Myths of Origin Four Short Novels - By Catherynne M. Valente Page 0,186

Old, dry-clawed crows hop from stone to stone, pecking at the first blocks of the cathedral, which are also the last. A wild, shag-pelted pony wanders, chewing at the tough grass. The market has gone, so too the farms and the monks and the cows. The ground refused to give up any further beans or turnips—it was hoarse and tired and coughed up its last cucumber long ago. The wells are brackish and thick with slime; a slow drip wears away the cisterns. A withered grapevine crawls along a low line of stones, hung with yellow leaves that are almost, but not yet, dust.

The base of the old tower lasts longest—rain and wind pit and streak it until it forgets all the queens it ever knew, and dreams under the new hills, which cover the ruin like grave-mounds, snaking around the valley, eating what is left of this place, modestly drawing themselves up over the bones like shrouds.

In a century, no one will remember what this place was called. In five, someone will say that it was seventy miles south and in another country besides. Someone else will say they have dug it up and wouldn’t you like to buy a bit of soil, a bit of rock, a bit of bone? Someone else will say there was never a castle here—the land is too poor to support a population.

Occasionally a shepherd will try to feed his sheep on the yellow, fibrous grass that is left. The animals bleat pitifully and will not touch it: it is so bitter. The flock moves on.

Under the blessing hills, a thousand dreaming bones shiver in their sleep.

XX JUDGEMENT

Morgan le Fay

And when they were at the water side, even fast by the bank was a little barge with many fair ladies in it, and among them all was a queen, and all they had black hoods, and all they wept and shrieked when they saw King Arthur. Now put me into the barge, said the king. And so he did softly; and there received him three queens with great mourning; and so they set them down, and in one of their laps King Arthur laid his head. And then that queen said: Ah, dear brother, why have ye tarried so long from me?

—Sir Thomas Malory

Le Morte d’Arthur

Away in the apple-groves I dreamed of you, and you seemed so still and grave—once, you and I ran laughing from our mother’s house, and hid in the forest, and told each other tales of terrible boars who would snatch us away to prisons made of pomegranate and whalebone. Even then you tried to kiss me, when the afternoons were thick and yellow, and the dust-motes swam in the air.

I blushed—I was not brave enough.

They took you from me—remember how you cried? You grabbed at my dress, my hair, clung to me, trying to stay. For your safety, they said.

I cut my hair the day they took you. I burned it in our forest. The ash smelled like us.

Why have ye tarried so long from me? Away in the mint-fields I clapped a hand against my shorn hair and learned things I will never tell you about. I did not see you again until after the crown clamped on you like a lamprey. You had married her already—and do not think I did not note her deep black eyes, so like mine.

They will say we didn’t know; they will say it was an accident. How could I not know? How could I not see how tired you had become? How could I not see your too-thick hair that still would not obey and the three little lines in your forehead—how could I not know my brother?

Do you remember how we walked together, in the forest which was not our old forest but was green enough for walking, for talking of grain and crops and how green sashes were in fashion at court that year, and I could hear the weariness in you, how it pulled at me like a hook in my throat? I stroked your head against my breast like I used to, innocent as a sister, innocent as a nun, and you kissed me again, and I was brave that time, wasn’t I? I was brave and the dust-motes floated in my hair which was not as long as it had been, and you moved against me in the shade of a old hollow oak, and your kisses became cries, and your cries became a son—

Oh,