Dragonfly: A Tale of the Counter-Earth at the Cosmic Antipodes

by Raphael Ordoñez

  In the early afternoon I came upon a great deep like a gash in the earth. I spied its rim from a peak, then descended to the brink to look out. The floor of the basin was carpeted with pale yellow moss. The lake in its bosom was a lozenge of turquoise. A herd of behemothim stood huddled together close to the shore. Their herder was a pale-haired cyclops with a crook of black iron.

  The giant looked up and saw my form outlined against the sky. It made a horn of its hands and bellowed. The sound drifted faintly up to me after it had ceased its cry. A few of its kind appeared in the doors of the great stone houses built into the crevices on the far side of the pit.

  I dropped out of sight then and continued around the rim. I spent the night down below the watershed and heard no more of the anakim.

  On the third day I continued to go lower and lower. I felt the hot wind in my face now, saw russet reaches of the desert between the shoulders of the peaks before me, with a hint of the Pillar at the rim of the world.

  I longed to go leaping across the flats, to forget Enoch and the Cheiropt and Narva, to forget also Seila and Gaspar and Jairus. What good would I ever do there? Hadn’t I already admitted that my journey was a mistake? And hadn’t I come to know that there was no fighting the Cheiropt?

  And yet there was Sephaura, the living burden I bore in my brain. I thought of how it would die with me if I buried it in the desert. There was nothing I could do in Enoch but burrow beneath its teeming millions. But it seemed at that moment that I had never finished my Walking, and that my songlines led, not across the desert, but under the roots of the world-city. I thought of the kingdom in casual shelters of which I had dreamed in the dungeon. The future was a darkness and a blank, but my heart went forward to meet it.

  In the afternoon I found a grove of giant ephathim. They grew in a hollow filled with red-gold light reflected from its sheer upper walls. They were huge and ancient, with thick, knobby trunks and exposed roots that seemed to have been formed with the stones themselves. Their rust-green reeds rattled in the breeze. The dell was warm and peaceful and the air was flecked with golden motes.

  I drove a nail into each tree and hung a cup below it. When this was done I climbed out to the rim. The white foothills shimmered in the slanting sun. The flats beyond were like the wrinkled skin of a drying fruit. At the edge of sight was a hint of the canyon that hid the fossil city of Urgit.

  I turned and looked the other way. A small ephath stood in a cleft high above. Shielding my eyes from the sun, I saw that it was on fire. I went bounding over the stones to see it.

  As I got closer I went more cautiously. The plant was glowing with red-gold light. The tip of each reed smoldered like a match tip. But it was not consumed.

  I took off my sandals and knelt. There was no sound, nor even a breath of wind. The tree was inspired by neither angel nor dryad. It was simply itself. At the tip of my tongue was a single word, but I dared not speak it. My mind was alert; my heart hung inert. My lips remained sealed.

  Slowly the fire faded. I came to myself. Shadow had crept across the desert behind me. The sky was pale lavender, with shreds of pink over the peaks. I went back down to the grove and made a sandy bed between the rocklike roots of a tree.

  * * * * *

  I opened my eyes. The sky was like black velvet dusted with stars. The heads of stone that ringed the pit were caput mortuum against the dark dome. A staircase rested its foot in the grove, an arc of chrysolite linking heaven and earth. Divine spirits of flame went up and down it, their eyes like carbuncles, their pinions outspread and clothed in scarlet scales, their voices like the rushing of many waters.

  I rose and began to climb. A hush and a stillness lay over the desert. It was lapped in a golden glow like a warm blanket. The stars’ scintillation played over the stairs, lending them a bifrostian pulse.

  Higher and higher I mounted, stepping out of the sublunary sphere. The moon passed below. I peered into its secret abysses and beheld shimmering domes and spires of olivine linked one to another by strands like spider webs. The terminator swept across the orb, and the cities glittered greenly in the dark.

