A Dirge for Preston John

by Catherynne M. Valente

  “Did you mother ever read The Scarlet Nursery to you, when you were a child?” I whispered. When one lies in bed at such an hour, every word seems a secret.

  “Oh, yes,” he smiled, his ink-stained lips shining in the dark. “I haven’t thought about those stories in years. I think I spent most of my youth in love with Imtithal. In my first Abir, I prayed to be matched with a panoti. I wanted to be wrapped up in those ears, and told tales, and kissed by a cold mouth. I could have killed Houd for his cruelty to her.”

  I bit him playfully on the hip.

  “Think of it, Asto. She lived through the first Abir, when it would have been hardest, most agonizing to endure. When no one knew how to keep from calling out to their former mother in the street or embracing their former husbands at the market. When no one knew how it was done. And she chose to live by the queen’s law, not to return to the snow and her family, to cast her lot with us.” I moved sleepily against my new husband. “We do not think of Imtithal the sherpa, leading pilgrims into the mountain peaks, though we know she lived that way before, or Imtithal the lamplighter, though we know she lived that way after. We love Imtithal the storyteller, and wish she had been our butterfly. But the Lottery chose that for her, chance chose it—and who knows when it may choose a life for us that will lead to glory and love, and tales told over and over by a thousand fires? What if this life holds wonder for you, my love, and you pull blackness over your eyes, down and down until you cannot see it?”

  “But the queen cheated,” Astolfo countered. “She wanted Imtithal for a nurse for her children, and that’s what the barrel chose. How could that have been true chance? No, she rigged it, to have her way.”

  “You don’t know that,” I sighed. It was an old debate, even then. “Chance is a kind of god, and what ought to be generally comes to pass. We love her now, so she had to be a nurse then, or we wouldn’t be talking about her in our safe, rosy house.” I looked out at the warm, orange-gold moon, hung like a gourd drying in the sky. “And what if the old queen did cheat? It was worth it, if our Butterfly came in the bargain.”

  Oh, my memory. I wish you would soften, I wish I could hang a veil over those times and remember only whispering and love in the dark. Instead, my own words mock me, and pierce me to the very quick.

  And in the morning, Hadulph came for his monthly pamphlets, and nuzzled my shoulder, and asked what sucked my belly thin and turned my eyes red.

  “My husband does not love his life,” I answered, and that was the first day Hadulph and I went into the pepper fields and I learned how his tangled mane bristled, and how rough his tongue could be, and that some coupling among Pentexoran goes easier than others. Ours was difficult, and brief, and earnest, and fierce. I did not care, I only knew that with the lion I was not alone, I did not have to coax him to love this world. I did not know how much I could come to love that old beast, and how far we would go, he and I. For it would not be the last time. I told Astolfo of it that night. He had no jealousy, only interest in how we managed to contort ourselves enough to accomplish it.

  I have told you. An infinity of time crafts a much different soul than a few anxious years. I knew that Astolfo had at least once visited his old vineyards and seduced a panoti girl there among the grapes. He told me how her ears enclosed his whole body, and I marveled, even envied him. Envy and jealousy are sisters, but not twins. Anyway, the first years of a change are hard, and we soon had other griefs than fidelity—for in time my husband grew sick, and though we do not age much past thirty, sickness we do know, even if it is rare, and disease, and plague. His face lost all color, and I drained the ink from his gullet, for he could no longer hold it all in. His weakness sparked such fear in me; I trembled with it, as with a child, knowing that it must sooner or later come to term. He slept often and rarely woke, and my arms ached from the stretching of every parchment alone.

  Finally, I lifted him from our bed and strapped him onto Hadulph’s broad crimson back. We walked thus, Astolfo as silent in his illness as in death, and the sun overhead dim and diffident. The tall banana trees let us pass, and the mukta flowers, clusters of pearls heavy as peas on their stalks, bent under our feet and shattered, the rain came and just as quickly went. More than once, I fell to the ground weeping, so tired and thirsty and afraid. It was a long road—but like the road to the Fountain, if it were not long it would be worth nothing, and I find it hard to speak of such a private thing as that journey.

