Myths of Origin Four Short Novels - By Catherynne M. Valente Page 0,123

nothing, lower than worms, than snails—make the blood stop. Be a good girl, be the good daughter,

(be a good girl)

{be the good daughter}

put your hands on me and plug up this wet mire

—reach up, baby sister, and we will carry you—

it will ooze between your fingers like menarche but don’t fear, don’t fear

:: and she caught her belly, gasped, fell forward on her knees and saw the fish in the water, pig-bowel dribbling from its piscine lip, looking at her through the filmy green pond. It blinked in the slant-light, and she breathed quick and fast :: there is a space in me

(there is a space in us)

the space from which all this miasma wells

/the place kept still and soft for you, Kushinada/

and that space was once empty, nothing more than a hollow between muscles

—it is not so bad here—

but now, now there are seven there, and their mouths make a chain, and they

|we|

are waiting for the weld of you, and

[we are the Mouth now,]

and I think if I could turn my heads just so

*if we could knot the body just so we might see ourselves*

I might see them inside me, holding hands, and out of their heads flower the branches that shiver my bones

:: quick and fast and low, and the grass was soaked with her water and her blood; her womb-water joined the green water and flowed in and out of the rosy fish’s gills ::

there were fish at my

(our)

birth, too, so many, all silvern and clear, and they smelled, oh, they smelled like

*sorrow*

lightning, and they weighed nothing at all, nothing—

:: and she bit down on a cassia branch in agony, and her mouth was flooded with the murky taste of cinnamon ::

(we remember how she told this story,)

|how she used to give you a flake of cinnamon bark|

/to suck when you teethed/

I

{we}

had no teeth, my

[our]

eyes would not open, I

|we|

could not stand, I

*we*

was nothing but a sack sloshing with water, and only the fish would take me,

—us—

would give me

(us)

their tentacles to suckle.

:: and the tear in her grinned wide :: wide, ah, wide! :: wider than the mouth of the watchful fish, and she thought her bones would shatter as she squatted by the green water. I came out of her :: like a leech-child :: and her hands on my soft head were red as paint, and the umbilicus was knotted round my neck

—yes, she always told it like this: she tore it with her teeth—

/oh, what a fish mother caught that day, with the pole-and-line of her ruined flesh!/

:: And gasping in the flotsam of her body she looked at the rosy fish again ::

the fish carried me

[it carried us—didn’t you feel that we were in you already,

the promise of us, the taste?]

away from Onogoro; I

(we floated with you, the seeds of our plums and our weeds)

rested on their backs like the bow of the boat of heaven, island to island, and the water tasted of mother, and I, I was so alone.

*Oh, beauty, oh self of our selves!*

(You are not alone, we are none of us alone!)

I was alone then, in the dark.

[Never again, we swear it]

|we would not let you go into the dark alone|

—not without our arms ringed round you—

:: floating still next to the line. It looked at her silently, without reproach, and slowly closed the morsel of pig-gut in its mouth ::

*and the tear was so wide and so great in her*

/that mother never gave the trees another daughter/

|and told us the story of the fish and the cassia|

{while we stirred the soup}

We birth each other, over and over, Mouth to Mouth, and it is still dark, but seven clutch each other,

(seven clutch you)

and seven clutch me, and I

[we]

do not remember any longer whether I am eighth or first or last,

*there are eight, always eight*

I do not remember any longer what mother looked like, but their

—our—

cool black braids lie over

/all of us/

me like first kisses.

:: My first meal was the mash of that fish’s black eyes ::

My first meal was the slippery skin of those velvet jellyfish, and in those days we were so like each other, but they did not speak to me like my selves do now, and

{we never bled}

|but we ate|

(and we grew)

:: Please, it is cold out here, and I am alone. I taste of cinnamon, and I will lie soft on your tongue. Let me touch your skin—it flames blue and sere!—but let me touch it, let me pry open your lips. It is cold, I