The Orphan's Tales

by Catherynne M. Valente

  “I have no gold to watch over. I have only you.” I tried to press my head against hers, but she turned away, opening the hidden seam in her black frock so that the mouth in her belly—the mouth that bore me—could speak freely.

  “You will, Quri. You will have a clutch of eggs and a nest of gold, as all Griffins do, one day. We must each tend to the talismans of our people—you to your gold and Giota to her wall.”

  “You have never told me the name of your people. I know nothing of you, of your ways and your blood. If you are leaving me for a wall and a chain, at least tell me why; tell me what burden calls to you from what tribe to do this thing. Tell me who you are!”

  She grunted and leaned against the crumbling, moss-covered wall, holding her belly in her hands as she had done on the few days when she had spoken to me for longer than a few affectionate sighs—days I remember now like feasts, holidays, festivals of her voice. She turned her lipless face to the sky and shut her black eyes, and the tongue in her belly began to tell its tale…

  I KNOW WHAT YOU ARE THINKING. THAT SOMEWHERE in the world there is a race of people who carry their mouths in their bellies; that somewhere there is a tribe in which I would seem unremarkable.

  There is not.

  I am only a woman, born from a woman, sister to women. Alas, women were rare in the wild, honey-colored expanse of my home—vast grass-swept expanses of land spotted with tree and horse. Thus, my caravan was always small. Sons were born easily, brothers quickly had, husbands too numerous for the few wives. Each woman had many—men fought for the honor of marrying into her bed. The women born were always powerful, almost to a girl a witch or a warrior. The birth of a daughter was celebrated by three nights of feasting on the meat of skinny hawks and blue-bellied lizards. The birth of twin daughters was considered a miracle sent by the blessed Stars.

  Triplets occurred once in a generation, when the Snake-Star aligned with the Harpoon-Star, and the light of the Pierced Serpent fell on the yellow grass. These star-born triplets are the emblem of the caravan—we were known for them; they were prized; without these sacred births we were no more than a ragtag band of horse-traders peddling chicken feet as love charms from town to town.

  The triplets are called the Sorella, and I am the youngest of mine—I was born a full minute after my sisters. We are special, we are sacred: The oldest of each triad carries her eyes in her belly, the middle her ears, and the youngest her mouth. The organs are erased from their right places, but not gouged out, not torn. It is simply as though some god passed her hand over our faces and washed away our eyes, our ears, our mouth. We were the Seer, the Listener, and the Speaker.

  We were Pangiota, Legiota, and Magiota. We were sisters, and with one mind we guided the path of our caravan—for Legiota saw the path, Magiota heard the Stars’ commands, and I spoke the path. We could not lie; we could not guide our people falsely. If the Sorella were consulted, only I could reply, and I could not fail to answer truly, to tell the tale of what my sisters saw and heard. We were more than an oracle: Our faces were the valleys on which the Star-gods walked. We braided our hair into sacred habits, for our bodies were the vessels of the Stars’ light, and no woven cloth could be more holy. It was whispered that the Sorella were the same women in each generation, that the spirits of one set of sisters simply stepped into the bodies of the next. I know nothing of that—I am Pangiota; I have always been. More than that no one can tell.

  I often envied my sisters. After all, I only reported what they told me, what Legiota saw and what Magiota heard. I, too, wanted to turn a secret ear to the sky and hear the white-hot words of the Stars pouring into me like burning honey. I, too, wanted to see the path of truth extending from my lashes like a golden ribbon. But I could only open my hair like a curtain and let my hidden mouth speak. The gods touched my sisters, they did not touch me. I used to pray that we could trade powers, that I could, just once, be the woman who laid out her body under the Stars and let their light spill onto her belly.

  Children make prayers so thoughtlessly, building them up like sand castles—and they are always surprised when suddenly the castle becomes real, and the iron gate grinds shut.