  As Imtithal said, weakness has always been a part of us, from the beginning. And so the world knows how to answer weakness. There are many secret places in Pentexore, many answers. I knew the place I sought, deep in the forest, a still white pool, like milk but not milk, where two old men stood knee-deep in the chalky water. Cattails of glass would bob and chime there, but no birds. The two old men, whose white mustaches had grown so long that they braided them in huge spirals like wheels of hay, hummed a single note, forever, unbroken unless a broken body came before them. I knew the place, so did Hadulph, though we had no name for it. He bore Astolfo’s body stoically, and never once complained.

  In that pool, a mussel-shell taller than a camel rested, dark blue, crusted with barnacles like lace. The two men, so old their wrinkles pressed on their eyes until they could not see at all, guarded it and tested the patient. They wore identical gowns of long grass. I propped Astolfo up on his feet; he groaned, his head sagging under the weight of his jaw. I staggered beneath his heavy body, which stank of sickness, sickness I thought bloomed from his despair as a nut from a nut-tree. If he had not despaired he would not be sick now, I was sure.

  “Do you wish to be healed?” said the first man. It would be their only question.

  Astolfo moaned and struggled to open his eyes in the thin sunlight.

  “Do you wish to be healed?” said the other.

  If he lied, the water would turn black and nothing the mussel-shell could do would help him. Faced with the gaze of the ancient men, many say no. They realize they want death, rest, not to be well and go on with living. Not everyone wishes to be well, in their hearts. Some wish to vanish. The question is not an empty one, no matter what John said later. Some reach out for darkness instead, and find it.

  But Astolfo murmured: “Yes. Please, help me.” His body could summon up no further word, not even one.

  The men opened the mussel along its edge with their fingernails, grown long and orange with age. Within, it showed pinkish-white wetness, like soaked silk, and a kind of pearly sweat seeping from the flesh of the shell. I helped my love forward, my poor creature, my lost one. He stepped into the deep blue mussel; it closed up after him. He did not emerge for four days, and all the while I kept vigil, leaning against Hadulph’s flank, watching the stars wheel, warm and certain in their spheres. I tasted the milky water once—it tasted like skin. Once, as we waited and the old men hummed, Hadulph asked me:

  “Do you wish the Abir had gone another way? That it had paired you and I, or you and some less delicate soul?”

  After a long while I answered: “No. I wish everything to happen exactly as it did, for if it had not, it would not, and what trouble we would be in then. And after all, I have you anyway.” And I rubbed his soft muzzle.

  When he emerged, Astolfo was whole and flush, and such joy shone from his eyes that I felt it as a blow, heavy and pleasant against my breast.

  And from that day, he never spoke again.

  The shell takes its trade, always.

  THE SCARLET NURSERY

  The summer rain ran rivers around the al-Qasr. Rain is a melancholy animal. It pads after one in the late afternoon, when all is soft and dim, pricking the spirit with silver darts. When I looked out of the nursery window all curtained with thick red and tied back with crimson cord, I always wished it were snow instead. In the wide basin of Nural, the great capital city, the city of sard and onyx, home but not my home, it never snowed.

  One morning some years past I woke to find the water in our chapel’s lustral basin lig
htly iced over, the barest whisper of ice, so that one touch of my fingertip shattered it. I was filled with such delight on that day; I walked through every hall and street full-up, as though carrying a wonderful secret. But it was a single crystal bead in an endless strand of hot stones. In Nural, clinging warmth was our constant companion, clinging to papaya leaves and baobabs, milkberry vines and bleeding roses. The great rains circled the summer solstice like a great golden drain, and though every flower opened up on the streets like beggars’ hands, I drooped in the warmth. The children could not play outside, and in their thwarted wildness broke a dozen toys and several other objects which were not toys, such as my snowshoes, and all before noon.

  This is how it went with us:

  Houd, Who Was Mainly To Blame for the Snowshoes: I shan’t apologize, either! You oughtn’t to have such ugly things! It never snows here!

  Ikram, Who Broke Three Clay Soldiers Herself: One day she might go home, Houd. Especially since she has to look after beastly things like you.

  Lamis, Who Broke Nothing and Was Mild: No, never! Mother would never allow it! You must never go home! You are our Butterfly, and no one else’s, and I shall thump anyone who says different right in the face!

