The toilets, by the way, are concave basins with raised rims, powered entirely by gravity and a surprisingly sweet-smelling lubricant. On second thought, perhaps it's not surprising; perhaps it functions as an air freshener, maybe even a disinfectant. I haven't noticed any evidence of a maid service.
Stinkfree and
Shane
* * * *
Liv and let Liv,
The language is too fluid. Last night, we spoke at length about the last book. They were curious about human religions. They weren't curious about the incarnations of gods, but about the milieus. How can we draw a line between heaven and earth, and earth and hell, or the equivalents?
We were wrong about them not having a written language. They removed my shirt and trousers and, with a surprisingly pleasurable sensation—again, is the thirteenth digit a sexual organ?—traced what felt to be a Venn diagram on my abdomen. The syntax was unclear, but it seemed that not only are their versions of life and afterlife as fluid as anything else: one moment one might be on earth—well, Shadow—and the next, without spatial, temporal, or intellectual movement, one could be in Zion or Abaddon.
I think they are silicate creatures. Is there any covert test we could perform?
Shane
* * * *
Dear Ben,
You want kink? Last night, they undressed me. Not for sex, but because they write with fingertips on skin. Circles, in this case. Well, there I was, & fore I could say boo, they'd stripped me. Well, I could've said boo, but this was new & that's the point, right? I stayed as close to the warm rock as I could. They couldn't see me, but I still didn't want to be small & wrinkly. What I didn't know was that they'd think it was a finger. & when I did, I didn't want them to think it was deformed, you know?
Drawing with their fingers—shivers up my spine just thinking about it, & the certainty of erotic dreams—they discovered my cock. This delighted them to no end. They'd made remarks that I was symmetrical—I think that's the right word, more or less, though it also has the connotation of plant, as in trees and flowers—& though they counted two less than I should have had, I wasn't symmetrical, or plant-like. They handed me something I'd never felt before, a type of rock, I think, dense and rough. They indicated that they were this rock & I too was the rock. Rock-hard, too, let me tell ya. They found that delightful too. But not as much as me.
Shane of the shit-eating grin
* * * *
Olivia, my repressed nymphomaniac,
Sex sells, but how am I supposed to figure out the mechanics if I'm blind? Cop a feel? They did to me, but—remember the fruit?—I have absolutely no means of asking about or distinguishing sexual or asexual reproduction. I can't even tell the difference between my hosts.
Shane
* * * *
Dear Ben,
I told you I never saw evidence of a maid service or anything, right? But I know they come into my room. A few days ago—they don't even have a word for day—after the orgy, I came into my room and tripped over a statue that wasn't there before. It fell over with a wicked noise, so I hurried to lift it & found that it was impossibly heavy. It wasn't very big, maybe the height of my knees. Still, I couldn't possibly hope to move it, but then, as if gravity had suddenly shifted, it was light & I could lift it easily.
I found ten more of them in my room. One in my bed. My dreams that night were, um, intense. I had to wash the sheets, know what I'm saying?
Here's hoping I ain't stuck on you,
Shane
* * * *
Dear Olivia,
I think I'm in trouble. Something's wrong. I should've told you before, they've discovered my penis, which made them happy. Before, they didn't like that I had an even number of fingers. But now, while it's in an odd location, they've accepted me as a person, not a child? pet? plant? insect?
Which led to a discussion of sex, you'll be happy to know. I had to let them learn as much as they wanted, which made me tremendously uncomfortable. But after, we talked about sex. I didn't want to say that it wasn't a finger, because then maybe my status would go back to knick-knack. I tried to explain that it was in an odd location because it had a specialized function; but they don't have a word for specialized, for single, for unique.
The translation I gave them was something like this, I think: ‘My odd finger vomits genetic material into another's emptiness.’ Do I need to remind you sex organs and gender seem meaningless? Then I said, ‘What was empty bears fruit.'
