Through a Mythos Darkly

by Glynn Owen Barrass

  Nemo kneeled beside the princess and the two other men took up position near André, who they watched carefully.

  “It must indeed be something important that brings you to our realm,” said the thing on the throne.

  It was manlike with two legs, arms, torso, though its head was fish-shaped and the scaly skin was dark gray with reptilian density. As it spoke it bared serrated teeth that made André shudder with fear. He didn’t know why his crewmen held him down at its feet so brutally; maybe they knew that he would run screaming from this place if they did not. And, he suspected that Nemo would have prepared the others for what they would see. But why hadn’t he prepared André? Or was it that the other men had been here with Nemo before?

  “Ar’Teh Rai,” Nemo said. “I give you Princess Tembukah to do with as you wish. She is a willing sacrifice.”

  “Beautiful, too,” Ar’Teh Rai replied. “I have always enjoyed the human female form, so different from our females. The skin is so smooth and soft.”

  A thick tongue slithered over rubbery lips, and the creature had been speaking for sometime before André realized he could understand its words. The creature’s words horrified André—were they going to eat the girl?

  “Your tribute is acceptable,” Ar’Teh Rai concluded.

  From behind the creature’s throne emerged three females. They were similar in color to the monstrosity on the throne, but more human than he appeared: a hybrid of human and this creature. “Take her to my chamber,” he told the females who now surrounded the princess. Tembukah’s eyes were round and filled with adoration as she bowed before the god on the throne. Then she allowed herself to be taken away by the females.

  André was now beginning to see what purpose Ar’Teh Rai had for the princess, and bile rose in the back of his throat at the thought of this thing using the young girl this way. He turned his head to look at Nemo, and wondered how many such sacrifices had been brought down here in the past. How else would Nemo know the way here without any form of navigation? How else would there be half-breeds?

  “And the boy, too?” Ar’Teh Rai said.

  “No…” Nemo shook his head. “He is a member of my crew…”

  “The second sacrifice, as you know, must be unwilling.”

  “This young man has a promising career with me as an engineer…” Nemo argued.

  “Why have you come here, to merely waste my time?” said Ar’Teh Rai.

  “I hoped that a princess would be enough…” Nemo said.

  It took a moment for André to realize that they were discussing him. He began to struggle with the two crewmembers that held him.

  “No. I won’t…” he said.

  Ar’Teh Rai said, “His corruption shall be a joy for our females.”

  “No!” André cried as several creatures resembling Ar’Teh Rai surrounded him. The Nautilus crewmen passed him over without a word and then they withdrew to stand to attention behind Nemo.

  Nemo remained prostrate before the throne. He could do nothing. This was one sacrifice for the sake of many other lives.

  André was dragged. “Captain! Help me!”

  Nemo didn’t look at him.

  “What do you need,” Ar’Teh Rai asked.

  “Earth has fallen to our enemies from the stars…”

  Ar’Teh Rai leaned forward on his throne. “We felt the tremors, but did not know what it meant. Martians?”

  “The priest has confirmed it to be so.” Nemo’s voice trembled. He cleared his throat. “Man cannot fight this. It wears machines and feeds on the blood of humankind.”

  “You could have merely fled to the sea. You and your men are safe here. It is after all the life you prefer,” Ar’Teh Rai observed.

  “Yes. And my instinct was to do that except…would these beings be satisfied with conquering the land alone? What small leap into the planet’s waters it would be for something that has traveled through space.”

  Ar’Teh Rai was thoughtful, “What makes you so sure of this? Or that the deep ones could be any form of threat to make this enemy retreat?”

  “No one could defeat you on land or in water,” Nemo said. “Attack before you are attacked. Man did not have the luxury to prepare. But if they had, they still might not have been able to destroy these creatures. Their technology is like nothing I have seen except…here.”

  Nemo’s eyes scanned the impossible cavern. Trees, oxygen, plant-life grew in this miracle place, but he knew it was more about technology with the sea gods, rather than magic.

