Myths of Origin Four Short Novels - By Catherynne M. Valente Page 0,27

of camel-hair remains. We are moving, expecting to make time against the morphing Path, expecting impossible things and racing against the night which will bring only progress towards mania and fire-vertigo. I brush a long sheaf of burgundy hair from my face, and stare at the Road, in this region fashioned of polished cedar.

“I see wheels in the sky and my own body cracking like a tree’s trunk. And strange whisperings tunnel through me like earthworms.”

The Monkey scrambled up onto my shoulder and stroked my cheek with great concern.

“I am so sorry, beautiful, pitiful girlcreature,” his voice was warm and kind. “It is so hard for you.” Garnet tears sprung to my Grecian eyes, spilling like paint.

“I am afraid that I am not myself any longer. Even in the day I stare out of my body, I do not inhabit it. And I can hear the Door following us, shuffling and sliding.”

“Yes,” the Monkey sighed, “I was hoping you had not noticed. She told the truth: there is a Door, perhaps a few hours behind us. It is very stealthy and patient. But I am more clever. I snuck up on it, to see what sort it was.” I waited, while he hopped from one foot to the other in agitation. “Oh, my dear, it is a great, black Door, oval and light-eating, with a bull’s head knocker. It will not come before your next heartblink, but it will come.” He patted my hair and fussed with his tail, softly murmuring, “We have time, little one, we have time. Hoo.”

“I cannot think, Monkey. Tell me a story, or a riddle, or lecture me. But fill up my head, I am weary, I am growing old.” He paused, seeming to ponder some great puzzle.

“I will tell you the storyriddle I think you need. I will tell you how I Devoured my name. Long was the time I lived young within the pretty stone arms of my Temple, and I was alone. I enjoyed alone, it enjoyed me. I swung from the thick red-berry vines, and felt their length firm and sure in my golden hands. I danced on the altar, I sang the songs of my birth-tree and my mother’s strong fur in the choir, echoing all through the dome as though my brothers and sisters were all around me in the forest. Hoo! I was content. I did not think about the Center, I did not care.”

“Once I was like that, too,” I whispered sadly.

“We all are. And then there is a day when we are broken into, like a rich house, and rifled through. Everafter we look sidelong over alabaster shoulders and know that we will never be so pure again. Mine was a pleasant spring morning, the rain fell like a grey sweater unraveling, and I played in the yarn-drops as I was used. I was not myself then, just as you are not yourself, but empty and happy. But that day, and not another though it matters not which, a Snail crawled into my Temple to escape the wet. He was very beautiful, with a great, grey double-spiraled shell like mother-of-pearl, sparkling even in the dim stormlight. His body was like living oil, goldensilver, rustling and slippery, large eye-stalks waving gracefully, visiondancing.

I hooed in a more or less friendly manner, but he ignored me, moving within his ponderous shell towards the thickest and most delicious of my vines, slowly breakfasting on a fat leaf. I marched up to him and rapped imperiously on that iridescent shell, whereupon his oilskin rippled slightly and eye-stalks swiveled vaguely in my direction.

“Leathe me alone, thwiftfurry thing,” the Snail yawned. “Of course, my Darlingred, I was indignant, began to hop mightily and grow purple-faced in a most unbecoming fashion. I insisted variously that he ought to be more respectful than to gobble up my vines without a word, that he ought to vacate the premises immediately, that he ought to know he was eating in my Temple. Again, my only answer was the bored motion of glistening eye-stalks.”

“Lithen, mate. I needn’t take orders from thome thilly primate who hathn’t got a name.”

“I don’t need one, you lisping mollusk. My mother knows my smell well enough, and the Labyrinth has no use for names. Hoo! Now run along.”

He munched thoughtfully on one of my red fruits. “Doethn’t it though? If you hathn’t got a name, you aren’t much of anything. Thith Temple can’t be yourth, you hathn’t got thome thort of deed, and