  One day, which was not unlike any other day on the steppes, when the honey cakes boiled in their pans and men shot lazy arrows at raccoons and voles who were little more than little bundles of dry bones, Legiota and Magiota called me to them in our secret place. We crouched in a cavern of black rock hidden in the flank of the orange-and-white-banded cliffs which marked the edges of the grassland, of our home. In the shadows, the sound of water dripping from the stone ceiling made us sleepy and calm—but that day my sisters were awake and nervous as foxes that scent a huntsman. They had unbraided their hair from crown to toe, and sat naked in the cave, their bellies displayed like jewels.

  “I have seen a new path,” Legiota whispered.

  “I have heard the footsteps of the Stars diverting from their courses,” Magiota added, clutching my hands in hers. I realized suddenly that they were frightened.

  “There will be no more Sorella after us. The caravan is dying. There will be more daughters soon than ever were born to us, and mothers will no longer pray for them. There will be no more triple births. The Harpoon-Star has refused to pluck out the eyes, ears, and mouths of any other daughters, and the Snake-Star will not plant them in other wombs. They will give us generations of daughters as compensation, but all of them will be plain. They will not be born with power; they will have to wrest it from this cave, which is deeper dug in the earth than even we had guessed. We will be forgotten, and when the last gray-haired grandmother who remembers us bleeds her blackest blood onto the earth, the caravan will hunger, and thirst, and die.”

  Legiota spoke matter-of-factly, as though she spoke of the average rainfall on the flats. “A man has been born whose great-great-grandson will murder the Snake-Star, and there is no longer any path the Serpent of Heaven can take which will not lead to her death. She has told me this, and she mourns herself under the black veil of the sky. The Sorella were her handmaids while she lived; we cannot serve her when she is dead—she has told me that she will take other Stars as her own, little snakes to be her pallbearers, and remove herself to a temple far removed from the cursed city, to wait for her doom to come on heavy feet.” Magiota’s eyes filled with tears, and they dripped onto the shell-like ears in her belly.

  “Pangiota, my sister, I am afraid of death,” Legiota rasped.

  “Why should you fear to die?” I asked. “If this will not come to pass until the prime of the grandson, we will not see the Serpent perish from the sky. We will not see the new handmaids take our place. We are safe, if no longer blessed.”

  My sisters exchanged glances, and Legiota passed her hand over the smooth expanse where her eyes might have been. “You do not understand. We two are her handmaids. We will go into seclusion with her, and give our strength to hers, our sight and our hearing to the little snakes, so that in five generations, her light will be so great that she will rise again from her own murder.”

  My eyes drooped and my shoulders fell. I touched my sisters’ bellies with affection and sorrow. “And I am not to go with you.”

  “Pangiota.” Legiota’s eyes softened and creased their corners, trying to make her words as gentle as she could. “You are the least of us. Never has the Serpent-Star seen you or touched you; she only knows of you as our sister. You only speak, and she does not care for human speech. For the Sorella, you are vital; for the Serpent, you do not exist. And the Stars have determined that the Sorella should be broken.”

  These words hit me like a bellow of hot wind—but I knew them to be true. I was nothing, only a mouthpiece, a mute pipe into which my sisters’ breath flowed. I bent my head and nodded, knowing how small I was in their presence. Magiota threw her arms around my waist and pressed her fluttering ears to my lips. It was an intimacy we three rarely shared, the touch of lash to lip and lobe.

  “We will go; we love our god as w
e love you. But we have decided together that we cannot let the Sorella pass from the world. We have sat vigil in this cave, searching out a path which would allow us to stay with you, to stay Sorella, and to birth another three which will carry on our memory past the death of the Star. No caravan should be left blind and deaf, mute and helpless. And we have found a way.” Magiota smiled and drew a small knife from her skirts, a curving silver blade with a handle of bone.

  “What has been ours will be yours, Pangiota. We will cut out our eyes and ears and give them to you to swallow. The power will be passed to you, all the Sorella in one body. And you will leave the caravan, you will leave the horses whose smell you know like your own, and go into a city covered in a dome of roses, and there you will wait for the beast to cry out to you. I have seen this already; I have seen you walking under white petals.” Legiota’s eyes gleamed from her navel like green torches in the dark.

