The Orphan's Tales

by Catherynne M. Valente

  The Shaduki are disturbed by Monopods. Though monsters and angels of all description walk the streets of the city, though indeed it was the Hsien, men whose wings are greater in span than even the Griffin’s and who are no more human than we, who raised the Rose Dome over their spires and rooftops, the Monopods seem to trouble them like no other. To them we are ugly and misshapen. To them we are stupid and slow. To them we are scheming and slant-eyed. Though the wine we crush between our many toes brings in great sacks of silver for the city vaults, whenever disaster occurs we are blamed. If the snaking Varil does not flood its banks or floods too severely, our hideousness must have offended some god or another. After all, beauty is, of all the exports of Shadukiam, by far the most prized. Beauty and money, and not those diamond sticks, are the twin pillars that hoist the city into the skies.

  We take this as gracefully as we can. We live peaceably in the Ghetto of Moss and Root; we do not ask for more. We sleep beneath our feet knowing that we are virtuous, and that one day we will take our wine barrels and sail south on our heel-ships to the promised kingdom of the Antipodes, where the first Monopod walked, and where legend tells us whole nations of our people still dwell.

  Because we are not liked, when the Yi came among our people, no one would help us. There was no outcry. The Shaduki shrugged together and were grateful that the Yi had moved on into less desirable portions of the population. Clean out the rats, they said, and leave the cheese for the rest of us.

  It was a year before I set off for the Red Mountain that my Tova died. The tendon in her foot was severed when the horses of a passing Shaduki cart trampled her underfoot. This tendon is to us what an artery is to most creatures—when it is cut there is no hope. She survived long enough on her bed of peonies and crabgrass to whisper to me that she wished we could have been married, as we had planned to do after the next barreling season. It was a horror to see her there, unable to lift her foot, the thick leg hanging at a limp and weeping angle, like a broken hinge. We buried her that night, and asked the Root-Paths which connect us all to guide her spirit to the Antipodes, and to rest.

  The next morning, I awoke to find my Tova staring curiously at me, her familiar red braids neatly plaited, her cheeks as fat and well-colored as ever. But in her eyes there was no Tova. There was something strange and cold instead, something with teeth. The Thing-That-Was-Not-Tova laughed harshly, a sound like spoons scraping against stone, and hopped away from my patch of violets and bladderwrack without looking behind her.

  Of course it was clear to all of us what had happened. We knew of the Yi, but until now it was a plague that only visited the Shaduki. Only they suffered the gruesome sight of their dead loved ones walking among them; only they were forced to watch their children worn like clothing. We had never guessed it could come among us. But we should have guessed—the Yi could not pass up the experience of our strange bodies.

  The elders did not want to see the Tova-Thing. They ignored it as though it did not walk through the Root; they would not speak of it, as though not giving it a name would make it leave our home. But the Tova-Thing seemed happy to stay in the Ghetto. We could not force it to wear the moon robes Shadukiam enforced outside our places. It hopped wherever it pleased, curious and silent, except for that awful laugh. I begged the elders for permission to put the body of my Tova to rest and kill the thing that wore her, but they would not give in; they would not soil the Root with a stranger’s blood. Finally, I could not bear it any longer—to see my beloved’s face laughing at me each morning, as if the Thing inside her knew that she had loved me, and specially enjoyed seeing my face twisted up in pain. I went into the city center, to find a way to give my Tova peace.

  It was said that one of the Yi kept a human apprentice, but I could not risk consulting such a corrupted creature. And anyway, what Yi would reveal a secret weakness to a human? He would just as likely strangle me and give my body to his master. No, I had to find a deeper knowledge, a knowledge as old as the Yi itself.

  Those who are not accepted with open arms into the bosom of a city often know more about the goings-on of its dark corners than those who sit high on the hill and dine with sapphire forks clinking against golden plates. This is how I came to know of the Anchorite.

