Myths of Origin Four Short Novels - By Catherynne M. Valente Page 0,36

You attach to my flank like a lamprey and want me to love the slow drain of my blood from the wound. Leave me to the copper bit and the foaming mouth, the pulverized teeth and the jaw of frayed wire. Leave me to drown in the rice-fields, when I have become blue again they will eat pearly slivers from the delicate dish of my mouth. Leave me to go mad alone. It is such a private thing.

“I know you are glad of me, it matters nothing what you say,” The Monkey patted my bent head and I simply breathed. There was nothing else my body could manage. Under the curtain of my agate hair I could smell a strangeness growing like a bladed weed, sharp and thick, sweat and smoking bones. Ezekiel tugged on my glowing limbs.

“Visitor,” he murmured.

Through strands and curls like living vines, through my heaving breaths ragged and strangled, I saw now a massive Bear, thickly-furred and broad-headed, lying on his side with a great sucking wound in his flank. He whimpered and bellowed at turns, black blood seeping onto the papery earth. The Monkey scampered up onto the mountain of his hip, examining the gash.

“It has always been like that,” the Bear moaned. “It never heals. I have tried poultices of laurel and banana, honeybees’ wings and birch bark, bird-marrow and Wall-dust. Nothing helps. It laughs at me, with it bloody lips. But I have come to love it, now. It is warm and bright and pretty. It never fails me. Would you like to come and touch it?”

I said nothing, moved not an inch. The Monkey looked at me expectantly.

“If I put my hands on him,” I whispered, “he will only die like the rest.”

“You touch me, beloved Darlinggreen, and I am not dead,” Ezekiel crowed softly.

“Yes, see? Perhaps not, perhaps not, girl,” the mournful Bear brightened hopefully. “Come closer. I am very beautiful reflected in your skin.” His wound did reflect black and red on my thighs, pulsing like a womb, open and quivering as if to speak. He stared at himself reflected and refracted in me, preening. I did not move, frozen by a manic disgust.

“Don’t be afraid. If you are very, very good, you could have a wound, too. I would even administer it myself. My teeth are the color of the stars, aesthetically perfect. Orthodontia is so expensive. But see the results! Wouldn’t you like to have them in your nice green flesh? Be sweet to me and I will make you beautiful, paint your belly with blood.” He struggled to rise and come near me, but I backed away as best as my weak leafbody could manage, bile rising in me like the tide. The Monkey had also clambered off, and returned to me, protective and proprietary, grimacing at the beast. It kept on its imploring way:

“Don’t run away. You haven’t seen the pointillist masterpieces of my intestinal tract, the glory of my bruises, the majesty of my swollen tongue! You are very ugly now, girl, with no breaks in your body. All revolting solidity. Come, come, I will make you splendid, seraphic, gloriana in the highest! I will make you the Queen of Capillaries, Empress of Bones! Don’t you want to be beautiful? I will love you forever, I will write masterpieces on your flesh!” I began to cry through my suffocation, drawing dagger-breath, loathing his nearness, the warmth of his mewling breath.

“Come closer, I cannot see myself in your mirrorbody any longer. You are too far off. I am being very generous. It is not polite to refuse.”

I broke and ran, stumbling and weeping. The Monkey sprinted after me, trying to keep up.

“Come back! It is useless to run, the Door is on your heels! One way or another, you will be like me, and bleed! We will all be beautiful before dawn!” His howls echoed after us, choking my poor neck.

But he was right, I could hear it now, clanging copper pots in my skull—

(—nam vos mutastis et illas—)

Latinate clams clattering in the water, their vulgate symphony of clicking nails and meaningless morse code, which translated reads as a meaningless clam-tongue, pink and meaty. The Door-tongue, the Hinge-dialect.

I cannot run far enough, ever and ever.

The sea takes back its stones. My limbs crumble. There is black mud under my nails, secret and ashamed. Such a private place I inhabit, with no Rosetta Stone to help you make sense of it, of my ceilings and windows. I