The One We Feed

by Kristina Meister

  His voice trailed into silence. Our eyes were upon the very real man who sat beside us, the legend incarnate. In my pain, I had forgotten him, the Lord Buddha. How was that possible? Thousands of years my senior, the man who begat Eva and me, and I had regarded him as a hindrance. It was a sobering thought. Swallowing hard, I sat up and leaned forward on the bed.

  “Mara,” I whispered with a shiver, for I knew what the name meant, “the bringer of death.”

  “It is said that this was the moment of the Buddha’s Enlightenment,” Ananda continued, his voice alive with true emotion, a resurgence of that follower he had been. “It is the moment he became immortal, it is true, but Mara is just a construct, a tale added over time. I learned this story among the Guardians, though I have liked it very much.”

  I turned and looked at him. He was gazing into space, across time, seeing years as they had truly been, stretched and interminable, lengthy serpents clothed in tiny scales of minutia. Close to, they were rough-looking things, but from the distance afforded by history, they were smooth and seamless, weaving together as if alive, nipping at their own tails.

  Be careful of their fangs, my dear, I thought. Serpents were such tricky things.

  “Then it didn’t happen like the story says,” I asked Arthur, though I was sure he would not answer me.

  The Buddha smiled in that strange quixotic way preserved in countless variations of stone, gold, and polished wood, retaining his mystery but acknowledging what a nuisance it was.

  “Hinduism had no place for me. It had to make one in order to survive.”

  “Then who is Mara really?”

  Jinx leaped up from the bed and into his rolling office chair. In a push of wheels over matted carpet, he was at his terminal, jacked in, and typing as if furious with the keyboard.

  “Mara is a deceiver,” Arthur said quietly. His smile was gone. He was looking at me from behind the protective cover of his long, dark lashes. “Like Moksha, he sees the weaknesses of men, but unlike Moksha, he can become those weaknesses. Each person sees something different, from the most trusted friend, to the person to whom you owe the most. In this way, he bends men to his will.”

  I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. This certainly explained Petula’s Mr. Dark Spot. He was a chameleon, and her ability could see nothing but the lack of truth. Or perhaps she saw the thing she feared or longed for the most: darkness, the absence of all others. It was a solemn thought, for even though she was over a hundred, I still saw her as the child I had cradled in my arms.

  “His armies…,” I turned and looked at the Revolutionary. He was still typing away. “The monsters with fangs and lolling tongues, were they like Reesa?”

  “The Rakshasa are Mara’s chosen weapon. They always have been.”

  Suddenly, Jinx disconnected from his computer and slid across the floor to us. “This is fucking amazing. Mara isn’t just a Doctor Who nemesis!”

  He looked up with a smile that was out of place, the sheer delight of the explorer correlating data, and dropped it as soon as he saw our faces.

  “Um...okay, so...Mara isn’t just a Buddhist phenomenon, either. He’s everywhere. The name Mara has been given to half a dozen wraiths, goddesses of darkness, evil spirits, and you name it. From Latvia, to India, to Germany, to the Bible. He’s almost always the bringer of death, lord of the night, goddess of the moon, or whatever.” He turned the computer around and showed us a painting of the supposed creature Mara from Germanic myth. It was a tiny demon who sat astride the bosom of a sleeping woman. “His name is the root of the word ‘nightmare.’ He’s been around since before the Buddha even suckled and has been dancing a dervish through history ever since.”

  I looked back to Arthur, stunned. “If that’s true, then...he was immortal before you?”

  He closed his eyes and bowed his head almost sleepily. It was as if he’d been waiting an eternity for me to ask that question, and finally things were as they needed to be. I felt as if I was on a cusp, as if suddenly, he would open up to me, and I would see through to his heart. It caused my chest to clench with a memory-twinge of painful anticipation.

  I leaned forward and touched his hand. It was cool.

  “Suffering has always existed, since the beginning of sentient thought. So too has Mara, the first of us to grasp for immortality and take hold. But he is simple...devious, but simple, from a time when men were barely men.”

