Myths of Origin Four Short Novels - By Catherynne M. Valente Page 0,62

horn-of-plenty, their best work. They sugared it with marrow and lapped with agate tongues.

I dreamed I was dead in them, I dreamed I was scattered over the rims of earth.

And I dreamed that when he had swallowed his last, and I was a spot of blood on his beard, Mountain began to laugh.

Seedlings Sprout

The I-Ayako is satisfied with the progress of the beans. They have not broken the scrim of soil yet, but she can hear them wriggling beneath, like butterflies. She is worried about the turnips. Next year she will have courage enough to ask the dream-villager for some wheat to plant. She looks now to the crocuses peeking up their candle-tips. They will not keep her alive, but they are so sweet on her little pink tongue.

The wind is still cold when it comes down from the Mountain after its prayers on the peak. She would like to say it is a kimono that she pulls around her thin body for warmth, but long ago it abandoned its pinks and yellows and seems now little more than a blank cloth flung upon her.

My/her mouth aches like a shut box. I want so to speak, to moisten my lips and make my own wind-ablutions, add my verses to the Mountain’s long poem. I am afraid it is broken, its tumblers have shattered in the winter freeze.

Thus one evening I went to sit at the foot of gnarled old Juniper near my pagoda and told him my story, which sprouted from my throat like a plum-tree. I do not know the juniper’s name, but he is a good listener, and the moon rustled his branches while I spoke in a cobwebbed voice.

“When I was a girl and had a fine brocade obi and soft sandals, I lived in the dream-village. (I suppose it is possible that this is only a vision like the others, but I am here, and so I must have come from a Place, and one place-tale is as good as another.)

I had seven brothers who were all very wise and brave and they protected the huts and the market and the temple. But then came terrible men with their bodies covered in leather and iron, who swung long swords against the wind which screamed as they bit into flesh. They killed everyone, even my poor mother with her hair like a spider’s best web, and they burned the temple to the ground.

I hid under a wheelbarrow for three days, until they had gone and the dream-village smoked black. I was very afraid. I wandered among the ashes of the bodies and wept.

Near dawn on the seventh day after the men had left, a Sparrow came to me with a fat red berry in her mouth. She ruffled her fine brown feathers at me and spoke: “Go and see Mountain,” she said, “he will be your village, your father and your mother and all your seven wise brothers.” Her fluted voice drifted off and, dropping the berry at my feet, took flight eastwards, towards the craggy toes of the sacred Mountain.

And so I took what clothes I could, a leaky water-sack I could mend, and the fat red berry and I went up the Mountain, following the path of the Sparrow.

It was evening again when I found her, perched atop my pagoda, picking at the ruined paint with her little gold beak. I waited for her to speak again, eager for bird-magic, but she did not. I held the berry out to her in my small white hand and she caught it deftly as she flew back to the village, leaving me to the tower and the Mountain.

It was difficult for the first years, when I had no rice or tea, but Mountain provided for me cherries and plums and chestnuts, almond milk and cold green apples. After a time, people returned to the dream-village and children began to come to me and bring me little presents. Since I am a ghost, they wish to appease me.

And so we sit together and watch the origami-clouds, our dream-village of Mountain, Tower, River, Juniper, and I.”

Peach Blossoms Open

They are suddenly here, floating on the trees like a cloak of butterflies, a blush creeping through their white petals. Suddenly the pagoda has beautiful handmaids which shower it with pale silks. There is warmth hushing through the sky. I lie under the trees with their flower-veils drooping low and I dream that in the afternoon I can see the eyes of