  Children, you must understand, are monsters. They are ravenous, ravening, they lope over the countryside with slavering mouths, seeking love to devour. Even when they find it, even if they roll about in it and gorge themselves, still it will never be enough. Their hunger for it is greater than any heart to satisfy. You mustn’t think poorly of them for it—we are all monsters that way, it is only that when we are grown, we learn more subtle methods to snatch it up, and secretly slurp our fingers clean in dark corners, relishing even the last dregs. All children know is a clumsy sort of pouncing after love. They often miss, but that is how they learn.

  Their hands are so big, so big, because they need so much. They reach out and out and you could disappear in their grip.

  I know all this now, for I am much older. Then, I felt that I might cry, I missed the snow and the ice and the cold so terribly much. I missed my old life, and the girl I had been. I did not want to be shut into that oppressively dark and blood-colored chamber any more than they did. But you cannot show weakness to monsters, even small ones. Still, my snowshoes lay splintered on the floor and all three of the children studiously avoided looking at them. I summoned a deep pool of peace within myself, and iced it over until I could speak to the beasts again. Sweetly, with love, as much love as I had. Sometimes when you are sad all you can do is tell a story about sadness, so that by some obscure law, sorrow will cancel itself out and the rain will clear.

  Besides—all royal children should know that they are not the center of the universe, despite all the evidence of their senses.

  Darlings, I said to them, do you know that there is a world very far away from our own? With domed cities like herds of jeweled camels and towers so tall you cannot see their tips for all the creamy orange clouds?

  Houd, Who Knew Everything: That is a lie. You shouldn’t lie.

  Ikram, Who Felt Very Poorly About the Soldiers: Says the lyingest liar who ever lied!

  Lamis, Who Wanted the World to Be Big: Are there children there, like us? With big hands, and orange eyes?

  There are children everywhere. And some of them, logically, must have hands like yours. But you should ask me, instead: How do I know such a world exists if I have never been there nor ever so much as seen a cup made by a man from across the sea?

  Houd, Who Would Have Smashed Such a Cup: I don’t care.

  Lamis and Ikram, Whose Eyes Had Gotten Very Big: How do you know, Butterfly?

  The rain said plink, plink, hush. I said:

  Once, a very long time ago, before your mother was queen and before she pulled a bronze barrel into the Pavilion and spun all our lives inside, a man came to Pentexore from this other world. I was very young, not much older than you are now, and my ears had not yet turned white. When panotii are young our ears are blue—so blue they look black in the moonlight, like water. I lived in Nimat-Under-the-Snow then, and I had two mothers and a lobe-father. Not everyone is like cametenna, with their one greatmother and a dozen mating males, those dear and mute boys, dancing at night under rose-colored tents!

  This strange man came into our city, wretched, starving, his toes near black with frostbite. He had not eaten in days, and when we fed him ox-tea he choked on it; he could not get enough. Perhaps I shall make this for you one day. In a cup of white tea, the sort that looks like silver sewing needles before it is picked, you pour ox-blood and honey, and add a lump of ox-butter to melt in the brewing. Nothing is better for starving souls.

  Ikram, Who Ate Three Quince-Jellies That Morning and Was a Bit Ill: Ugh! I shall never drink that!

  Houd, Who Liked the Sound of the Blood: I shall.

  I was the only child in Nimat in those days, for we bear young infrequently, and the mating trio must be chosen from among all the village. In this way, a child is assured the protection of not only their parents but so many souls, and Nimat never grew too crowded nor too lean. Everyone adored me, and I adored everyone. We, all panotii, remember such overwhelming love, and it is from this memory that we draw up our kindness and patience with those who never knew what it was to be cuddled and kissed by every grocer, nursed at the breast of every blacksmith. When we are tried, by lovers or queens or pestering children who break everything in sight, into that full well we must immediately dive to cool our tempers.

  Lamis, Who Was the Youngest, and Most Often Forgotten: I should like to be loved like that.