  A pillar blotted out the stars before me, so that the staircase was like a ribbon down a black stole. Mirya was a pendant high above; Saant was a red candle behind me. Slowly the sun dawned from behind the pillar’s head. I was close enough now to see its many mansions.

  The stairs bore me to the column’s summit and there ended. I stepped onto the black stone. A white dome with an open doorway was huddled there. I walked over to it and went inside.

  A fat man stood with his back to me, poring over something at a table. His greasy gray hair hung in ringlets over his bulging flesh. I made a noise, and he turned. He was ugly, built like a toad, neckless, with a hairless face, and fleshy lips that looked ready to snap shut on flies, and small eyes that disappeared when he smiled.

  “Hello, Grandfather,” I said. “I thought you were dead.”

  “I am,” said Brandobrabdas. He came forward, his great white alb swinging with his steps. “I’ve been waiting.” He enclosed my hand with his own, which seemed to be all thumbs. “Come,” he said. Together we went to the table. A palace of ivory rested upon it. “Do you know what this is?”

  “It is Sephaura,” I said.

  Somehow now we were on the table and walking through the gate of the tower. We traversed its concentric corridors and entered a chamber that I had never seen. It contained a single pedestal, upon which rested a spherical vessel made of shell. My grandfather took it up.

  “Watch,” he said. With a fat finger he traced upon it a certain sacred character. And he turned it in his hands, and I saw that on the back, where before it had been blank, there was now the character, but reversed, as in a mirror. And these pairs were paired, so that, whatever was one to one, the opposite was done to the other.

  “Watch,” my grandfather said. And he folded the shell in half, so that it had no edge and only one face, and the sacred character on that face, for the character and its image had become one. With his finger he slid the character around once, and it was reversed. Then he slid it around once more, and it was itself again.

  Now I looked out. All was formless and void. A spore fell in the darkness and began to unfurl. It took on the shape of the folded shell. Demiurgic spirits of flame descended into it, putting all in its place, gathering light into vortices, letting it coalesce into corpuscles and dark droplets.

  Nine spirits came to love one of those lights. They went to dwell in it as a thought dwells on a thing. And the light put forth a droplet, and the droplet was barren. Then one at a time the spirits lay with her, and begot upon her the daemons of air, the nephelim, and the daemons of water, the naiads and auraiads.

  To the lesser gods and daemons the nine gave the task of forming the earth, and clothing the naked hills with mosses, and forming from clay all that creeps upon the earth, and flies through the air, and swims the paths of the sea. And the auraiads and naiads were winds of divine inspiration and holy wells of old.

  Then there was strife upon the earth. The nephelim waged war against one another, not as men wage war, but with power and fury, like the lightning that flashes from one end of heaven to the other. They laid waste the earth in their proud contentions, and the seas were poured across the land, and fires burst forth from the inner furnace, and fell beasts stained the rocks red.

  Then the spirits of flame split the shell into two leaves, and consigned the fallen to the dark half for their mighty transgressions, they and their blasphemous works, wrought in secret at life’s dawning and indwelt by imperishable spirits. And there in the unfinished earth the nephelim sojourned from age to age, forsaking their husbandry of life.

  I blinked, and there was my grandfather holding the shell. He had unfolded it again, so that the sacred character was on one side and its reversed image at the antipodes. “Grandfather,” I said, “if the world is but half-formed, why are there men in it?”

  “Hate and love,” he answ
ered.

  * * * * *

  With that I awoke. I leaped to my feet. The staircase was gone. Dawn crept over the desert.

  I set up a stone to mark the place of my dream. Fragrance from the pierced trees filled the basin. A few globules of sap like blood had rolled to the bottom of each cup.

  All that day I went striding northward across the face of the range like a substantial spirit traversing a rainbow of stone. I found two groves and nailed each tree like the others. Then I turned and retraced my steps to the south. I went beyond the first grove another day’s march, encountering four more groves along the way, distributing cups to each tree.

  I went back to my starting point, the place of my dream. Each cup was half full of resin. I repeated my entire journey now, gathering all the cups.