  “They’re barely ‘men’ now,” Jinx mumbled. I looked at him sharply; he was not to ruin Arthur’s one foray into disclosure. “What?”

  I gently tapped the hand I held. “Go on,” I said, trying to say with my eyes how badly I needed this.

  Benevolently, he obliged me. “He clings to this, to what he may have from this place. That is why he remains. He cannot let go.”

  I sat back pensively, Arthur’s fingers sliding through mine. If it was the Thought that kept men here, and the Thought that turned to torment, then what other way was there? From one suffering to another, could there ever be a way out?

  “First, we saw, then, we sought, and now we shall seek to seek no more,” he breathed. His hand was in his lap, he sat as if on a throne, but if it was the face of a living god, it was a nearly exhausted one.

  Immortals before Arthur’s infectious meme could rampage through society and turn our eyes inward? I could not imagine it.

  “Are you saying you evolved from him,” I said before Jinx could say it. I was the one who needed to speak those words. I was the one who needed the answer.

  Arthur shrugged one shoulder. “From him, because of him, in response to him, I know not. Nor does it matter. I know only that the superstition he begets has no place in this world’s future. Our natural will to survive will annihilate it, or we will perish.”

  Suddenly, he got to his feet and walked out the door. I heard his footfalls on the balcony as he strode heavily toward the stairs. I jumped up and slapped my hands on Jinx’s shoulders, spinning him in the chair.

  “Find me more on the Rakshasa.”

  He saluted and slid back to his desk. I turned and went for the door.

  Ringing in my ears were those few words that said so much: “Things will not always be as they are now….”

  I dashed after Arthur’s retreating form. At the base of the stairs, I caught him, my fingers curving around the handhold of his collarbone and gripping tenaciously. He turned and leveled me with such a mournful gaze that I thought I might gasp, but I managed not to. Instead, I put my hands on either side of his neck and matched my quickened pulse to his slower one with barely a thought.

  “Are you all right?” I leaned toward him, eye to eye, thanks to the last step.

  He managed a smile. “And so it begins, Lilith.”

  “Say it, please,” I said, though my voice caught in my throat. The sobs were within my chest, clinging at my heart, strangling me with desperation. I needed him to feel my tears, but what would be the point in that? They were just water to a creature that could hear my thoughts and know me so completely. “Tell me I’m on the path, Arthur, please. Tell me I’m meant to destroy him and I will.”

  To my utter shock and delight, he reached around my arms and took my face in his hands. He pulled me so close, that I thought, for just a flicker of an instant, this would be the moment, but no, it was something more important than the lusts of a stupid girl’s romantic inclinations. He held my eyes before his and looked into me deeply, as if he could not see exactly what I was, as if I was as much a mystery to him as he was to me. Flattered and distraught, I smiled and held to him as tightly.

  “This is dance, Lilith. It always was. He and I, circling around. Before us was the idea of us, until the idea became reality. We circle always.”

  For the first time in our friendship, his voice was not the perfect, unblemished sound of a low flute. It was hoarse and raw and it terrified me.

  “How can I join?”

  “You are already a part of it, Lilith.” The pressure on either si
de of my face grew and then dissipated into a mere feather as he stroked my jawline with the backs of his fingers. “You are the center. It was always a battle for you, but I am the only one who knew it.”

  “Then am I meant to beat him?”

  His eyes traced my features lovingly, and a shiver threatened me with weakness. I pushed it aside for him, for what he needed to say.

  “There is no winning a conversation, Lilith. There is either progress or silence. This world is stuck in battle, fighting advance, filling silence, choosing nothing. That is the dharma, my dear. You are the dharma. This world is yours. Remake it in your image.”

  I could feel him pulling away, tiny muscles strained at the moors of my affections and began to unravel. I grasped him tightly and leaned closer, throwing my arms around him.

  “Tell me you love me. Say that I’m not just a means to an end. Say I’m a person that you wanted to know. Say it.”