  Nemo waited for the king of the deep ones to speak: Ar’Teh Rai stood.

  He placed a webbed hand on Nemo’s shoulder.

  “Often you have brought us delights, luxuries in food and human form for us to indulge in. In the old days we would seduce our victims, some willing, others not, making our hybrids, knowing that on birth they would be thrown back into the sea for us to take to our world. As man has evolved, such things had become less attractive, less easy for us to do. The rise of Christianity made demons of gods. It has been some time since we ventured on land.”

  “Now that humankind has met a demon from the stars, they will be more susceptible to the revision of old religions. Especially when a real god, like yourself, comes to their rescue.” Nemo said.

  “You are wise. And you offer me more in this than the sacrifices we have already accepted. Therefore, I cannot refuse your request. We will emerge from the deep once more and take the land back.”

  The Nautilus waited just off shore, but still submerged from the eyes of the alien machines while the deep ones, a warrior race from the sea, climbed up from the water and swarmed in their thousands onto London’s dockland.

  Even on land the creatures were agile. One of the creatures leaped into the air, climbing onto the bulbous body of a heat ray machine. It tore at the metal with clawed webbed hands, ripping open the alien’s outer shell. Oxygen poured inside, the machine tottered, but the alien didn’t fall; instead one of its appendages caught hold of the sea warrior from the top of its machine and then, pierced him with the sharp long needle.

  Blue blood came from the creature, not red, but the alien didn’t care as it tossed the lifeless warrior aside and injected itself with the blood.

  The machine swayed as the alien fed. It took another step, reaching out for one of the warriors that now swarmed around its tripod legs. But the deep ones toppled the being, sending it crashing down hard. The metal casing that covered its body cracked open like an egg. The creature oozed from it. Now unprotected, it began to shrivel under the intense rays of the sun. Oxygen pressed against its slimy bulk.

  Then the creature bloated and burst: it was an extreme case of the bends.

  Several machines appeared on the horizon. They poured towards the docklands as more of the deep ones, including some of their hybrid offspring, continued their assault. Warriors fell and were fed on by the Martians, but each time, the tripod beasts became unsteady and were toppled soon after. It wasn’t certain whether the blood of the old sea gods, or the exposure to Earth’s atmosphere, was the cause of the combustion, but in each case this is how the alien monsters died.

  The remaining machines fell back when it became evident that they could not defeat the sea creatures. Even their powerful heat rays, which poured devastation on the landscape, could not boil the ice-cold blood of the ancients.

  The sea gods poured inland after them, they worked together like soldier ants, using strength and body mass to swarm the final remaining machines.

  The battle went on for days, many of the deep ones’ warriors died, but their sacrifice was crucial to the survival of the rest.

  When England was free, and the remaining population came out of their hovel hiding places, the Sea Gods took any offered sacrifices. Many women came to them willingly, and the rewards for their efforts were reaped over and over again as the warriors lay with them.

  Then, with instruction on how to deal with hybrid offspring from their unions, the warriors returned t
o the sea.

  Nemo followed and watched as France was taken back, and then as the creatures freed Europe.

  It took months to push the enemy back, but as the Nautilus and the deep ones reached the Americas, the aliens were dying: poisoned as they were by the taking of blood from animal, human and sea god alike.

  The ancient gods, however, enjoyed the final bloodletting as they swept the land, dipping in and out of sea as they went. The scourge of alien invaders fell beneath their might. The alien machines, and Martian bodies, were trampled under webbed feet.

  Nemo stood on the deck of the Nautilus as Ar’Teh Rai pulled himself up from the sea. He bowed to the God as he reached the deck.

  “Such is not necessary between us,” Ar’Teh Rai said.

  The deep ones had saved the planet, and the old religion was now re-established—humanity, as Nemo had predicted, saw the sea creatures as their liberators and gods. Who, unlike the Christian god, was a tangible and approachable benefactor. So what if some of their women were expected to birth hybrids? To pair with a god was a privilege not a sacrifice, and all were more than willing to take on the mantle.

