Myths of Origin Four Short Novels - By Catherynne M. Valente Page 0,106

Room of Eight Footsteps, to the tortoise-floor now grey and slick with tears and blood and seed, and into this he threw her, and fell upon her, and though she made no sound beneath him, he whispered obscenities into the hollow of her throat as he filled her this time with a son, a son she could already feel flaring red and orange within her, and he too could feel the heat of it pouring from her even before he pulled himself off of her body.

He was gorging again when she bore it, and there was sand between his teeth, and the ruined diamond slush of the creatures dribbling from his chin. He would not have gone to see the new child at all—the feast was waiting, after all—except that something bright and hot swirled up from the house of the pillar, and he turned his head to the top of the bluffs, where first of all things in the world that burned, the little house vomited smoke black as Izanami’s hair into the clear sky.

“Kagu-tsuchi!” came a howl from the blaze.

He ran up the sliding sands, half-curious at the beauty of the strange gold thing eating his house.

“Kagu-tsuchi!” came the howl like a tree-trunk tearing in two.

Izanagi stepped through the shattered door, which had once been carved so prettily, as if to welcome them, and saw the only woman yet in the world standing on the tortoise-floor, her body wrapped up in red, in orange, in blue and white. Her flesh bubbled on her bones, and her once-swelling belly sagged as if it meant to fall from her; her thighs were burnt black and crisp, and the smell of the meat of her filled the hall. The hot, ropy light pulled back her lips from her teeth, her lids from her eyes, and what stared at him was a skull, save that her hair still streamed back from it, as though it had all along been conspirator to the flames.

In her hands she held a flashing, flaring thing, its limbs splayed out and full of the boiling scarlet stuff, tongues of it licking around his chubby infant’s arms, his mouth full of it, his eyes too bright, too bright, burning already in its head.

“Kagu-tsuchi!” she snarled, thrusting the inferno-child at Izanagi. “This is Kagu-tsuchi, this is Fire, it is born to us, it is your longed-for son, from your pure and perfect words! Take him, take him and may he burn you out from the inside, may he hollow you like a gourd, as he has done to me.”

All around them, the house buckled and creaked, the fire of Kagu-tsuchi lapping hungrily at its mother’s breast, at his mother’s feet, at anything that would burn. Happily he nursed at the floor and rafters, at the ruined words carved on the holy wall. Izanagi held out his hand to his wife.

“Come out of this place,” he begged.

Izanami threw back her head, burned clean of flesh, and her voice sent the roof into conflagration. Her body opened as if on a hinge, and out of her blazing bones tore a child of green and forked branches, her mouth a cluster of bleeding berries, and this was Hani-yama-hime, who was the growing earth, and then a splash of water which did nothing to dampen the orange flames still lapping at the belly of Izanami, and a sopping, blue-skinned daughter descended from her mother: Midzu-ha-no-me, who was well-water and puddles and lakes, and her fingers dripped with scum and algae. They rolled on the smoking floor, and Midzu gurgled as she slapped out lazy sparks with her wet and plump hands.

Izanami held her son to her tightly, and flames poured from her blackened womb, from her shriveled breasts, it leapt out of her mouth, and Kagu-tsuchi laughed, patting his mother’s cheek with a flaming hand.

As she died, first of all women in the world to die, she thrust her son into Izanagi’s arms, and her knees buckled into ash beneath her, and her body blackened the green-tiled floor.

Izanagi ran from the holocaust-house, his arms full of children as of apples, and Kagu-tsuchi giggled in his arms. Midzu-ha-no-me started patting at her brother, dowsing his flames in places, while he struck back at her, trying to set her afire. Hani-yama kept her wooden arms far away from both of them, shuddering. Izanagi dowsed his son in the churning sea, and the flames beneath the baby’s skin banked to glowing embers, warm and cheerful. Midzu