  But I should have known better. He reached up and disentangled me, pulled me back into the less secure bower of his embrace and blinked at me in sadness.

  “Lilith, neither you nor I have ever had a choice in this meeting, and that is because we are not individuals, no matter how much easier that would make things. You know this.”

  He took my face in his hands again and ran his thumbs over my lips. It was all I would have.

  “We are both the means to an end.” And he let me go.

  I don’t know why I said it, but I heard the words come from my own suddenly parched throat, “The earth itself will testify.”

  He stopped. I felt his gaze pass over me, but it was not the breeze of conscious consideration I knew. It was a rigid gaze that pressed me. When I caught it, I could see for myself the edge to it, the keen satisfaction there.

  “So it will,” he said.

  “You’re not leaving for good, please….” A sob escaped my death grip. “Not yet?”

  “No,” he turned and took the soul away from me. It was fair enough, I was so casually hard on it. “I am taking a walk.”

  “We are like the sun and moon, you and I,” I murmured. “I feel like I’m chasing you all the time, and you are always far ahead, shining brilliantly.”

  “You are wrong,” he smiled over his shoulder at me, one blue eye sparkling, “it is I who am chasing you.”

  Then he walked away and all my strength left me. It was the parting before the parting, the herald of things to come. He was preparing me. The least I could do was be prepared.

  I stood up when my legs would again hold me, and went back into the room, a new sense of purpose awakened.

  Chapter 13

  The Wild Man

  Arthur did not return that night, or even the following one. He wasn’t lying when he said that he would, but in my core I was certain that the relationship as I had known it was over. It hurt in an entirely new way. What I felt was graver than loss, deeper than sadness. I had grown comfortable with the idea of an “us,” but that was a silly thing for me to have done.

  There was no contract amongst our little fellowship, just a few travelers all going the same direction. It could never be more than that because, to realize our communal goal, I was sure we would have to go our separate ways. We all had our roles to play in the dharma, but if pivotal figures like Arthur and Mara were fighting for my soul, did it mean my choice would change everything?

  I thought about it for hours and came to only one conclusion, that where the Buddha was concerned, it could never be so simple.

  Fucking Zen.

  Sometime in the late afternoon, when I had finally exhausted every possible television channel, had spied on every neighbor with my sundry talents, and had even attempted a game of Go with Ananda, Jinx unplugged himself from the machines and plummeted back into the real world. For a long while, he stared at the ceiling as if suffering from mental blue screen.

  “You okay, pipsqueak?”

  An eye rolled my way. “I feel like I just looked up the Universe’s skirt.”

  I stifled a smile. He’d been working non-stop on the Rakshasa question, dancing between screens and windows like a pesky, information-sucking mosquito. My emotions were just a bit frazzled for our usual banter. “What’s she got up there?”

  He twitched and was suddenly on his feet. “Come on, I’ll show you.”

  He didn’t wait for me. By the time I got down to the truck, he was inside, bleeding a can dry. As soon as I started the engine, he synced his phone with the computer and programmed the GPS. The mechanical voice filled the silence, directing me through two freeway interchanges and over a bridge.

  After he’d crumpled up a third can and tossed it to the floorboards, I cleared my throat.

  “I’m assuming you found out about the Rakshasa.”

  “I’m an immortal genius,” was his reply.

  “Are you going to tell me?”

  “How’s your pinkeye?”

  I glanced at him. His boots were braced on the dash, and his lip ring was clicking over his teeth.

  “I need to know, Jinx.”

  “And I need to find a way to tell you so that you don’t crush my skull. I’m a great healer, as we’ve already learned, but strangely it’s never fun.”

  I kept my mouth shut until we arrived at our destination, somewhere within Golden Gate Park. Jinx walked me to a giant, ugly box of a building with a massive safety-pin sculpture stabbed into the ground nearby.

  “There’s a special exhibit going on right now,” he explained.

  I halted by the ticket counter and crossed my arms. “After what happened at the rock, you’re going to bring me to a public place?”