  “So you will return to Y’ha-nthlei?” Nemo asked.

  “In time: when enough young hybrids have been collected. They will go a long way to replenishing our warriors. But for now we are enjoying the land above.”

  Nemo nodded. He understood worship; he had seen it briefly in the eyes of André. But he pushed down his remorse at giving the young man to the deep ones. There had been no choice: sacrifices of all kinds must be made to maintain the equilibrium of the world above and below.

  Ar’Teh Rai said his goodbyes and dived from the deck of the Nautilus back into the sea, but Nemo knew the ancient god was making his way back to land. Maybe another sacrifice waited for him, spread eagerly on the sand?

  Nemo wondered though, if there would ever be enough hybrids to satisfy the deep ones now, and had he brought in one invader to depose another?

  It didn’t matter in the end he supposed, after all, mankind had renewed faith that gave them purpose, and if Ar’Teh Rai and the warriors from the deep bred enough—and those hybrids bred again with the remaining humans—how much of humanity would be left to worry about?

  Down on the bridge, Nemo ordered his men to dive. He couldn’t wait to leave the battlefield behind and return to the ocean. He couldn’t wait to find once more his peace of mind. But as the Nautilus submerged he couldn’t help wondering if he had kept, or failed to keep, his promise to the Queen. Were the oceans safe?

  Get Off Your Knees,I’m Not Your God…

  Edward Morris

  FOR EVERY THING, THERE IS A PLACE. A TIME. A TIME TO SWING IN the branches and play, and be glad. And a time to rend. To uproot that tree from the ground and make a club of it, and test its swing.

  A time to smear my face and chest with the blood of my kills, to hide the shine of sweat and mask my stink from the larger predators. To sleep upside-down in trees, like the great fruit bats who come when it is warm and eat all the worst of the bugs.

  A time to go out and execute natural law. To do what must be done. To hunt. This is good. The way. Mine.

  But there is peace, too, when the nights get long and late, and this big island talks and talks and talks. Like Mama would, but in an older tongue I can still understand when it’s just us awake. Just me and this island.

  This island talks deep. Deeper than the slow fingers of the tide that

  washes up baby turtles and driftwood and stranger things. Deeper than the chatterings of the wriggling two-legged rats that washed up and nested on my beach some other time ago, even when they pound their hide drums and sing.

  Deeper than the cries of the lizards, the serpents, the wing’d and nighted things who sweep down at me sometimes, like great troublesome mosquitoes which I must pause and snap in half.

  This island speaks. Just as I speak. That clearly. The island and the forest do, the wind in the trees, right there for anyone to hear.

  In the tongues of the ancestors of my ancestors, they sing to me, and teach me everything I need to be. Everything that makes it make sense, when I listen and hear, and let my terror run off and get itself good and lost out there in that thick, dank fog.

  “You are the last of us,” old Mama croaked in my ear, time and again, while she was here. “Once, my dear baby boy, our temples were mighty. Taller than even you could climb, all up and down the long, long coast that used to be…there…” A withered, pointing claw, gesturing somewhere out in the sea. Way past the beach.

  “The sea took most of our land. Our birthright. In times before my mother’s grandmother’s time. When Doom came to us…”

  Now only this island remains, and atop it, the Hill of the Skull, our people’s necropolis I knew as cradle and hunting ground since Mama took me off the teat.

  Mama. Where did you go, that last night, Mama? You were the last to go out in the woods. I was too young to understand. So young I tried to follow. To go and find you, or any of the others, when you all fled.

  I looked inland. I looked underground. I climbed everything. I dug everywhere.

  And I then cried, and tore at my own flesh. Because I was still alone. Alone. None of it was like playing hide-and-seek when I was a youngling. None among them wanted to be found.

  I would always be hidden, now. And always seek. That puzzle is too much for me, and I gave up on it long ago.

  I remain in the temple, only I, just me. As votary. As acolyte. As keeper.

  As Kong.

