Myths of Origin Four Short Novels - By Catherynne M. Valente Page 0,134

my ribbon flutters in the sage-edged wind, in the whiskey-and-orange-tongued air, and I will gather him into my arms as my brother might have, and I will carry him on my shoulders the way Ector, our father, once did, and I will try to be happy at the weight of this sun-shot avatar, this twin of the brother-that-was. Perhaps the thing which carries him will have something of the Kay-that-was ricocheting between ether-capsules and parchment-ribbons.

Perhaps that awful sword smoothly excised the boys we were, placed them up on a shelf somewhere, locked into a cupboard. These shoulder-plates and greaves hold only out of habit the shapes of men long dead.

The character of the ocean is variable as a child’s—it is violet now, deeper than dye, and the salt is crusting in the corners of my mouth. All around me the heat of my plating causes the sea to recede, boil off. Trickles seethe in—exploratory, hesitant—and hiss into steam when they touch me. It is not quite enough to breathe, but I walk in a warm haze, and bubbles, not of breath but of heat, unbearable heat, waft up to the dark surface.

Midnight, Sixth Day

He sits in the center of the ocean, a silver boy-pin stuck in the floor—the currents move around him like Saturn’s rings. Cuttlefish weave through his hair. He opens his mouth and roe wriggle out, floating up like red bubbles.

I open my sixth capsule and stale air fills me up like a sickly bellows.

What is that? His voice ripples the water, even my coat of steam.

It is how I can come to you, boy, down here in the dark. I would lend one, but you do not seem troubled by the water.

He shrugs. A child learns to love its first milk, mother or ocean. I drink, I breathe. I have been down here a long time. No one came for me.

I have come for you. Because you look like my brother, not for yourself alone. Because in the concave mirror of his skull he looks and sees you, and wishes that you were not alone as he was alone as he is alone now.

Do you like it here? It is very blue, and the salmon are talkative.

He is a strange boy—but all boys are strange. His feet are covered in infant coral, soft and pocked. It breaks and wafts up as I pull him free, little pink fingers clutching at the thin strands of silver starlight that penetrate—how I cannot imagine—this far. He does not protest; boys this age are used to being carried to and fro and never asked.

Walk quickly, metal man, the boar is only out looking for dolphins to eat. He does not need capsules, either.

Metal man. How a knight must look to a child, plated over with silver and iron and horned helmets, leviathan-sharp. We must look like walking knives. My strides turn the ocean to steam around us, slushing through the sea-sand of the floor, the anemone and kelp-roots. He clings to the nub-antlers on my helmet, the one my brother had made in the shape of a faun’s head, as if to acknowledge our common source in bucolic forests. His little legs dangle over my shoulders.

Soon I can feel him sleeping heavily, and I trudge like St. Christopher through the sweet water, bearing the sweat-scalped innocent on my back. His weight is not so much, and he smells like a son, he smells like a brother, he smells like a tired child who has had too much excitement on Christmas night and needs an early bed.

The ribbon in my back is almost shredded. It chews itself as the quest goes on, obliterating unnecessary commands, leaving the core of what I must do. All that is left:

Retrieve. Return.

I am a worker. The factory of chivalry and quests extends ever west, and we go into it in a long, wending line, heads bent, lunches at our sides, lurching forward, lifting stones to find whatever precious object comprises the day’s labor. It is no different than the manufacture of linen or gears.

My shift is almost done.

The water is lightening already. Far, far above, I can see the paddling feet of seabirds fishing, and the bottoms of empty boats gliding by.

Dawn, Seventh Day

Arthur came to me with the sword, and he had not even cleaned the moss from it. He did not know what to do. I can say that I was not even tempted to take it for myself, but I cannot tell if