  “You will swallow the child of the beast as you will swallow our flesh, and bear the creature within you like your own daughter. In this way two races will be saved, and the three of us will be always together, beyond the death of the Star. We will go into seclusion, and you will go into the wicked city, and give birth to us over again.” Magiota stroked her ears quietly.

  “I do not understand,” I cried, unwilling to devour my own sisters, terrified of their strange words.

  “Of course not, of course not, but you will. Prophecy is such a difficult thing, but we know that there is no other way to preserve the Sorella, and we will not refuse the call of the Serpent.”

  Oh, how I wept while I watched them! Naked as animals, they performed this surgery before my eyes: Magiota seized the knife and plunged it into her belly—it entered her with the sickening slick sound of a finger passed through running water—and slowly cut her sacred ears from her stomach, sweating and crying out quietly as she worked. She tried to keep her smile, so as not to frighten me, but I could not bear the sight; I retched in a corner of the cave while her whimpering sounded in my own ears. Legiota carved out her eyes next, never allowing herself to moan, but her breath was ragged as a torn dress, and her hands when I turned back to them were shiny and wet with blood.

  They placed the lumps of pitiful flesh in front of me like servants laying out an exquisite cake for their lady. Both still bled, yet they smiled and smiled, unbraiding my hair with almost maternal care, just as they used to do when we were girls together. They pulled the long sheaves of hair aside and put their arms around me, cradling my body with their own and stroking my face with sticky red hands, urging me to swallow them, to close my eyes and do it before the organs cooled and died. I screamed and screamed in their arms, my voice echoing in the rocky chamber until it seemed as though we were surrounded by a chorus of shrieking ghosts. They hushed me and held me close, and finally through my screams I seized the bloody clumps of my sisters and pressed them into my mouth, gagging, swallowing, gagging again. I forced it down my belly-throat, and my tears mingled with their blood until all I could taste was salt.

  It was quiet afterwards.

  I lay on the cool rock and they lay over me, blood drying on our skin like paint. We lay like lovers, tangled together in pain and sorrow. Legiota pushed the matted hair from my ear and said:

  “Now we will never leave you; you are all of us, and you will go on. We will leave the world; you will go into its steaming heart. But remember that you are always Sorella. It is your duty to guide the caravan, the ramshackle train of kindred that crawls over the face of the earth, scrabbling at the dirt for fruit, scrabbling at the skies for revelation. When the beast has gone from the city and you have done your duty by her, you must be Sorella for all the caravans, and perform our duty for them. They will come to you, and you must see for them, and hear for them, and speak for them. Cut your hair when you go into the city, wear their threads and not your own, but when you have finished your maternity, when you are ready, braid it again into our holy dress. We will be with you, inside you, and we will love you for all the days of this body.”

  With these words, Legiota and Magiota laid their heads on my breasts like daughters and died, their spirits, their light, rising like steam to join the Serpent in seclusion.

  I wept alone in the dark.

  GIOTA’S EYES WERE DRY AND DULL.

  “By the time I reached the diamond turrets of Shadukiam, I could hear their voices in me; I could hear the Stars singing in their choirs and I could see the path stretching out before me like a golden ribbon. I was not Pangiota any longer; I was only Giota, all of us and none of us. It is difficult to keep it straight—sometimes I seem to speak to them, sometimes to myself, sometimes to the dead air. I have done my duty by the beast, by the Griffin, and now I must do my duty by my sisters, I must be the Sorella of Shadukiam, the Anchorite, the Oracle.”

  I stared dumbfounded at her, humbled by the expanse of what I had not guessed about her. “But why must you chain yourself to the wall? You can be an oracle anywhere; there are towers full of them! You could stay in my nest and the folk of the city could come out to you.”

  Giota looked at me with wild eyes, vulnerable as a lamb beneath a wolf’s teeth. Though I knew her mouth was free and wide in her belly, the featureless skin where it should have been made it seem as though she was gagged with some terrible rope.

  “I am so frightened, Quri. If I do not do this thing now I will not stay. I will go with you and I will abandon my sisters. All my life I prayed to have their power, and I am so frightened of it now. Do not begrudge me this: It is who I am; just as you will one day have your gold and your eggs to look after, I must look after them.” She raised her hand to stroke my face—such a small hand!—and then lowered it to peeling off her dress. “Help me, my daughter. Help me braid my hair again.”

