A Dirge for Preston John

by Catherynne M. Valente

  Lamis, to Whom Rastno Gave a Glass Flower: He tries to be sunny for us, but he cries beneath his wing. Even I have seen it.

  Houd, to Whom Rastno Gave a Glass Dagger: He is a grown-up. Grown-ups are always sad. It’s their hobby.

  I bade them come close to me. I let my ears flow around their shoulders. I coaxed them to look down into the valley of Nural—to see the midnight flowers, how black they were, how they fluttered on the long grass like moths. The moon makes that wind, as she gets ready to be born. The trouble was not that Rastno was grown-up. It is true that we pile up sadness in our hearts like treasure—though love and happiness too, I promised them. The heart is greedy and vast. But Rastno’s sorrows were also greedy and vast—they sufficed for a whole people. And I asked while the coffee steamed, for I was always a teacher to them: What do you know about phoenix?

  Lamis, Who Sang a Song for the Phoenix, When They Were Alone, About Having a Cruel Brother, and Not Being Pretty: They bring presents!

  Ikram, Who Danced for the Phoenix, When They Were Alone, Mad as a Dervish, Spinning Around: They live five hundred years, and then burn themselves to death in a cinnamon nest, and rise up again, a new bird, to live a new life.

  Houd, Who Said Nothing to the Phoenix When They Were Alone, But Stared Stonily at Him, and Then Wept: Like the moon. Like us, when the lottery-barrel spins.

  Oh, I had such clever children. But I knew something more, and so did Rastno, and this is why he was sad.

  Listen to me, now. To listen is to become like the moon, silent and full of light, a witness in the dark.

  Once, so many phoenix lived in the cinnamon forests that it all seemed like a long red river. The forests nestled south of the great lake of silver that borders the city of Simurgh far to the north of Pentexore. Not so terribly far from Nimat-Under-the-Snow, but in the warm lowlands, where the great mountains of my heart can be seen bright and bold against the gentle sky. There the trunks of the trees are made of a soft, fragrant amber called frankincense, their leaves ruddy brown, sweet cinnamon flake the color of embers. Those forests once teemed with phoenix-life, and Simurgh was their city. They held autumn balls there, and at the end so much passion and such complex dances had crossed the floor that the whole palace would suddenly go up in flames, and the birds would stand outside in their finest dewcloth and applaud by stamping on the ground and crowing.

  When an elderly drake and duchess—for that is how the male and female of the species are properly called—felt her time coming upon her, every soul in Simurgh would bring her gold and cassia, cinnamon and incense, tea-leaves and pepper-root to build her nest, and it would be a festival day, and they would cheer her and praise her long life before she immolated and the sky turned dark with her smoke.

  Now, in those days, it was not enough to burn on a soft, sweet-smelling nest. The phoenix who reached the end of his days and wished to resurrect had a long journey ahead of him, as long and arduous as any he might take in life. Before the flame took him, the aging bird would fashion for himself an egg of myrrh, a funeral egg, and into that egg he packed not only his own ashes and charred red bones, but all of his memories and loves, his disappointments and terrors, everything that was the old bird. For days the old matron or master would sit upon the egg as if it might hatch, as if they meant to nurse the ghosts of themselves. Even when the nest burned, the egg remained, unspoiled, not even blackened, and the first task of the new phoenix would be to take the funereal egg in her talons and fly far, far off, to a city called Heliopolis, beyond the Nural, beyond Silverhair, beyond Nimat and the Axle of Heaven. Rastno said it lay beyond even the Rimal—but only they knew the way.

  In my heart I suspect Heliopolis dwelt in that world where my friend Didymus was born, but Rastno himself, the Bazil of the phoenix, the emperor who makes such beautiful toys, does not know, not anymore. Only the former Bazil knew the place, and when a matron went to her conflagration he would whisper the way into her ear, so she might perish in peace. But this chain of emperors was broken, and the map is lost.

  Long ago, you see, Alisaunder the Red came to this country. You remember I spoke of him with Didymus Tau’ma in his hut. Do you know why he was called the Red?