  I had the resin I needed. I’d been gone for a week and a half, and my supplies were falling low. I set my face to the west.

  34 Resin and Bones

  I circled to the south on my return journey to avoid the basin of the anakim. As I came down from the mountains I dropped into a forested canyon that wound deep into the range. It was morning. The air was cool and wet. Big, damp clouds slid past the stony walls.

  As I bounded through the ferns and cycads I caught sight of a pale human form. I crouched in the undergrowth to watch. It was a great troll of a man, with long brown hair, and flaring nostrils, and eyes that rolled in their sockets. It was naked, and its chest and groin were clothed in layers of hair. There were several females crawling around through the bracken at its feet. They were naked as well. They were pulling up fruits and eating them.

  I loosened Deinothax in its scabbard and stood. The group caught sight of me. The females and whelps scattered into the shadows, but the male stood his ground, watching me silently. He grimaced as I approached. I walked past and went my way unmolested.

  The valley deepened as it widened, joining the great rift at its lower end. I was south of where I had slain the deinoth, so I turned to the right and began climbing. I reached the house in the afternoon.

  “Did you find what you sought?” asked Gaspar.

  “I did.” I set my pack down and lined the cups up along the wall of my room. “I’m going to go think,” I said. I walked down to the stream and sat on a boulder. After a while I caught a giant cockroach, and a dragonfly, and several stoneflies, and examined their wings. Then I sat and thought some more. Day drew toward evening. I went back up to the house and looked over the bones I’d collected. “These will do for the most part,” I said. “But some will have to be fresh.”

  So the next morning I went out and killed two juvenile adrothim. I gutted and skinned them and set their meat to curing. I boiled their bones clean, then started the process of making glue from their scaly hides.

  That evening I worked with the bones. Spines I hollowed or split to make shafts. Other parts I shaped into shorter pencils and arcs, or carved into joints to suit my purpose. One at a time I laid them out on the floor of my room in the shape of my intended design.

  “Master,” I said while chiseling a bone by the fire, “what are ghulim?”

  “Did you see them in Enoch?”

  “Yes. It was when I escaped from the antique mart. They were being led by a man who works for the Cheiropt. A ghularch, they called him. He was there to arrest the old woman.”

  Gaspar knit his brow. “A ghul is a rare sight these days,” he said. “It must be this Misfit. His presence is drawing them out.”

  “But what are they?”

  “Think back to the hexaemera, Keftu. Every living thing has a soul. Mosses have vegetative souls for nourishment and reproduction. Beasts of field and forest also have sensitive souls that allow them to fly from what is evil and pursue what is good.

  “Now, when a plant or an animal dies, its soul, its organic life-principle, perishes at the same moment. Against this we have the hierarchy of spirits. Naiads and auraiads, angels and archangels, nephelim and seraphim: all are more or less independent of matter. Between the two realms stands man, the animal with a soul that knows, and knows that it knows.”

  “All this and more is set forth in the Third Mansion of Sephaura,” I said.

  “Good. Then here’s an answer to your question. A ghul is a man with only a sensitive soul. How such men came to be no one knows. Some say that they stem from a primeval race that lost the divine spark through wickedness. Others, that they were created by infernal arts. But my own belief is that they’re merely descendants of men in whom the spark was never kindled.

  “However that may be, the fruit of the union between a man and a ghul is truly human. The ancients held ghulim as sacred. Use of them as draft animals or war machines was unlawful. Intermarriage or concubinage was permitted, and the one who took a ghul as mate was supported by the deme. It was seen as a way of strengthening the human bloodline, for the children of mixed unions were beautiful and gifted. Many great heroes and sages were such.

  “From the earliest times, though, these laws have been violated. In Enoch during the Age of Strife, ghulim were bred as killing machines. They were offered up as a great hecatomb at the Synoecism, but a few survived here and there, illegally, and eventually their use as thralls became widespread. The Helot Union succeeded in banning them from the factories around the time of the Inception. Since Enoch was at peace, their use dwindled.”

