The New Death and others

by James Hutchings

  Coming to the City of Dust, Ur-Zaba began to speak in the public square. After a time he gathered a crowd. All women, they stood around him as silent and still as the idol he sought to overthrow. When they had listened for many hours, a woman asked him,

  "O man, who would win in a fight between our Daba and this Averna?"

  "If it were possible for Daba and Averna to fight, then it must be admitted that Daba is a dwarf while Averna is tall and strong. Is it not, therefore, obvious who would win?"

  At this the women declared their support for Averna. Soon an empty building became the new temple of Averna. Soon after that the temple of Daba stood with lamps unlit, the droppings of the sacred lizards went uncollected, and there was no one to worship the scowling idol, unless those lizards did so.

  ---

  A priest of one of the many rival gods in Telelee hurried past the temple of Averna. He kept his face hidden lest he be recognised, and some of his past mockery be given back to him. The obscene and voluptuous rites of his deity no longer thrilled the people. He shared a sympathetic glance with a priestess of the Crone, who stood in the street chanting one of that goddess's grim sagas in a defeated voice. In the temple courtyard the priestesses sat as content as cats who have been fed and now lie in the sunlight.

  "In the bazaar this morning," Ummi-waqrat remarked, "I heard it said that there has been no triumph such as ours in ten thousand years."

  "So much for Nara," Ninduzu answered, referring to a heroic scourging of the slave-taking Fin-Folk by the temple of that god, not twenty years past.

  "So much, too, for Iasthes," Yarimlim added. The temple of Iasthes had recently marked its thousandth year of feeding and clothing distressed travelers.

  "Indeed, those priests who poured derision upon us are like cooks who prepare poisoned food, only to find it served to themselves." Ummi-waqrat said with satisfaction. "Ho, Beketmut!" Ummi-waqrat shouted to the chanting priestess. "We have had to add another evening ceremony. Our congregation swells like the belly of a pregnant woman." The courtyard would have rung with the sound of hand upon hand, had the 'high five' not been entirely unknown in Telelee. It was at this juncture that a messenger arrived from the City of Dust.

  She came on foot. Horses, camels and riding-lizards were among the many luxuries not found in her city. Indeed she disdained shoes; her feet were cracked and blackened from the road. She knelt before the priestesses, as if in allegorical representation of the conversion of her people, and presented the scroll she carried.

  "O priestesses of Averna," Yarimlim read aloud. "We, your humble parishioners, finding our piety outstrips our learning, do humbly crave the benefit of your wisdom, in settling a question which has vexed us greatly; to wit, is the sun a manifestation of Averna herself, or merely a manifestation of her benevolence? And if the latter, is it a separate benevolence to that by which the rest of Nature manifests? The blessings of the goddess upon you, Ur-Zaba and the believers of the City of Dust."

  "New converts are ever more zealous than those of many years' faith," Ninduzu said, in a voice too soft for the messenger to hear. The latter remained kneeling, eyes downcast and entirely motionless, save for the rise and fall of her breath.

  "You may rise," Ummi-waqrat said. The messenger did so immediately, as if commanded. The priestesses noticed that her knee was bloody. No one spoke. The woman's stoicism, the rivulet of blood snaking down her leg, her silence and submission, all compelled the priestesses' attention. They felt a cold shadow in their warm and familiar courtyard. At that moment they did not feel triumphant.

  "We must consult certain texts to ensure a correct answer to this query," Yarimlim said at last.

  "I shall aid you in your research, sister," Ninduzu added quickly. The two priestesses left for the temple library, leaving Ummi-waqrat alone with the foreigner.

  "So..." Ummi-waqrat said uncomfortably, "how goes the City of Dust?"

  "Error has been entirely driven from the city," the messenger replied proudly. "All have accepted Averna. We worship her daily with martial displays and athletic competition."

  "That sounds very, ah, zealous," said Ummi-waqrat, who preferred to worship Averna by sitting quietly and reading, and believed that Averna's dancing and athletics were largely symbolic.

  "Indeed," said the messenger. "It is a stark contrast to the days of our ignorance, when we were wont to pay tribute to the detestable Daba with unholy rites."

  "Did these rites consist of martial displays and athletic competition?" asked the priestess. The messenger gasped at her insight. Ummi-waqrat sighed to herself.

  "I suppose the goddess is pleased that they now perform their contortions in her name," she thought.

  At last Yarimlim and Ninduzu returned.

  "The Commentaries of the Unimpeachable Sages give a clear answer to your question," said Yarimlim.

  "Well, as clear as a five-hundred-page poem about seven different aspects of the soul talking to each other...which, which is to say, very clear to those learned in theology," Ninduzu said awkwardly.

  "The sun is a manifestation of Averna's benevolence, like the rest of Nature, and differs from it in degree but not in kind."