Shane
* * * *
Sweet Olivia,
They've taken me to their gods. We should've had this for the last book! I had to swear a thousand solemn oaths that I would not reveal what I discovered.
Fat chance, right?
I've gotten quite used to this stick: tappity-tap-tap-tap. Is that too much? Will it read well?
Have I written about the bricks that line all the roads? They sound solid against my cane and when I kneel, as if I'm making obeisance to the stone, they're rough like my beard. I'm afraid to shave. I don't need a mirror—who's going to judge whether my hairline is regular?—but I have this irrational fear that I'll sever my jugular. Or is it carotid? When I first learned to shave—have I told you?—my father insisted I learn to use a manual razor. It was one of those things he said men should be able to do. Anyway, I cut my upper lip. It didn't really hurt, but it seemed to bleed forever. I must've used a roll of toilet paper. But that was nothing compared to the bleeding I've done today.
The path—they assure me it is not a road per se, not a coarse, unfeeling, changeless, leading-to-nowhere road, which is a rough translation, but a path, all the symbolism implied—was made of the same stone as the gods, though I didn't notice on the journey there. And what a long walk too. Somewhere, something burned with a thick odor. I swear I couldn't get enough oxygen.
I thought their cooking methods were indicative of Prometheus’ absence, but now that I know they have the ability to ignite fires, does that mean that they've never discovered food can be cooked by fire? Is fire purely symbolic? If so, of what? No doubt they have a dozen or more words for various sensations associated with fire—blue or white flames are substantially hotter than red coals—but as this is the first time I've experienced this, I've no linguistic matrix.
The stone and gods. I'll try to explain. Find a steel ball or marble, or better a steel or marble brick, and find the equivalent volume of lead, or better yet, gold. Lift the steel in one hand and think This is heavy this is solid this is real. Put it down. Pick it up. Repeat until your muscles burn and your shoulders ache. Think how heavy it felt. How real. How can anything be any more solid than this. And then lift the lead or gold. Do you see? Ha ha.
Their gods are made of stone. But it's a kind of stone that makes the cobbles or bricks feel positively ethereal. When I struck them quite gently with my cane—I was told it was not sacrilegious, I think—I felt as if I'd swung a baseball bat against a tree trunk. And rough! I'm typing this with my left hand only, as the mere laying on of a palm to the graven image has flayed the meaty part of my hand to ribbons. They've rubbed a salve on and bandaged the skin with a substance that feels like snot and binds to the blood and bone and whatever remains of the skin. I can no longer peel ribbons of flesh and the bleeding has ceased, but my hand feels as if it will permanently retain that pins-and-needles feeling.
Ecstatically yours,
Shane
* * * *
Ben,
I can't tell Liv this yet. She wouldn't believe me. She'd be convinced I'd inhaled or swallowed some drug or gone completely mad.
We seemed to walk up & down entire mountains, seemed to ford chest-deep, fast-flowing rivers, crossed entire deserts of burning sands & through an arctic cold that lasted what I would've sworn encompassed the entire moon. Whatever they were burning was some strong stuff. We don't know anything about them except that they seem as a species to be aggressively agoraphobic. Maybe they're not. Maybe we've seen them all the time and don'
t know it. Maybe they've got some sort of instantaneous transport system. In the myth book, there was that hoity-toity physics guy who thought alien visitation, miracles, that sort of thing could be explained with a variation on an ansible. All that math to show it was easier to move a littler package from one space to the next than a bigger one. The readers loved the bit where I came back with a bowling ball and a ping-pong ball and asked if I could have a job now.
What is curious, and deeply disturbing, is that as I've wandered the length of my room, which seemed generously sized after a ‘liner bunk but now feels small as a prison—and sometimes I dream of stone scraping on stone and believe, for a moment, that the walls have inched inward as I've slept—is that the stone, which was rough but no more so than granite, is now—at times and in very small patches that disappear when I seek them again—as serrated as the stone gods.