  I lowered my head to those long, coarse strands, their familiar smell overwhelming me, and lifted one bundle of hair over another with my beak, slowly, clumsily, weaving her habit down to her ankles. My tears fell onto the strange fabric, and left great golden stains on the braids.

  “Mother”—and with the word a swollen river burst in my heart—“will I truly have gold of my own and eggs to tend? I cannot really believe it; I cannot believe that the race of Griffins will go on. If you are an oracle now, if you are the Anchorite, then you must tell me the truth; you cannot reassure me with lies.”

  “Quri, your brother lives, and while he does, you have a duty to perform as much as I do. He will quicken your eggs, and you will have three chicks to warm with the fur of your haunches. Go, return to the Red Mountain, and find him.”

  With this Giota clamped her chains around her wrists and took her place at the wall. I left her, though my bones mourned, and turned to the plains of Nuru, to find my brother’s blue plumage again and obey my mother, as good children do.

  In the Garden

  IT WAS STILL DARK. THE SKY HUNG HEAVY ABOVE THEM LIKE A NOMAD’S tent, lanterned with stars and buffeted by quiet winds. The boy’s head lay in the girl’s lap—he had at first thought himself brave to lie thus, but she seemed to welcome it, and tousled his hair with a nervous hand.

  “I’ll be clever tonight,” he whispered, “and I will not be caught.”

  The girl laughed like rain trickling through palm leaves.

  “I will! I will not let your tale keep me until light breaks the sky like a pitcher! I will leave now, while the stars are still bright, and return to the blacksmith. Then Dinarzad will know nothing, and I will be able to come all the earlier tomorrow!”

  The boy ran off happily, past the stately rows of cypress, back towards the minarets of the Palace, rising into the dark sky like a second grove of trees.

  But the next evening found the boy not roaming free in the Garden, but curled in the corner of the stall, pouting. He drew his knees up to his chin and scowled. He had been lying that way for a long while when he saw a shape crawling towards him through the secret door. It was the girl, hay decorating her black hair like a crown of gold. He starte
d in joy and dragged her with eager hands out of the passage and into his stall.

  “I was not as clever as I thought,” he confessed. “Dinarzad did not discover me, but the fat Cook saw me sneak in and swore to tell if she ever caught sight of me out of doors again. I could not decide whether to go out again—I was trying to think, trying to be brave as Sigrid on the pirate ship, to go to my Griffin no matter what. But I could not decide.” He blushed, though he hated to do it.

  “It doesn’t matter. You are easy to find,” the girl whispered, smiling with half her mouth. The two settled into the corner of the stall while the sorrel snorted and stomped softly, nuzzling at his salt lick.

  “Now, the white Griffin was despondent for a long while after Giota embraced her wall,” she began, her voice lilting like the sway of rushes in a summer storm. “She could not be consoled, and flew in circles around the Basilica, crowing in grief like an albatross. And this sound, though not so piercing as her mother’s shrieks had once been, were carried gently on the wind to the red peaks of Nuru, and there Jin the blue Griffin heard his sister’s sorrow echoing for years upon years. So when the Monopod climbed upon his back to go down into Shadukiam, Jin was glad, for the last two creatures he loved in all the world would be waiting for him under the dome of roses…”

  I DID NOT KNOW MY BROTHER WAS COMING, BUT something in my lion’s heart woke and began to stalk back and forth within me. Something in my eagle’s heart rustled and tested the air with its wings. For days before his turquoise shape appeared, a blurry spot in the sky, I waited, though I did not know for what.

  And then he came, carrying some misshapen creature on his back. We stood together before the Basilica, before the twisted roots of the high-arching door, dwarfing the parishioners who were so well trained to avoid looking at monsters while they passed in and out of the holy place. Monsters were part of the other Shadukiam, the shadow city which found its sacred space behind the church in the body of a twisted, mouthless creature. The pious Shaduki were very skilled at ignoring the other city.