Myths of Origin Four Short Novels - By Catherynne M. Valente Page 0,29

calling it, beckoning with my paws. I snagged something on my fingers on the backswing, slipping out of the Door’s grasp, nearly losing my tail as it clanged angrily shut. I fled back into the Temple, clutching my prize, accosted by the cacophony of thousands of Doors slamming in fury and gnashing their hinges. Hoo!

What I held against my heaving chest was a gigantic sturgeon, swollen with silver scales and squirming in my grip. Her mouth gaped helplessly and its pupilless (so like yours, my own!) eyes blinked their transparent lids in fear. I did not lose a moment, but slit her Gautama-belly with my teeth and plunged my paws into the writhing black mass of salted caviar, searching, searching, searching.

With the last gulping heave of the great Fish’s gills, I seized and pulled from her corpse the body of my name, all entangled with translucent entrails and strips of silver skin, scarlet and flowing moonstone, clinging to the shredded womb of dark eggs and golden flesh. It was furious, and began to bite at me with the sharp branches of letters. I knew I had little time and gripped the vicious thing in both paws, shoving it down my triumphant throat, the sweet tang of starfruit and water-moccasins. Hoo! It was mine, I held it within me.

After this, I began to understand things, as the Snail could not, since I alone ate with intent. I was wholly Other. I had Devoured a Center and it arranged my organs into ascension, made clear the Paths of the Labyrinth, and I ceased to fear it. I ceased to be myself, and yet I was myself, whole, and no other.

At this the Monkey began a slow grin that split his face, terrible and feline, punctuated by his long yellow teeth. He reached into his belly, pulling aside the golden fur like theater curtains, the skin and muscle Wall parting like an ocean, and behind it the dark and secret moon-shape of the Stone. He held open his body so that I could see, pushing against the oily flesh of his stomach like some misshapen fetus, the outline of his name in a savage jungle-calligraphy, still trying to escape the calm pool of his gastric perambulation.

EZEKIEL.

19

“I could never do that, Ezekiel,” I murmured as he closed the sheath of his skin.

“I know,” he said, closing himself as though buttoning a suit. “You are not strong enough. There are ways within ways. You follow the way of the mad. It is different.” He shook his head at me. “But I am here, hereandnow, I will not leave you.” The Road had slushed almost entirely to deep, rich black mud, and we were slogging through it one sucking footprint at a time. The Monkey’s fur was streaked in dirt like war paint, my arms like ruby stalactites circled in bracelets of earth.

“Why are we walking? The Labyrinth will change around us, the Door will swallow us. Why do we not trust in it? I want to lay down, I want to Stop. It will carry us to her, or it will not. I don’t care.”

“We must keep up appearances, Darlingred. We cannot stop. Forward motion, endless if, but still we must.”

“I don’t care.” I stared ahead, unblinking, scarlet eyes drinking in the wide marshes and waving reeds. “Once I was the Marsh King’s daughter, and my wings were brown. I sipped at tadpoles with a delicate beak, scimitar-curved, and when I took tea with my father, I crooked my little finger like a scythe. I was a blade of flesh and nail, I was murky and obscene as the delta water.” Dew formed in blood-droplets on my eyelashes.

“You are slipping away from me,” he warned in a whisper. “No, I know it did not happen that way. But was there a timebefore, Ezekiel? Was there? Was I a child once, did I make mud-pies and leap two-footed into inkwells? Was there a yellow-clouded summer once when I skinned my knee, and felt the prickle of a father’s beard on my cheek as he dried my tears? Did I love a boy once, with hazel eyes and hair like wheat in the sun? Was I a woman once and not this? Did these breasts like swollen apples ever feed a daughter or a son? I could not say, I could not say, there has never been anything but this, but oh, Ezekiel, what if it has not been foralways?”

I was crying, long, stringy hot wax-tears, coloring