  Ikram, Who Sat in Awe of All Warriors, And Longed to Be One, Whispering: Because of the crows.

  Because of the white crows, the merules, who can see so many things we cannot. When he first came over the Rimal, which in those most ancient of days was not so forbidding as it is now, not so full of salt and fish with teeth, the merules drew back from him, and whispered that they could see his death hovering over his head, a red splash like a crown. He came with his wife, who was called Roshanak, and his lover, who was called Hefaistes, and four young men with shoulders like stones who carried his palanquin across the sea of sand while he and his beloveds rested on rose- and sky-colored pillows and shared bread and honey together. He exclaimed with delight when a delegation of sciopods greeted him, led by Tarsal, who was their greatest princess. Alisaunder marveled at their ropy, muscled legs, their enormous single knees, their broad, flat feet, and how such a wonder could be. He eagerly asked of Tarsal, whose hair streamed silver: Is there a sea on the other side of your country? A great sea that spans the world? It is this thing I seek.

  And Tarsal replied: I do not have time for children’s lessons. Take food, if you want it. Take water, and oil for anointing. Take even fresh pallbearers to hoist you back to your own country. For we are at war, and the merules say you are soon to die.

  Alisaunder smiled, for he was a god of war. He knew it better than marriage or eating or sleep. He beamed so broadly that Tarsal was charmed, and her retinue laughed at his childish enthusiasm as he put his hand to her shoulder and pledged: I can bring ten thousand officers, and as many horses, and each of these mounted nobles have in their service a dozen infantrymen. And each of the infantrymen have a brace of servants, and even the least of these knows how to march in formation, and hold up a shield, and cut down an enemy between two breaths.

  Tarsal, whose foot had broken the necks of many soldiers, was no fool. What would they have to give him for such things? No man makes war for nothing. But Alisaunder the Red said that he asked only to allow some few of his officers to intermarry with us, if they could find willing mates, and to call some small town or hamlet by the name of Alisaundry. He required also that the merules take counsel with him, and speak unto him concerning his death. Tarsal, who had done with marriage after her third husband, to whom the kingdom referred as her Third Irritation, took stock of the tall Roshanak, with her skin like cassia, and the gentle, almond-eyed Hefaistes, both of whom watched the Red with patient love. As long as Tarsal herself would not be compelled to take on a Fourth Irritation, she felt well-satisfied to sound Alisaunder’s horn across the sand-road.

  But no officers came thundering across the crisp sand. It roiled and crashed in white-gold waves behind him, as the road that had borne Alisaunder’s palanquin off the course of his constitutional vanished once more. Alisaunder smiled a second time. I do not need them, he laughed. Only tell me the root and cause of the war at your door and I shall end it.

  And so the sciopods took a knee, and Alisaunder and his family sat in the shade of their silver palanquin and listened closely, not only the Red himself but also his man and his woman, and even his four servants.

  Tarsal explained, very gravely. For those were the days of Gog and Magog, and their ravening over our country, their terrible teeth seeking any soft thing to devour, their stride leagues long, their blades so sharp they could cut your breath from your chest and leave you dead without a wound. Tarsal sighed: They do not want territory or wealth. They love only death, and eat only death, and they are killing us because we live so long that no meal could be sweeter to them. They are the end of things, that is their only purpose.

  Surely that cannot be so, Roshanak protested. Her long black hair was caught up in many lapis beads, and Tarsal found her too beautiful to look upon—even the long scars on her
cheeks made her only more severe and lovely. Everyone wants something. Everyone desires.

  And Tarsal allowed the truth of her words. In this country, she said, which we call Pentexore, we have a philosopher called Artavastus. He lives still, and has a very long coat, for he is a bear of great size, and the color of him is like pearl. He dictated to his amanuensis a long book, which I will summarize for you, for bears have little concept of brevity in literature, as they expect any book worth its weight to last through several hibernations. Artavastus said that the cosmos as we know it is always in a state of decay, hurtling toward dissolution, toward a kind of fire at the end of all things. He thought that we, by which I mean Pentexore itself, presented a kind of pin in the substance of the spheres that kept it all from flying too fast toward that end. And so it is natural that we should claim as our native land the same earth that gave life to our opposite. Gog and Magog, madam, are agents of that fire, that blackness at the end of everything. They work towards it, long for it; it is their mother and their wife and their child.

