as Nural, but something like Shirshya, with a well sunk, and a fountain gurgling, and an amphitheater for the summer rites. We, grubbed, hard-traveled outsiders, walked those streets in wonder, while everywhere the rainbows of the diamond Gates danced and darted. Yet these paths were empty—no one greeted us, or asked us our business, offered food or demanded we leave at once. Only three broad streets intersected in the center of the town, and we walked unimpeded up the grandest one—its dirt was most compacted, most often stamped down by feet and wheels. We walked through the quiet to the very threshold of the Gates, and there I climbed down from Hadulph’s great back and reached out my hand to touch the adamant door.

  The gems burned me; I drew back my hand with a cry.

  “Hot, eh?” came a voice behind me, and all of us looked to see an aged, aged peacock, so old his tail drooped and had gone black, splashed with vivid, searing green. His eyes still gleamed, but weariness spoke in his every feather. Those who drink from the Fountain usually stay young—at least as young as they are when they drink their third swallow of that brackish slime. But some few by chance or an ornery nature did not drink until they had already reached a stately age, and these folk grow instead into a kind of regal senescence, still hale, but colored strangely, or their voice goes rough and deep. This bird had done all this and more—his tail so full and heavy it spread behind him like an emperor’s robe. And it was by that I knew him, for what did I not know about the old peacock who chronicled the generations of the cannibal tribes so faithfully? The old rooster had not found his way to the Fountain until he was advanced in his avian years, due to a habit for blackbulb nectar, and a lazy disposition.