  In the central square of Shadukiam stands the Basilica of Rose and Silver, whose spires are famed throughout the world for their intricate carvings, whose gargoyles have made women faint at the sight of their grimaces, whose door is carved from a single living cedar whose roots delve deep into the earth beneath the Basilica and whose branches crown its towers. This is what the beautiful and wealthy Shaduki see.

  Behind the Basilica, concealed behind a brick wall overgrown with belladonna and other poisonous tendrils which creep and twist, a woman is chained to the church wall. She is clothed in a dress woven from the hair which even still sprouts from her head—as the black strands grow, her gown lengthens. Her eyes are bright and wild, rolling in her head like a baker’s pins. She has no mouth; her face is blank and smooth where her mouth should be. It is said that she scrapes letters in the soil when she wishes to speak, and that there is nothing she does not know. It is for this reason she is hidden and chained, so that she will not reveal the secrets of the Shaduki. This is what we who are hated see.

  I went to the Anchorite in the early hours of the morning, before the Basilica held its Mass of Coins, before the Tova-Thing roused itself. I ducked behind her wall, careful not to touch the green growth that clutched hungrily at it, and crouched at the side of the mouthless creature. She was huddled against the stone church, knees clutched to her chest, staring at me with her blank, mad eyes. She made no sound—I suppose I could not have expected more.

  “Help me, Anchorite. One of the Yi has taken the body of my Tova, and I cannot bear to see her used so, as though the heart of my heart were no more than a fashionable hat. Help me to kill the Yi in her, and lay her body to rest. I beg you, holy Anchorite, to tell me the secret of bringing death to the deathless.”

  She stretched out her thin legs, truly no more than bones, and touched my leg with her skeletal hands, stroking the ropy muscles as if divining some fortune from their patterns. Finally, she drew back, her chains clinking against each other like dinner glasses. She pulled at her gown of hair, opening the tangled strands covering her stomach and pulling the plaits open as though they had been fastened with buttons.

  Underneath her thick black hair was a fleshy expanse of belly, and in the center of the belly was a perfect mouth, lined with teeth.

  It was not unlike any other mouth, except that it opened in the middle of her body, and the voice which issued from it was lower than any woman’s voice.

  “This Anchorite wonders if you want to get it out of her body, or kill it altogether? A very different procedure, depending on which it is you aim for.” A dark pink tongue slid out of the mouth and licked its lips.

  I looked down in shame at my foot, whose once-thick hair had grown sparse with grief. “I want to kill it. I want to destroy it.”

  “Well enough. I won’t ask you if your love is true or any of that rot—it’s not my place to judge. After all, I’m a naked woman chained to a wall; I’ve no business questioning the lifestyles of wine-makers or anyone else.”

  “Did you choose this prison, my lady?”

  “Don’t ?my lady’ me, little limp-leg.” She chuckled, settling herself against the wall so that her chained arms cupped the speaking belly, almost as an expectant mother would cradle her womb. “Of course I chose it! Do you think the priests of the Basilica could keep me, if I did not wish it?”

  The Anchorite slipped her wrists from her chains as easily as a child undresses for her bath. She shook her hands at me teasingly and pushed them back into the manacles.

  “I am not here for them. I tell them nothing, I give them nothing. Shadukiam is a necropolis; it is only that the streets do not know they are dying. It is a slow poison, a rot that takes centuries to kill. Love of silver, love of beauty, l
ove of seeming. The oligarchs do not care what justice is, only what seems just. They do not care what mercy is, only what appears merciful. Thus justice and mercy will always escape them. I am the canker; I am the sore on the flesh of this dying pig. I am for you, and for the others who dwell on the fringes of Shadukiam, who can be saved from its ruin. What knowledge I can give to those who are treated with what seems like kindness, but is unkind, I give. When a Monopod comes to me, I open my hair and show him my true mouth. When the Hsien come, I let them cover me in their wings and I tell them secrets in a cloud of feathers. When a priest comes, when a banker comes, I roll my eyes and piss on their shoes, and they think I am mad.”

  I knelt—which is not easy for us—and pressed my lips briefly to that secret mouth, in sacrament and thanks. When I pulled away, I saw tears shine in the Anchorite’s eyes.

