Myths of Origin Four Short Novels - By Catherynne M. Valente Page 0,173

and flailed in the wake of it, trying to touch the rim of my mother, somewhere in his desert geography—but she was not there. I was not there. We did not exist for him; we were not the saguaro and the yucca. This is what I understood in his marrow—I was encased in a vial of water, and he wanted only sand.

And now I seek the waters of you, because no black-eyed queen ever looked at me with fire cutting her fingers.

In the cell of him, floating over my mother and the painted desert, I tasted the apple-bile of his sorrow, and forgave that cairn of murdered words. Perhaps I would not have survived that gaze.

He should have known better than to seek you in the wild—a cup is a thing of the city, it is civilized, it sits at a hundred thousand tables and travels from wood to mouth. A cup is only needed when joined hands at the river have failed, when an adobe hut is raised up, and a stone oven shaped into the wall, and dried flowers thrown into a pot. He sought the Lady, I seek the King.

Perhaps there is no difference, perhaps the King wears a gown of river-white, and the Lady binds her breasts under an ermine robe.

Last night I was Lancelot, and I fathered myself on a woman I hated, and I begged forgiveness from a lake of night.

So this is the end.

I walked with heavy feet to the end of the pier last night, and looked into the sea which is the rim of the western world, and wondered when I accepted that this was inescapable. I still hate that you did not think me strong or clever enough to turn from this road. (And of course I was not.) But there on the pier was a little fisherman’s hut, white paint curled back by sea wind, and it glowed softly in porcelainlight.

I stood outside for a long time, and the door seemed to grow to enormity, to much for me to dare. I felt and still feel that this is all too big for me, that I am a salamander before the throne of the King of Spears. The threshold mocked me, and whispered that I was a very clever child, the strongest and cleverest of my brothers, but I would never, never be wise, there is no forest deep enough to purify me, my madness will last and last. So in the end it was pride that drove me through the door, that I would show myself to be pure enough, just barely, to finally see you.

And there you were, not so powerful-looking, an aging man, but not infirm, the gold of your hair not quite conquered by snow. You sat in a deep leather chair, your left hand held an ancient fishing-spear, your right held a cup of living glass. Yet in the lines of your body there was a darker shape, a liquid self moving behind the lines of your skin, holding black-tipped breasts out to me with both hands, like a sacrifice.

You looked at me with laughing eyes, and I saw that sleek shape moving behind them. I wondered then if I saw you with a beard because I could only give myself over to a father, to a King, and the rest was beyond my touch—pure enough for you, but not for her. I suppose it doesn’t matter, in the end—if you are doubled, if you are twinned, I will know in a moment, when the chair is mine, and I vanish into the glass.

You could not speak, that was not the ritual, it was mine to ask the question you have desired. But you laughed because you understood, of course. You know the nature of quests. You know that this has been the question, all these words to you on the road to this temple/hut. You know that my fighting has burned this body hollow, and made it ready for this. You know that the end of the quest is silence, only the quest is the sound and dancing and galloping toward.

And so I reached out, able to do nothing else but dare this thing, and touched the rim of the cup/lake.

And the burning filled my vision.

And the sea swallowed my voice.

XVI THE TOWER

Mordred

For King Arthur lay by King Lot’s wife,

the which was Arthur’s sister, and gat on her Mordred.

—Sir Thomas Malory

Le Morte d’Arthur

The art of war, then, is governed by five constant factors,