Maybe I am mad.
With cackling laughter,
Shane
* * * *
Liv,
I think there's a problem. I didn't think about it until later. It's night and I'm awake and can't sleep. I miss the sun. But the sun's like fire, right?
It dawned on me that the fire was a test. It was so close to the paths and it didn't make any sense that it should be there. But I could easily avoid it without a hand or my stick. Do you understand what I'm saying? They don't have a word for day, but they have a word for fire and it's very, very bad.
Scared Shitless Shane
* * * *
Dear Ben,
I think I've misinterpreted something. Remember I said that emphasis on the fourth syllable implies a negative? I don't think so. Or maybe sometimes. Anyway, I think it actually means sacred or holy or something like that. So emphasis on the second and fourth syllables would translate as Is [noun] sacred? But since the same emphasis means sacred and not, there's no way to ask if something isn't sacred. So what does that mean? Anyway, that would explain their interest in the mythology book.
Shane—Who the hell else would it be?
* * * *
Dear Shane,
I believe we should call this off. You've got enough material for a book. And what the hell. Even if it was thin as Martian air, people would snap it up like that just because no one else has ever so much as stepped foot on Shadow.
Olivia
* * * *
Damned Olivia,
No! I absolutely insist I stay the duration. Did I tell you something was amiss? No, I don't believe I did. There are only twelve stone gods. Why? Where is the thirteenth? I believe there is a linguistic trick. The religious nomenclature is fluid; we might discuss one god and then, with no break at all, another name will surface. That's an entirely appropriate verb, by the way: without sight, words seem to float, sometimes coalescing and other times scattering into fragments, like a diagrammed sentence suddenly exploded into nouns, verbs, adjectives, all without syntax or context. And then later, the first god—if it was a first, and not another avatar or incarnation of the same god—will breach and send the first or second or twelfth name spiraling into the murky depths of sentences and paragraphs from several minutes past.
Tonight I follow the fires. Where is the thirteenth god? I will find him. Her. It.
Traveling man,
Shane
* * * *
Beloved Olivia,
We grieve the Sacrifice. We envisaged his transgressions. He forfeited his existence in the mode of the symmetrical.
We earnestly anticipate his electromagnetic recording appliance is exclusively attributable to his deficiencies and not to any others of your species.
His relics are attached to this epistle.
Sincerely,
Shades
[Back to Table of Contents]
The Prophet: two figures by Ilona Taube
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* * * *
[Back to Table of Contents]
Fear Not Heaven's Fire by Jaine Fenn
Despite my good intentions, I have sinned, Lord. I have spoken to a man.
It was this morning, soon after Prime. I had run out of wool, and the other sisters were in the fields, taking advantage of the early spring to sow corn and beans. They would not have known if I had just let the distaff drop and sat idle in the sun, but I try to be good, truly I do. So I went to fetch more wool. I felt my way along the stones of the church, out of the cloister and crossed the outer court to the granary. The sounds around me told me the wind was shifting: the trees were restless and I could no longer hear the sheep down the hill.
As I edged back down the granary steps, I heard something. I thought it must be a stray goat or sheep, broken through the fence into the outer court, so I stopped at the bottom of the steps and waited for it to give itself away. After the initial rustle, there was silence, and I walked on. Then I heard a small sound of pain, quickly stifled. It came from under the granary. I turned and went back to stand by the steps. I could feel the chill on my legs where the wind blew through the open space under the granary floor.
'Is someone there?'
No answer. Perhaps only an animal then. But I was not so sure.
Remembering how one with sight would react, I twisted the unspun wool into a tight knot within my skirts, then bent down to put my head below the level of the raised floor. The breeze blew the smell of damp earth and rotting corn into my face. Someone shifted in response to my movement, and now that I had my ear at their level, I could locate them by sound. They were in the corner, against the hurdling that protects the space below our food store from the worst of the rough weather that blows in from the north and west.