  “Then I have no thanks enough, and whether you like the word or no, I will call you Lady. Tell me how to kill the Yi.”

  The mouth smiled, and the smile was as full of pity as a spring well is filled with rain. “The only thing that can destroy the spirit of a Yi and force it to the underworld, the only thing that will bind it and keep it from taking the body of another dead wretch, is to pierce the Yi through the eye with the golden talon of a Griffin.”

  “Then I shall seek out the Griffin.”

  “Ah, I am sorry, my boy, but there are only two left in the world. The Arimaspian hordes have slaughtered the rest in their lust for gold. The female, called Quri, dwells in the Boiling Sea; the male, called Jin, at the peak of the Red Mountain of Nuru, whose slopes will blind you before you approach its smallest peak. And neither is in the habit of severing his or her talons for grieving lovers.”

  “Nevertheless, I will seek out the Griffin. I cannot do less for my Tova. I cannot leave her like this, to be used up and discarded when she no longer even bears the face I know so well.”

  “Then I suggest the male,” she said with a sigh. “The female would dine on your liver before you had hopped three steps onto her beach. Go, if you are determined. But go now; the parishioners approach and the Yi is even now turning the flesh of your woman to crags and craters.”

  The Anchorite closed her gown of hair over her mouth and huddled once more against the wall, keening back and forth in an impressive display of madness. That very day I left the Rose Dome and turned my foot toward Nuru and its red cliffs.

  I WALKED ALONGSIDE CHAYIM, WHO HAD GROWN slower in his halting gait as he told his story.

  “I am sorry my people have made this more difficult for you. It is true we hunted the Griffin and took more than our share. We are ashamed of this.”

  “But you still hunt the poor beast. And how can you take your share of something that is not yours?”

  “You do not understand; you are not of the Oculos. Our mistake was not in hunting the Griffin, but unbalancing the war between us. The Griffin’s gold is ours; we are blessed by the Fourth Blink of the World-Eye. It is ours by right and by strength of arms. But we should have been satisfied with the world as it was, and not sought more gold than we needed. Without the Ocular, we are nothing. It is the golden eye that makes us Arimaspians. How can we be denied that which we are? How dare any Griffin deny it to us, even to the last of their kind?”

  Chayim scratched his grimy hair. “What exactly does it do?”

  “When forged according to the Ritual of Ob and pressed into the skull of the King, it grants him the strength of ten men, and a lifespan three times his natural length. The Ocular can see far beyond our kingdom, into cities and wild lands on the other side of the world. It allows him to guide his people, to influence them and give his vision to the tribe. He sees far beyond the space of one tribe, and far beyond the life of one man, for his own life sees the death three times over of all he loves. The Ocular draws the Stare of the World-Eye, and ensures the survival of our nation. Without it, the Eye would slide from us, and we would perish from the face of the earth.” My voice shook with passion—these are the deepest faiths of my father’s fathers.

  “And with all that perspective, no King of yours could see that the line of Griffins would end, and there would be no more gold for your Ocular?”

  I shrugged. “The Eye will provide. They ate our herds by the hundreds and thought nothing of it—why should we be counted as less than they?”

  Chayim shook his head—like most outsiders, he could not accept the superiority of our claim, or the obvious need for the Griffin to submit to us. I was a little disappointed. After all, I understood his need to put his woman to rest perfectly. “I had hoped to simply ask for the gift of a talon, but after such losses surely Jin will not part with one. It will have to be stolen.”

  I put a comforting arm around my compatriot. “One must always steal from Griffin. They cannot be reasoned with. You would not try to beg a gift from a wild hog—a Griffin is no different.”

  We walked in silence for some time, and the red silhouette of Nuru grew before us like a living flame. It had begun to prick at my eye, to scratch at my lashes and pull tears from behind my lid. I rubbed at it, trying to clear my sight, and knuckled away the tears as they swelled up. I could see that Chayim was also weeping; only a little at first, but then more and more until tears streamed down his face and mine in salt rivers. We could not look at the jagged peaks, or the sunlight filtering through them in thick red-violet shafts. I fell to my knees; Chayim crumpled and lay on his side, breathing shallowly, unable to raise his head towards the glowering mountain.

