Myths of Origin Four Short Novels - By Catherynne M. Valente Page 0,165

of wildcat piled red and dripping, the pearlescent feet pickled in so many glass jars.

The Beast is blessedly silent, he has no hooting language, no raucous claim. And if I have any fealty left in me, it is owed to the gilt-lined innards of the untouchable leviathan.

I will wait, and I will walk in the ash-strung wood.

And in the distance, there will be, before the end, a green flash in the mere.

IV THE HERMIT

Galahad

Then took he himself the Holy Vessel and came to Galahad; and he kneeled down, and there he received his Saviour.

—Sir Thomas Malory

Le Morte d’Arthur

Last night I was a lily, and very purple. I sat on the water with my toes in the silt, and my petals curled darkly up at the juniper forest. Thick violet lips reflecting the light of flickering fish deep in the lake, surfacing to nibble at my lily-flesh. But I do not taste like a dragonfly, and they never eat me entire.

A flower is very still, still in a way I can’t imitate in the suntime. I grow legs and fingers and breasts, and lost my purpleness. I begin to notice imperfections—my coffee cup is chipped, I haven’t made my bed in days, I stumble under the almost-raining sky like a doomed gazelle. And oh, the ocean here is not so wide or deep as I had hoped. It does not swallow me, or demand, or promise like the ocean I remember. When I am a lily I am not disappointed, the lake moves through me and I can let it.

You understand, of course. You know the nature of lakes. Water passes over you in sunlight and moonlight and grasslight and fishlight and you love it for its passage. I envy you your capacity for silence, and waiting. Do you know the Question already? Or does it wait in your mind like a hibernating bear, ready at the precise aural combination to stretch its furry legs and roar out its relief? Funny how “question” contains the word “quest” inside it, as though any small question asked is a journey through briars. You want me to push towards you, to believe in you, to want you and strive to achieve you. To be bent upon your purpose and wear white robes, passing though trees like a fiery-eyed wraith, filled with your flame. To encircle the globe with desire for you.

But a lake is a deep-within place, within a forest, or mountains. And I am by the Sea, an edge-place, the end of the world. And somehow, because it is beautiful, and sparkling, and very expensive to stand on the seashelless sand, I feel I should not be so disappointed, that I am not allowed to be. But still, I will not come to you, will not succumb to the destiny you have written for me. This is not a quest, but a battle, and my will is as strong as yours.

Let me tell you a little story. You know it already, of course, but here in Southern California, it floats between the boardwalk shops like half a memory. You see, on the voyage home from windy Troy there was a place called the Island of the Lotus Eaters. It was on the coast of Africa (which in the Western Mind is somehow all Sahara, all sand and desert with an occasional cheetah or jackal). But the flower-eaters island wasn’t like that. It was full of green, and lakes and rivers, and beautiful, bulbous blue flowers that grew everywhere like dandelions. They covered the rocks like foam, and rippled like laughter at the base of the swaying trees. Pale, child’s eye blue floated over the island, and the petals tasted sweet, like spun sugar, their fuzzy texture melting on the tongue. And the men ate the flowers, and they were always happy, and serene, and they could let the water pass through them. Through the flowers shining and dancing, through the skein of cerulean and silver-white, they thought their land was the best and the most wonderful, and no one wanted to leave. Their tall ships against the bleeding sunset seemed ugly, monstrous skeletons, which had once seemed so graceful and sleek. Happiness forever seemed to hang like a jeweled necklace in the air, the promise of an eternity without intellectualized discontented winters.

And you know, the people here remind me of that a little. There is a thought that inhabits many of us, not quite generated of our own brains, that this is the