  “I saw a family of them on my return,” I said, “or thought I did. They were in a valley to the south.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if there were wild ghulim living in these mountains. I doubt they’re autochthonic, though. Any ghulim dwelling around the shores of Tethys are most likely descendants of escapees.”

  “It’s strange that Sephaura is silent on them,” I said.

  Gaspar shrugged. “Perhaps. Eldene practices tended to diminish the population. In time it would have been bred out of existence, or, rather, drawn wholly into the human family. Perhaps that happened in Arras a great ad or more ago, so that there’s no memory of them.”

  “Have you met any of these half-men?”

  Gaspar smiled slightly. “I have. It sometimes happens that a spirit takes up residence in a female ghul and woos a man to be her husband or lover. The child then has two mothers, a bodily and a spiritual.”

  “I saw cyclopes in the mountains, too,” I said.

  “I know little of cyclopes,” said Gaspar.

  “Someone in Enoch said that goblins, cyclopes, and Enochites share a common ancestor.”

  “Who did you hear that from?”

  “A woman I know,” I said, blushing. I hoped it was invisible in the firelight. “She used to be a handmaid of the Sibyl of At.”

  “Hm. I hadn’t heard there was one again. There was a time when Eldenes regarded the Druins as heretics, for they worship the dead and the devils of the desert places, yet claim some kinship with us. But it seems that wisdom resides in Moabene. If I were not an old man, I would go see this Sibyl and question her.”

  After that we fell to talking of other matters, and I continued shaping my bones.

  The preparations took a few days in all. When everything was ready I had several cakes of hide glue and hundreds of bone pieces laid out like the veins of a giant pair of insect wings. I began to glue. The leading edge of each pinion was constructed from lengths of hollowed dorsal spine. Joints where the wings would fold or flex were assembled from carved balls and sockets and ligament trimmings. Thinner pencils and arcs and split spines formed the network of veins. Basal joints were shaped from hollowed scapula.

  When the skeletons were complete it was time to form the membranes. I warmed my mushroom cups one by one in the hearth and poured the resin into a metal bowl. This I set on a bed of coals, stirring slowly, skimming the detritus from the top. A bittersweet fragrance like burial spices invaded the room.

  Once the resin was hot and viscous, I took the brass tube that Gaspar used to blow on coals, dipped its tip into the bowl, and gently blew a bubble into an opening of o
ne wing. The bubble popped, leaving a membrane stretched between the veins. It cooled and hardened. I brushed another layer on each side with a sponge. The same process was repeated for each opening. When the membranes were complete I brushed the entire wing with a few more layers of resin, coating membranes and veins alike.

  I held it up in my hands. It was strong yet light, and flexed as I desired. It had red-brown veins and membranes of golden yellow, and joints like a beetle’s wing. I made the second pinion like the first, then turned to the driver.

  The chassis, forged for me by Nyoc the smith, was already greening with exposure. I dismantled it and removed the broken wing-pieces. The coils and stops had to be adjusted to provide the motion my new wings needed; this required some smith-work in Gaspar’s fire. I ran a pair of leather belts through the loops and linked thin chains to the mechanism. Last of all I attached the two wings where the old ones had been, folded into a compact bundle.

  Now I would fly again.

  * * * * *

  The next morning Gaspar didn’t come to breakfast. I went in to see him. “What is it, Master?” I asked. “Are you ill?”

  “No,” said Gaspar, “just old. When you’ve lived a third of a chiliad, Keftu, you’ll have mornings like this, too, perhaps. Sit and talk with me.”

  “I never knew,” I said as I brought a chair from the other room. “I never met someone so old.”

  “If you want to know the truth of why I live here in the mountains and not in the city, it’s because the phylites would stone me as soon as look at me. They have no tolerance for decrepitude.”

  “For old age, you mean. You’re more hale than any phylite.”

  Gaspar struggled into a sitting position. “Do you know the secret of strong old age, Keftu?”