  I ran wild, and rolled in the gardens until my blue-black ears got all covered in snowflakes. I sang, and everyone listened, called songs charming and dear. I loved in my turn a little white fox, who ran about my ankles and slept in my lobes. And when the starving man came into Nimat, with his huge dark eyes and his long beard, I went running to him, as I ran to everyone, knowing as any child of Nimat knew that he would catch me up in his arms and kiss me and give me some gimelflowers to suck. My ears flapped in the winter wind and I leapt, so sure I would be caught—and he dropped me. He tried to catch me, he did, but I was heavy, and he was weak.

  I sat on the snow. Nothing like this had ever occurred before. I had been dropped. I looked up into the man’s eyes, and they were strange to me; they had a whiteness circling a deep, dark well, instead of a panoti’s total white. It seemed to me that he had an open void in his eyes, I was afraid of another soul for the first time. His cheeks sucked in, so hollow! He stared down at me, a little blue-black creature with great huge ears like an elephant’s, her furry clothes all stuck with snow, about to start crying for the clumsiness of a stranger. And the man, with a great effort, picked me up and soothed me. He stroked my ears, which is very pleasant for panoti, and in language prickly and soft all at once, told me all was well. I understood him, though some of the words echoed weird and warped. It was as though we spoke languages that had been siblings, but separated at birth, and left to grow up on their own without knowing that the other had a passion for diphthongs or certain ornate verb tenses.

  His name was Didymus Tau’ma, he said, and who was I?

  Imt’al, I whispered, now in terror, hardly able to say my own name. He smelled hot, and faraway, like baking sand. Do you have any gimelflowers?

  He didn’t. My mothers and my father made him the ox-tea and listened to his tale: he had come from a place I could not even pronounce, called Yerushalayim, where all the domes were made of gold, and olive trees grew all full of oil and fruit. When he spoke of his city, even though his accent jangled strangely, I sat slack-jawed, as though I could see it before my eyes: dusty streets and palm dates smashed on the earth, evening prayer-songs like swans calling, and a man called Yeshua, who Didymus said was his brother, and Yeshua had died because the governor said he must. But three days later he rose out of his tomb and ate bread and drank wine somewhat gone to vinegar and spoke with all of them. Didymus himself had needed to tou
ch Yeshua’s wounds, half-scabbed and half-healed, warped and ropy with scars, before he could call him brother, and believe it true.

  You must have planted him deep and well, one of my mothers said, for him to sprout so quickly. The foreign man stared at her and she stared at him and even I could see that he did not understand in any part what she meant. But neither asked further, not wishing to be rude.

  While Yeshua’s friends ate and drank and told old jokes concerning donkeys, Didymus looked toward the sun for a moment, just for a moment, and when he looked back to the table his brother had gone, never more to return to the living. Yeshua had returned to them—and all Didymus had done was doubt and frown. He was ashamed. Didymus Tau’ma dwelt deep in grief, he said. He would never see his brother again, not until he died himself, and perhaps then he would know how to smile.

  If you die here, my lobe-father said, putting a slim arm around the stranger’s shoulders, we will see to it that you are buried near your brother’s tree, even if we must walk all the way to Yerushalayim.

  Didymus Tau’ma thanked him, but he did not understand. He did not yet know where he was.

  Now, as you know, there is a sea that surrounds our country, a sea of sand, and it is called the Rimal, and I know you have drawn pictures of it in your lesson books, and used up all the yellow paint. But four days a year a path forms in the sand, which might lead someone lost at sea to our shores. Such a thing happened when the Ship of Bones beached here. But there is another way, I think, through the mountains, the way my friend Didymus Tau’ma came.

  He stayed with us for many years, and came down into Nural to see the al-Qasr, and tell the story of his brother to the king, who was called Kantilal and was one of the astomii, with a nose as big as your hands. Didymus made a house for himself of ox-skin and the great long bones one sometimes uncovers on the slopes of the Axle of Heaven. Every day I went to him, for I was deathly curious about the single soul in all the world who did not love me—though that did not last long. Soon enough I pounced upon him and kissed his face and he scratched my skull where I had begun to molt and show my new snowy coat beneath the blue. When I had grown and another family was busily swelling up with Nimat’s next child, my friend often blushed when I greeted him in the fashion of the panotii when among intimate family: wrapping my legs around his waist to sit in his lap, closing him up entirely in the expanse of my pale ears. He whispered to me, in that sacred space my body makes, that it was not right that we should sit so, that it was bold and shameless.