  Alisaunder beamed with a fullness of pride. Do you mean to say that your war is against two men alone?

  They are not men, Tarsal snapped. You do not understand. Every field they touch comes to serve them.

  Have you seen them? What are they, if not men? This from Hefaistes, who spoke softly, and with much grace.

  Tarsal considered for a long while. In the end one of her generals spoke. No one sees them, he said. We only see what they leave behind. And perhaps the wind of their passing as they strike us down.

  Alisaunder took counsel with his own heart as the sun moved across its blue sphere. And just before the evening took sure hold, he asked for three things: a pass in the mountains, high on both sides and very narrow; a great quantity of diamonds, as many as could be gathered from every mine, every secret pool beneath a black rock; and several giants, if they could be had in this country of wonders that produced men with only one leg.

  Such a pass Tarsal knew, but on the other side of it lay Simurgh, and many other wonderful cities, all besieged, but holding firm. Yet Alisaunder’s terrible plan could be accomplished nowhere else. With the help of the prodigious giants Holbd and Gufdal, long may their names be remembered, and the Great Dive, in which the diving boys and girls of the deep pools held their breath for four days and nights to pry diamonds bigger than camels from the darkest caves, the Gates of Alisaunder were built with a swiftness. This is why you will find any gem in Pentexore but diamonds, for they all went into the Wall, and there they stay. Upon the night the Gates swung shut, closing up not only Gog and Magog, but the beautiful cinnamon forests and Simurgh itself, the greater part of all the phoenix in the world—and perhaps also Heliopolis itself, that secret place. Adamant, as all men, even foreigners like Alisaunder know, repels wickedness as well as magnets and blades and possesses such light as to burn the hearts of the cruel. Gog and Magog remain trapped there, weakened, bitter—and in their frustration and rage they most surely have devoured the phoenix and their city, the grievous sacrifice made so the rest of us might live. But Ghayth, the historian who lived in the shanty-town below the Wall, said he could hear them singing at night a thousand years later. Who knows which of these is so?

  Singing, or screaming.

  And thus it was the phoenix lost their secret home. Only the Bazil knew it, and the Bazil was trapped behind the Wall with every wicked thing, and the phoenix hate the merest mention of him, for he was arrogant, and did not believe the Wall could keep him—thus he warned no one and told no one the secret paths. But the Wall did keep him, and all others. We cannot know what passed behind the Gates, why no bird can fly over them—surely, we do not want to know. Some few of the phoenix had business outside Simurgh, and remain living. But one by one, they live their five hundred years and burn, only to waste and die, because they cannot bury themselves in the holy city, they cannot preside over their own funeral, and so their soul escapes the egg, and flees. Now only five are left, and Rastno is their Bazil, though he has the diadem and not the secret. They mourn, and can do nothing to stop it.

  Afterward, before he returned to the shore of the Rimal with many calculations that would grant him a relatively safe passage, Alisaunder called the white merules to him. They came, like tall jackrabbits, hopping on their black talons.

  He asked them: Will it be a good death? Will it be noble, in battle, victorious, spoken of in song? Will I choke my enemies with my blood?

  The crows looked at each other, and at the red splash only they could see above his head.

  No, they said. It will be a small death, without reason or sense. You have made enemies of those who wish to destroy meaning and order.

  Alisaunder looked out, back toward his home and his life. He could accept that. No war is without casualties.

  But will my empire last?

  And on the sea of sand the silence of the crows carried long and far.

  It will crumble. That will be their revenge on you, they said finally, those you trapped beyond the Wall.

  THE WORD IN THE QUINCE

  Chapter the Fifth, in Which John Makes a Rather Long Speech About Religion, After Being Frightened Badly and Also Drugged.