  I remain, like this island remains. I squint and peer down the foggy stone canyons, into the jungle that grows thicker each season, over what were once our streets, our marketplace, our homes.

  Our home. The jungle eats more of it every warm season, hides more of it and makes more fog that blows up from the lowlands, into the hills and the caves, and makes more room for all manner of new monsters to bite.

  They can try.

  Mother told me many old words, and what they used to mean. “Little Kong, your name in the old tongue means ‘priest.’ ‘Guardian.’ You are guardian of these lands, where we live. Where we live is on a big rock in the sea, a big piece of ground sticking out of the water. It’s all one big rock, you see, but the water breaks it up into little rocks that stick out. The biggest rock of all is the whole ball of it, so big that it contains even the water.”

  I looked out and up, at the stars outside the mouth of our cave.

  “Ohhhh...”

  Mama saw that I comprehended. “Yes. Yes, my boy, yes. That is the way of it. There are bigger pieces, further out from us. We used to be able to walk to them. Perhaps one day you can make a raft.”

  “Mama, what’s the name for where we live?”

  A deep breath, and she nearly sang the word. “It is called Ghahnathoa. After him who spared it from the sea.”

  “Who was he, Mama? Who was he? What did he do?”

  Outside and down, in the lowlands and fog, some creature cried out, and I nearly hit my head on the cave roof when I startled. Mama smiled, patting the hurt-place while stealthily removing some insect from behind my ear.

  “Ghahnathoa was a god, baby.” Munch, munch. “A true Kong. He bested His father Ktulu-ili-mo’ku in a fair fight when Ktulu-ili-mo’ku wanted to destroy everything that was alive.”

  I remember leaning forward, chin on my fist. Listening. I remember the knuckles of that fist being white.

  “Of all our lands, all our birthright, only this island was not sunken into the sea. Only this temple. Only these few of our kind…”

  I love you, Mama, wherever you went, but I don’t want to serve a big scary god like that. I’ve never seen Him, or a flood, either. All that was before my time. I serve no god but me.

  And I don’t want to be a god like that to the new creatures, either! I try to tell them. They only understand some of my words. And, insult beyond sacrilege beyond mockery, they have barred our family tomb with a heavy wooden gate it takes
dozens of them to even close!

  Still, the tombs make me uneasy. The five-pointed handprints within the chain designs carven across the tops of each and every retaining wall. The odd star-shaped glyph above the temple gates, ornately wound with squiggles and loops which accentuate the shadows within its circle.

  I hate looking at those stones. Because it makes me think. And what I think, the island wind often affirms on my long nights, when there is timeless Time.

  I think that maybe my forebears called Ghahanathoa’s papa out of the sea. That maybe some of them went mad, and took after their own kind, and made blood sacrifice. And I think that maybe, in so doing, they made Ktulu-ili-mo’ku…madder.

  And I think it wasn’t just them. In every tomb, builder handprints in the mortar come and go, ones which are utterly unlike mine, but utterly like the ones etched across the top borders of every stone wall!

  This second kind of handprints are webbed, like the feet of the gull and the booby and the dodo, but veined like a leaf. Like a plant. A plant with hands.

  What on any rock would a plant with hands whisper in someone’s ear, as they built? What kind of madness, what kind of monsters, used to den here? What did my people do?

  But they’re not here now. No plant-monsters, up in my warm cave. No gods. Nothing that bites. Just me.

  When the darkness gets too quiet, I pray to the wind. The wind answers, from the canopy, where the huge purple butterflies sip at those same flowers I like, the ones which grow at my eye level. The flowers are sweet to eat, and they make me blissfully sleepy.

  In their sleep, I dream lands raised from the edge of some other sea, awash in vast bright skeins of light, and a hum no wind could make. That pretty country could only be Ghahanathoa, restored elsewhere, shining on a hill.

  If there were more of me, we could beat the jungle back, and the infestation that washed up on our shores to dig up and inhabit our tombs, and defecate in our nest.