Myths of Origin Four Short Novels - By Catherynne M. Valente Page 0,128

beside her in the kingdom of the dead, and when I have shed this flesh I will come back for you.”

She crumbled into my lap; her legs tangled in the jaws of the snakehead, and shuddered. “You are neither old nor young, handsome nor ugly; you are neither man nor god, you are neither alive nor dead, and after all this, after all this, I will be the only one of us taken to wife.”

I patted her head comfortingly. “It will not be so bad, my love, my love—when I am myself again I will turn you into a beautiful jeweled comb, so that you can come into the land of the dead while you yet live, as my father brought his comb. And I will place you in my headdress, and your teeth will lie close to my scalp, always, so that I know you are there, and that you love me. And every now and then, a jewel will fall from its setting, and those jewels will be our children, and they will grow up to be wonders: your rubies will be samurai and your sapphires will be court poets, your emeralds will be concubines and your diamonds will be magicians, and your silver will be empresses, and your gold will be emperors. They will fall like colored rain onto the radiant flesh of Izanami, and everyone will marvel at the glittering children of Kushinada!”

The mother of all emperors bent double on the wet earth, clutched her belly and opened her mouth to scream, but nothing came, nothing came but spittle and strangled gasps, and then she began that tiresome rocking, rocking and crooning.

I left her there, kissed her forehead like a dutiful husband, and told her I would return. I walked away from the manifold fence with a straight back and a cool brow—I looked back only once to see her with two of the massive, broken heads barely contained within her skinny arms, kissing their gory skin and sobbing.

The guttering sparks of the sun lay over Hiroshima far below, and I thought—only for a moment—that, as if I had already walked there, already eaten and drunk and slept and wakened there, I could see my footprints flaming over the city, burning white and sere, like an afterimage, and a hot wind followed after them.

XI

YOMI

“Mother!” he called to the bloody-flowered acacia.

“Mother!” he called to the top-knots of snow.

“Mother!” he called to the stones from the barrels of earth.

And it was the stones that answered.

“Here,” they murmured in their grinding, “here.”

Susanoo-no-Mikoto pushed stone aside from stone, slate from shale.

“Here,” they sighed, and moved from their loam, “here.”

He clawed at the mud, tearing thick furrows in the ground.

“Mother!” he wheezed, falling onto his face, beating his fists against the soil.

And in the long shadows of the night whose shape the sun cannot guess, the black earth closed her arms over her son.

UNDER

IN THE

MERE

Then quickly rose Sir Bedivere, and ran,

And, leaping down the ridges lightly, plunged

Among the bulrush-beds, and clutched the sword,

And strongly wheeled and threw it. The great brand

Made lightnings in the splendour of the moon,

And flashing round and round, and whirled in an arch,

Shot like a streamer of the northern morn,

Seen where the moving isles of winter shock

By night, with noises of the northern sea.

So flashed and fell the brand Excalibur:

But ere he dipped the surface, rose an arm

Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful,

And caught him by the hilt, and brandished him

Three times, and drew him under in the mere.

—Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Idylls of the King

XVII THE STAR

The Lady of the Lake

So they rode till they came to a lake, which was a fair water and broad, and in the midst of the lake Arthur was aware of an arm clothed in white samite, that held a fair sword in that hand. With that they saw a damosel floating upon the lake. What damosel is that? said Arthur. That is the Lady of the Lake, said Merlin; and within that lake is a rock, and therein is as fair a place as any on earth, and richly beseen; and this damosel will come to you anon, and then speak ye fair to her that she will give you a sword.

—Sir Thomas Malory

Le Morte d’Arthur

What damosel is this? What damosel is this? Perhaps I am nothing but a white arm. Perhaps the body which is me diffuses at the water’s surface into nothing but light, light and wetness and blue. Maybe I am nothing but samite, pregnant with silver, and