  "Aha!" the messenger cried. "I knew it! Your wisdom is like precious oil poured upon my heart, making it shine like a sword which thirsts for the blood of its enemies." She bowed to the three priestesses and, wound or no wound, ran from the courtyard with the joyful spring of a newborn lamb.

  ---

  After a time the priestesses ceased to taunt their rivals. If they did not grow more humble, they at least grew secure in their arrogance. It seemed to them the natural order of things that all other temples should have empty pews, and the congregations be like suits of clothes that have gone unmended, and been the food of moths, and grown threadbare.

  The three priestesses were again sitting in the temple courtyard, going over the plans for an extension to the building, when another messenger ran through the gates. Her bare, bruised feet fell as silently as the paws of a wolf in the forest. Perhaps, indeed, it was not another messenger, but the same one. The priestesses, and Telelee generally, were much concerned with the people of the City of Dust as a group, and the worshipers of Averna loved to state the number of them. But there was less interest in the differences between one woman and another.

  She knelt before the priestesses and presented the scroll she carried.

  "O priestesses of Averna," Yarimlim read aloud, "We, your humble parishioners, give thanks for your learned direction on the matter of the sun. We doubt not that our simplicity, rather than any defect in your wisdom, accounts for our ongoing consternation. Likewise the raised voices which, of late, have marred the serenity of our temple are, far from being testament to any inadequacy in your guidance, demonstration of our urgent need for it. The following question, trivial though it will prove to yourselves, nonetheless defeats us. Since the sun differs from the absence of the sun in the degree to which it manifests Averna's benevolence, and since sun-drenched lands such as our own are bitter deserts, is the desert is a sign of Averna's benevolence? Or is the sun a manifestation of Averna's benevolence only when taken as a whole and in comparison to its complete absence, not when one degree of presence is compared to another? We confidently and urgently pray for a quick resolution to the tumult the question has raised among us. The blessings of the goddess upon you, Ur-Zaba and the believers of the City of Dust."

  This time all three priestesses went to the library. When they returned it was evening, and the messenger cast a long shadow in the courtyard. She sat cross-legged upon the ground, and her face gave no clue whether she failed to comprehend the use of the benches before her, despised the softness thereof, or sat on the ground from humility.

  "The presence of the sun," Yarimlim stated, "though it create a parched desert, is preferable to the freezing void of space. Therefore a desert is as much a result of Averna's benevolence as a fertile field. O believers, do not compare the brown earth to the green, nor the
blue sky to the gray, but be assured that the same sun shines upon them all."

  A single tear escaped the messenger's eye.

  "If this is the opinion of you all, there can be no doubt that it is true and correct," she said. She hauled herself to her feet and, with the gait of one carrying a heavy burden, strode from the courtyard. But if she was carrying a heavy burden, she was not carrying all of it. For the priestesses, too, felt as if they had picked up a load too great for them, and did not know when or how they would put it down.

  ---

  No good news ever contains the phrase 'purifying fire'.

  After a few weeks, two messengers arrived in the temple of Averna in Telelee. They did not seem to have come together, for each looked at the other first with surprise, and then with hatred. Yet they said nothing. Perhaps each tried to reach the priestesses first, and to bow lower when handing over their message.

  "O priestesses of Averna," Yarimlim read. "We thank you for the water of your teaching, which quenches the thirst of the pious. Yet to the ignorant, pure water is as poison, and they are...hmm...let the putrescence of heresy be cut out...great reckoning of the false believers...oh dear."

  "O priestesses of Averna," Ninduzu read from the other scroll. "We thank you, and so forth...a great argument arose on how best to punish those who compare the brown earth to the green...in their perversity, they maintain that mentioning the sparseness of the desert does not count as comparing it to the forest, and are therefore the midwives of error and the wet-nurses of sin...we take up our spears to defend the temple and the truth..." she, too, trailed off, and let her hand fall, the rest of the scroll unread.

  The messengers knelt, waiting for direction. But the priestesses had none to give.

  ---

  Thus the temple of Averna in the City of Dust ended in fire and ruin. No more missions went out from Telelee, from Averna or any other god.

  Ur-Zaba was never again seen alive. It was said that he had died when the temple burnt down. And in truth, when the smoke cleared there was no lack of corpses.

  Yet a different story was told by a man of the City of Dust. He said that he saw Ur-Zaba come out of the fire, apparently unharmed by it. As he walked he became shorter until he was a veritable dwarf, squat and malignant. And he entered the temple of Daba. This was widely considered to be a man's idle chatter. Yet it must be admitted that, when the people again entered the temple of Daba, some remarked that the idol was not as they remembered it, but had a new expression of triumph on its hideous face.