'I will not hurt you.’ I did not think as I spoke how little a threat a blind nun might be.
'Please, I need water.’ The voice was weak, but male. Somehow I had not thought it would be a man. Yet this man had the sweetest voice I had ever heard. Even parched and in pain, it was a voice better suited to singing than talking. The sound of it made me dizzy, and I reached up with my free hand to steady myself against the steps.
'It....’ I tried to remember myself, to stay calm. ‘It is our duty to help all God's creatures.’ He made a sound then, something like a snort, but I carried on. ‘Please come out; I will try to find the almoner. She will give you food and water.'
'No. I can't come out ... into the light.’ He sounded afraid.
'You are hurt?'
'Yes. No. I am ... resting. Hiding.'
From the law? We have offered sanctuary to fugitives before, though the Thane's men are apt to disregard the sanctity of hallowed ground when it suits them. ‘You will be safe here. Let us tend your ills—'
'I am not badly hurt. But ... can you bring something to drink?'
'Of course. But will you not come out?'
'I cannot.'
I straightened and turned. I knew I should go and tell the others about our guest. But they were in the fields; they would be back soon enough, and I could tell them then. So I went to the refectory, filled a pitcher with watered beer, and carried it back to the granary.
When I returned, I leant down and balanced the pitcher against one of the stone columns that support the granary floor. I could hear nothing of our visitor, though I was sure he was still there.
'How did you lose your sight?'
The loudness of his voice startled me; he had moved to the front of his shelter.
I started and sat back on my heels. ‘A foolish accident.’ I was not used to hearing compassion from the lips of men. It disconcerted me.
'Ah.’ He saw the lie; his voice said so. But he did not pursue the matter. I heard him reach out, heard the scrape of pottery against stone as he took the jug. For a moment I felt a strange warmth and smelt something other than damp and rot, something like honey or blossoms.
'Will you come to the almoner now?’ I asked over the sounds of him slaking his thirst.
He made a sound of appreciation, somewhere between a sigh and a smacking of the lips, and when he spoke his voice was stro
nger. ‘No. It would not be ... appropriate.'
'But men are forbidden here, other than those being given healing or charity. If you are in need of either, we can provide them. But I cannot leave you here alone in the dark.'
'I am cursed.’ For the first time, his voice faltered. ‘I.... If you could see me, you would run from me.'
I thought of the rare times when strangers had come to us, and how I had heard in their voices, and felt in their movements, disgust at the ugly ruin of my face. He had given no such sign. ‘I understand. But....’ I let my voice trail away; I was not sure what I should do.
'I don't want to cause you trouble. If you could bring food and ale for a day or so, until I am stronger, then I will move on.’ He sounded desolate, as though he had nowhere to go, no aim nor goal nor hope.
I wanted to comfort him, yet I stayed where I was. I know my vows well enough. ‘Yes. It would be un-Christian to do otherwise.'
I heard him move back into the depths under the floor. ‘And I'm sure you are a good Christian.'
Was that mockery in his voice? Sometimes I imagine too much. ‘We are a House of God here.'
'And what is your name, little sister of God?'
'Elfleda.’ As I spoke, the chapel bell rang, summoning me to Terce.
I heard him turn away. ‘Go to your prayers, Elfleda.'
* * * *
I have not told them yet. You heard the words I formed as I sat in Terce. You know my heart, Lord. I could not concentrate on my devotions, but I have formed my confession. I will tell my sisters later, when the time is right. They are busy now.
After the others returned to the fields, I took bread to him. It was my food; I am permitted a greater share of the priory's meagre wealth, on account of my infirmity, but I rarely take it. Food is a base thing, a sign of weakness. If I were truly pure, I would not need it at all; I could live on the word of God and the light of the sun. But of course I am not truly pure.
GUD Magazine Issue 1 :: Autumn 2007 Page 11