  Even when I walked among the cranes, it seemed I both understood their speech and did not. To my ear, the inhabitants of this strange land spoke something like a kind of Greek that had had unmentionable relations with both Persian and Turkic, but also with some strange tongue which seemed to me to be less like a backbed cousin of these dialects than their ultimate mother, full of words I recognized, altered and metamorphosed into a kind of mirror of those that I knew. The only language that seemed to have no part of their speech was Latin, though such an absence might seem incredible. Fortunately, as a man of Constantinople, I was accustomed to hearing a dozen languages before noontime, and could make my way with some facility—until they heard me struggle with one word or another, and universally switched to a rather pleasant, if stilted and old-fashioned Greek. When I inquired after this to Fortunatus the gryphon much later, he laughed in his way, half-clucking, half-roaring.

  “Don’t all barbarians speak Greek?” he said, and this was the first inkling they gave me that the whole of their nation was quite aware of my world, and simply chose to eschew it. He told me about Alisaunder, and his wonderful method of teaching languages, and how he had taught the giants Holbd and Gufdal, and the giants had taught the rest. I shivered, as any man might. I still, even now, cannot quite believe that the great man could have walked here. And yet I have seen the truth of it with my own eyes.

  In my heart I believe that what they speak is the sacred Adamic language, the tongue we all knew before Babel, that perfect language granted to man by God. On the distant day when we came upon the ruins of the monstrous tower I would feel this truth rise in me like love.

  But I get ahead of myself, and Hagia is impatient, her breath all dark with figs and her eyes bright and slick in the dim light. We burn our tallow so fiercely—we must finish before my heart or my breath loses the race to fail first.

  I chiefly remember the horror of waking on that jeweled pillar. I felt my eyes crack open and thought the light of day might shatter my skull. Sand still seemed to stick in every inch of me. Though some kind soul had scrubbed me clean, I could still feel it scratching at me. Leaning over my poor, wracked body I saw: an eagle’s head with a wide beak, a scarlet lion’s muzzle, a very beautiful woman’s face with long black hair and eyes of a violent coppery shade, with rings of violet chasing each other within them, and a pair of full brown breasts tipped with cool green eyes where the nipples ought to have been. At first I thought I dreamed yet, and St. Thomas stood before me with his mouth in his belly—but my eyes took in the heaviness of her woman’s breasts, and a fiery dread filled me, a panic like the tremors of death.

  Forgive me, wife. I was so young, then.

  I gulped for air, I tried to ask after Thomas the Saint and to tell them my name all at once, but it came out on t
op of itself, backwards, and they did not seem to mark me well. My weakened body betrayed me and I shrank back on the stone with that monster over me, her lash-fringed eyes huge, interested and amused, and somehow their amusement enraged me. I saw, more clearly, that she had no head, but carried her whole face on her torso, and it was intolerable. I could not look her in the eye without witnessing the shame of her nakedness. She wore wide black silken trousers with a thick band of blue at the waist, but her navel was a red mouth and her breasts, her breasts tortured me already, and I could not look at her, but I could not look away.

  The other woman, with a serpent’s many-colored eyes, laughed at my discomfort and moved in, her motion too smooth and easy—I glanced down and groaned, for the lady possessed nothing like legs. From her waist she was a serpent, the copper and pinkish-green patterns of her tail coiling and uncoiling. An awful bustle echoed around me, as of many souls in transit, and after so long alone it assailed my ears, my heart, and I prayed fervently to be delivered from this new hell.

  “Does it do anything interesting?” said the snake-woman.

  “It said: ‘My name is John,’” mused the eagle—which I saw now had long, feathered ears shaped like a horse’s, the long golden body of a lion, and deep black-violet wings folded neatly onto his back. “That’s interesting enough. I don’t know anyone named John.”

  “It wants something called an Ap-oss-el,” piped the red lion, whose voiced seemed unusually high and gentle for such an enormous beast.

  “Oooh!” exclaimed the serpent. “Is that a machine or a vegetable?” She moved her massive, heavy hair back from her face. Her torso shone, clad in coins that jangled when she moved.

  “I think it is a person,” the horror of horrors said thoughtfully. “It called him Thomas. It mentioned a tomb.”