  “Newbs need pics. I can’t help it if you’re stupid.”

  “And violent.”

  He slapped my arm with a program and dragged me toward a roped-off corridor where other ticket holders had gathered. Groups of visitors were being loosed into a light-controlled labyrinth, prodded with audio tours, told that the only way out was to go forward. I gritted my teeth, wondering what they would say if I had a psychotic break and sent the poor public into a stampede.

  Jinx waved aside the audio tours and hooked his arm through mine; once inside the gate, he wove us through the connected rooms, scanning placards and glass cases for his goal. Stone heads, weird carvings, artists’ renderings all blurred together amidst the susurrus of hundreds of quiet observers. Pools of light drew us from gallery to gallery, until finally, in a pitch black room with only one exhibit, Jinx came to an abrupt halt and drew me into a corner.

  “Sit here, and just listen to me.” His voice tickled my ear, and I could smell cigarette smoke on his hair.

  “What are those?” I pointed to the two tablets across the room. They glowed with the incandescence of a high-powered spotlight, all their tiny rows of slashes turned to deep, shadowy wells.

  “Cuneiform tablets from the Akkadian period.”

  I blinked and resisted the urge to pull out my smart phone. “What’s the Akkadian period?”

  He pinched his face with frustration and leaned closer. “Just listen. You asked me to research the Rakshasa, and I did, but I think in patterns, and every time I would trace a tale backward, I would find another. Lily, every culture on earth has a myth about shape-shifters, werewolves, beast men, and berserkers. Every single one.”

  Swallowing, I slumped forward. It seemed wading through the quicksand of time was impossible even for Jinx. “Thanks for trying, anyway.”

  “No! You’re not listening. Let me explain it differently.” He grabbed my hands and squeezed them tightly. “Everything in nature tends toward entropy. You know what that is right?”

  “Chaos?”

  “Exactly. Everything falls apart, atoms scatter, and particles break up. It’s the natural law of all matter.”

  I looked toward the roughened edges of the ancient tablets and wondered how much was lost to antiquity.

  “So when I trace a myth,” he murmured, “I expect it to slowly unravel.”

 
“Like a game of telephone.”

  A red spike brushed my face as he nodded. “Which means that if we go backward, the myth should become less nonsensical. Imagery should show less diversity, there should be greater consistency. We have a source-tale of a wild man, and as people fanned out, migrated, conquered, they spread the myth. Over time it was altered, used to explain all sorts of phenomenon, and the wild man turns to a monster, but it all began at the source-tale. Do you get me?”

  Sullen, I hugged myself, folding his hand against my heart. “Are you saying that the Rakshasa are not the source-tale?”

  A docent had caught sight of us. Jinx’s voice dipped into a breath against my temple. “The stories are much, much older, Lily. The Wild Man has been around since the dawn of civilization.” He pointed at the tablets in their vibrant display. “I’ve traced it back to the Epic of Gilgamesh, the oldest literary work in the world.”

  I suffered a pang of loss. My education in world history and archeology had been cursory at best, and I could not remember ever having read the epic. Eva would have known it instantly and would probably have been able to talk about it for hours. If we had been on better terms, I might not need the lecture. Then again, if we had, I might not be here.

  Jinx braved my intellectual wasteland with a determined huff. “The epic is the story of an evil king, a tyrant named Gilgamesh who ruled with an iron fist, up until the day a divine emissary named Shamhat, the Magnificent One, descends from on high and brings enlightenment to a wild man.”

  I glanced at him. His piercings glittered in the diffuse light. “Enlightenment?”

  “The wild man and Shamhat bump uglies, and suddenly he’s all wise and shit,” Jinx translated with a smirk. “Point is, Enkidu goes from a savage to a philosopher overnight, emerges from the wilderness, and teaches the oppressor a thing or two.”

  With a frown, I peered down at the program clutched in m hand. A frozen, austere face looked up at me beneath a crown. Thoughts were beginning to align, and the chill of certainty was slowly turning me to stone.