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  The Dragon Festival

  I had moved to the city only recently, and there still seemed to be endless room for exploration. I found myself taking the train to the end of the line, then walking to see where the road would take me. I expected to find the houses becoming scarcer as the city turned to country. But in fact I saw more and more buildings. I might have thought that I'd become turned around, but for the fact that the road was more or less straight, and the new buildings unlike those I had left. After a while I came to a main plaza.

  In the center of the plaza was a 'dragon': one of those costumes worn by a team of men in festivals such as Chinese New Year. It was very realistic, if I may use that word. The men under it must have been wearing shorts despite the cold weather, for their legs and feet were bare. I wondered if this was the traditional practice. There was a large crowd. Almost everyone wore medieval Asian dress, or a sort of fairy tale version of it.

  The dragon writhed and capered while musicians played, loud and dissonant. The air throbbed with gongs and drums and the clapping and chanting of the audience. Soon a group of men entered the scene with fireworks. They set then off, and the dragon jumped with every explosion.

  On some signal that I did not notice the clapping and chanting and music all became faster. I covered my ears with my hands. The men under the dragon leapt into the air as if the creature was trying to fly. They had the grace and athleticism of dancers, and moved as if controlled by a single mind. Each pair of legs left the earth a precise fraction of a second after the one before it, so that the beast rippled like a wave on the ocean. Parents urged their children to join in with the clapping and a new chant arose. It was a single word repeated, or perhaps a wordless shout. The chant grew in speed and volume. It was unbearable, like the beating of a fist against my skull. Then, all at once, the men in the dragon lay on the ground, the noise stopped, and the dragon closed its eyes.

  Everyone gave a great cheer. I waited to see what would happen next. But it seemed that there was nothing to follow. The crowd quickly dispersed. I waited for the men in the dragon to get up so that I could congratulate them. I also wanted to ask whether they were professional performers or local people. I waited for a few minutes but they stayed down. I wondered if this was another custom that I was unaware of. The plaza was now empty except for me and the men. At last I went over to the costume. I knelt down. I excused myself but received no answer. Then I reached out to touch the costume, as you might touch someone on the shoulder to attract their attention. It felt strangely solid, and warm. There were no men. It was, or rather it had been, a living creature.

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  I Heard the Mermaids Singing

  I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

  I do not think that they will sing to me.

  T. S. Eliot.

  I heard the mermaids singing

  and wished I had not heard.

  I heard the mermaids singing

  a song that has no words.

  I heard the mermaids singing

  "Come, walk into the sea,"

  and all the waves that break are like

  white horses sent for me.

  I heard the mermaids singing

  and wished I could forget.

  I heard the mermaids singing

  and walked away, and yet

  I heard the mermaids singing

  and hear them singing still.

  As water to a wall of sand

  their singing to my will.

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  Singles Bar

  No one said anything about his new shirt. Well, no one other than the pretzels. But they had to. They were complimentary snacks.

  He hadn't seen a naked woman in so long, he was considering suing the producers of Snatch for false advertising.

  It wasn't his performance in bed. If sex was a sport, he'd be an Olympic athlete. Specifically, a sprinter.

  When his last girlfriend left, she told him

  "I can't stand your pedanticness." How could she say that? The word was 'pedantry'.

  Maybe, he thought, he should get a better job. He worked for a company that processed the leftover parts from sex-change operations. It was a terrible place to work. But he did get free Big Macs.

  He'd already tried going into business, but he went broke. He went around to people's houses and shat in a box in their kitchen. It was for people who missed their cats.

  His friend claimed he could get any woman at his work into bed. To be fair, he did work in a brothel.

  He hated singles bars. But what other options did he have? The last time he tried internet dating he met a woman who was really a transvestite who was really a spambot. He was prepared to give the relationship a chance, but it turned out she was seeing ten million other guys. Then they deleted his profile. They looked at his pictures, and there wasn't one of his erect penis.

  He hit the dancefloor. Dance: the universal language. Unfortunately he only knew one phrase in it: 'Hello. I can't dance.' He bumped into a midget whose face spoke of years of alcohol abuse.

  "Sorry about that," the midget said. "I'm a little drunk."

  He approached a young lady sitting by herself. Let's face it: he couldn't talk to women. He tried mime. He told her he was trapped in the invisible box of single life, walking against the wind of approaching middle age. She took a flashli
ght from her handbag, and flashed 'no thanks' in Morse code.

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  The Auto-Pope

  In the year 20__ the College of Cardinals elected the first robot Pope.

  They chose it out of desperation. All the other candidates had something horribly wrong with them. Some were child abusers. Others were members of the Mafia. Still others were women.

  Sadly it exploded when someone asked it whether married gay couples should get divorced.

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  Todd

  After Todd's mother saw his body, I'm pretty sure she told a lie.

  I'm reading a copy of the local paper from that day. My hometown calls itself a city, but it's small enough that a dead kid would automatically be front-page news. According to staff writers, after she identified his body she broke down in tears and told reporters

  "I wish I could have died instead."