  “It is like a riddle,” he gasped, his hairy toes twitching. “How do a man with one leg and a man with one eye climb a mountain without looking at it?”

  My chest was tight as a skin stretched over the barrel of a drum. I loosened the leather straps of my breastplate, trying to catch my breath as my eyes clouded with tears. As I pulled it away from my body, I glimpsed the mountain reflected in its polished surface, and found that I could look at the image in the metal without pain. I turned to the Monopod and smiled.

  “The breastplate, Chayim, the breastplate will guide us. I will carry you on my shoulders and your foot—your colossal, beautiful foot—will block the sight of the ruby slopes from us both. Hold the cuirass before you like a mirror and direct my steps. It will be slow, but we will reach the Griffin’s aerie.”

  And in this way, an ungainly beast ascended the heights of Nuru. Chayim’s gnarled trunk was not so heavy as it first seemed, and his great knee pressed only a little into my now-bare chest. The scarlet facets rose up around us, but I saw none of it, only the fleshy surface of his foot, covered with hair like moss on the root of an ancient tree. I studied the patterns of his yellow toenails; I counted the pores in his heat-cracked skin. Only the Monopod glimpsed the beauty of those crags; only he saw what no man yet had seen without paying the price of his eyes.

  I still envy him that sight.

  After a full day and night of climbing, Chayim called out to me that the peaks were no longer blindingly red, but had darkened to violet, and gave off no light to harm us, but rather seemed to pull the light of the sky, the spires below, and the breastplate into itself and extinguish it. We could look at it—so long as we did not look down into the inferno of stones below—and not be hurt.

  I set him down and we clambered up the last few boulders, strange and alien stones pocked like purple moons. No plant grew—the mountain at this height was a great dead thing, scarred and pitted—and the sharp rim of the windswept crater loomed up ahead of us.

  Perched just below the blasted crater, so precariously it seemed ready to tumble from its niche at any moment, was the nest of the Griffin.

  I was surprised—the nest did not shine or sparkle as I would expect gold-thatch to sparkle. It was a dull yellow, mottled and dim, clearly gold, but dusted with feathers, its color dampened by the use of its owner. The Griffin itself was, of course, predictably magnificent. His haunches took all the burden of golden shades his nest had abandoned, his tail whipping back and forth b
ehind him like a snake, tufted with a little flame of orange fur. His plumage was a garish turquoise and green, with flashes of deep red underfeathers peeking out from beneath the sea-colored wings. His face was broad, his metallic beak half a mouth, drawn back in a snarl. The wind roared around us, his voice vying with it for deafening power.

  “Go away, Arimaspian! I have nothing for you! Your ape grandfathers have killed us and stolen from us and cracked our eggs on their knees—you think I will portion out my gold for you like a shopkeeper? I wish rotting diseases on all your children!”

  I was prepared for the abuse. Those who are not beloved of the World-Eye always harbor hatred for those who are. But the Monopod looked panicked—it seemed to him, I imagine, that it was impossible to convince such an irrational creature to part with any piece of itself. Of course that is true—I never had his silly intention of asking for what I needed. I drew my curved silver knife and advanced on the Griffin, who reared on his hind legs and beat the savage wind with his blue wings.

  “Jin, Jin!” Chayim cried, falling to his knee in desperate terror. “Listen to me and I will not let him hurt you!”

  The Griffin and I laughed at the same moment, both amused by the idea of the hapless Monopod staying my hand or protecting such a beast in any way. Chayim looked at me pleadingly, and his chapped lips mouthed the single word: Tova. I lowered my knife but did not sheath it.

  “Who told you my name, one-leg? Griffins guard their names as their gold!”

  “It was told to me by the Anchorite of Shadukiam, noble Jin. I am sure she meant no harm—she knows my need is great.”