Myths of Origin Four Short Novels - By Catherynne M. Valente Page 0,32

beyond the beforetime, before and after the name traveled through me, I was also myself. Do not interfere with them. They are, that is enough. Let it be.”

I waited for a friendly hoo, but it did not come. In the press of the desert I was cold. I turned back up to the watery shapes.

“The tooth-hand is indolent. It does not speak. He carries the Stone, but it slithers in your veins like a sidewinder. As long as he walks beside you, you are not free. He keeps you mad for purposes none can divine. The right and the left. He conceals like a Door. He left us like this, and will leave you. But you can help us, you can, you can. With your red mouth you can show us the Way.” They seemed to beg, to implore.

The Monkey had given up and leaned against a large adobe Wall some space away, chewing on a cactus-thorn lazily. His glance spoke of resentment, do-what-thou-wilt, bemused sorrow. I closed my eyes, swam in the fresco of light on my inner lids.

“How? I cannot help anyone. All I can hold in my hands is Death, red and bright.”

“No, no, humanchild,” the chrysalis-voice of the pieces whispered, faint with anticipation, “You can give us the great silver chariot, the reins and the moon-bellied mares. You can move us, you can Play.”

Stutteringly, I began to see. “You cannot move yourselves?”

“We are the Game,” came the bell-like answer. “We stand forever at the beginning-place, where he put us, stiller than rain, and we cannot move the smallest iris. We are forever tilted towards action, never within it, never thrilling to Purpose. We were made, we cannot be. We do not know what Game we are, we do not know our name. We do not know Rules or Stratagems. We see into the hallways of your bones, but we cannot see a Path across the Board. No one can be both the Player and the Game, no one can hold both ends of the sword in his hand and yet part the flesh of his enemy. No one can be both the Man and the Bar.”

“You want me to teach you to play chess?”A silken rustle, smelling of mint and new basil on a grandmother’s windowsill passed through them, sibilant and sighing.

“Chesssss . . . is that what we are? Are we Chess? Tell us what Chess is, child, tell us how it tastes. Tell us, tell us, and we will give you a thing you desire.” My heart began to flutter like a sparrow within. “We will give you a Vision, a Vision of the beforetime. You may look into the glass belly of our Queen and see a landscape of notnow. We are poor oracles, our eyes cast not forward but backwards and within. But we can show you this small thing. Trade us for it, beautiful, blessed redwoman.”

“There was no beforetime. I have always been here.”

“And yet in the oracle’s eye you extend both forward and back. Perhaps you are right. We have been known to lie. It does not really matter, of course. Your want speaks loudly and in perfect verse.”

The Monkey was frowning now, but he was a gold blur in the darkness of my tears. I held on so frailly to the Road and the now, I feared to look even an inch beyond it. One madness had become comfortable—could I bear another? The serrated edge of unlearning my own singularity? But my Will had long ago become flotsam, curiosity a plank which had forgotten the shape of its galleon. If a thing was offered, I could not refuse. It was not the Way.

I sighed, drying my tears on my wrists, walking onto the Board, listening to the dull pad of my bare feet on the squares. The pieces seemed to lean in like glass towers, listening with their crystal veins. (But how do I know these Rules, how can I know them, who never learned them?)

“The King,” I began, sniffing, “can move one square in any direction. But the Queen can sail the Board like a dreadnaught, can move anywhere she wants . . . ”

20

The Board thrummed with its new word: CHECKMATE.

They were ready to move, leaning into the sun like wind sprinters, finding the shape of strategy in their glassy bodies. But they were honest pieces after all, and would keep their bargain. A high, clear voice like an amethyst trumpet trilled down the battle-lines, and this