Myths of Origin Four Short Novels - By Catherynne M. Valente Page 0,157

oft-grafted that Pellam himself seemed surprised had not come out half-dove.

Once the fighting broke out (I suppose you will say that was my fault, brother, that I need not take every challenge thrown up at me by flea-infested second and third sons, but I am what I am) Pellam cracked my sword against one of the perfectly appointed marble steps, and I ran to find another—I only meant to find another sword, you understand. How was I to know he had that ghastly spear hidden away? If it was very important, he would have displayed it in the hall and lectured about it for at least an hour before we were allowed to touch his precious brandy.

There was no crack of thunder when I took it from the altar, no blinding flash of folly or revelation—not even when I buried it in Pellam’s femoral artery—I use the precise term in his honor—was there any clap of cielo furioso.

Until the house came down.

But by then I had left the spear in Pellam, jutting up awkwardly like an inopportune erection; I didn’t connect the wobbling red lance with the sudden seizure of the architecture. Only after I was spirited out from under the Virgin Mary did I understand—the fields outside his house were a gray ruin, the migrants picking at shriveled berries that crumbled to ash at a touch. The orange trees had petrified, the corn-rows calcified, the apple orchards had dropped all their fruit in one gasp, and the wind was snatching up the stench of rot. The irrigation canals had iced over, though there was no cold. They sat sullen and blue-banked, glowering at the hapless workers with their bushels of clay and dust.

Was it his protocols and monotonous ritual that kept the land pushing plenty up through its crown? Or the spear in its proper place? You know I have never gotten a handle on propriety. If I had, I would have at least asked your name before charging—but I was tired, I wanted it over and done, I hoped there was a pretty maid in the tower to smile shyly and put a cool cloth on my head.

This island does not have the decency to blight at the touch of our blood. It keeps its swampy councils, and the cranes suck eels from the streams without taking notice of the tragedy nearby. You would think, would you not, my brother, that the noise of such irony as this would be deafening?

Balan

Perhaps it is the fault of our names. Balin, Balan, it hardly makes a difference, does it? Did no one ask where I had gone all those years, while you were assisting suicides and claiming more swords than you deserved? Did no one wonder what had happened to the older twin, the one who didn’t run at the other children like a rabid mountain goat, cracking horn against horn? While you were sidling up to Arthur and making battlefield eyes at his knights, did no lady with wild violets in her hair ask if you hadn’t once had a brother, and what had become of him?

What was the Dolorous Stroke? When have you made a stroke which was not?

Is she watching us, can you see? My girl? Are there eyes in that tower, feline and yellow—yellow I once thought of as gold, as lion’s pelt, as burnished bedposts. Does her red sleeve fall over the parapet—dare I hope that she is crying? I had my quest, finally, and it ended in her, her yellow eyes moving over me, appraising, as the blood of her last knight still steamed on my chest—and I can still smell the metallic tang of that blood as she pulled me down onto her, as it smeared onto her breasts, her lips, as it pooled in her navel—Balin, the smell of it, when I loved her that first day!

Can red have a smell? It must, it must—it must smell of her breath and her hungry mouth when she licked the blood from my fingers.

I cannot turn to look, you must do it for me—my legs have gone numb. If she is there, if her hair is falling over the tower stones, then she loved me and it was not that I was simply next. If she is there then she liked the taste of the beans I planted in the black soil—generations of duels will fertilize the land—she liked the sound of my children’s hearts beating against hers, she liked my heavy shape sleeping