Myths of Origin Four Short Novels - By Catherynne M. Valente Page 0,81

name. I have told him that in names lies the path to freedom, not only of the body, but of the ineffable Self. All this I have told him, before I ever demanded such a simple repayment as an answer, if only he could listen. There is not nearly so much gold in the answer, which is nothing more than a word.

What is a Riddle?

It is a box full of satisfactions. It never fails the questioner or the respondent. When it is opened, there is a soft intake of breath, when it remains closed, breath itself is stopped.

And on this box is written:

This is the Book of Dreams.

Burrowing Beetles Wall Up Their Doors With Earth

I am afraid to open it. A closed book is beautiful, because anything can be written in it, and so everything is. All the stories that ever were—love, honor, death, lust, wisdom—every word written is contained inside it as long as the I-that-is-Ayako does not reach forward to open the cover and reveal what is actually written there. It can only be disappointing. Perhaps that is why it bulges, so full of what it could be. The curve of potential, like a pregnant woman’s belly.

An open book is ugly, it is splayed open like a whore. It can only be what it is.

I am afraid of it, I do not want to touch it. It does not fill me with light like the Stone or the goat’s milk. What do I need with a book of dreams when dreams people my body as though I were a capital-city?

Waters Dry Up

River is worried. He sees that my dream-tears continue, falling with more speed, pooling around my shoulders in a salty ring. River is usually the first to understand. He will not tell Mountain until he is sure he cannot punish me alone. He set the sun on me to dry them, but the tears are alive now, they run their course like the mewling children of River do, heedless and wild. They come and come and come.

Within myself, I am smiling.

He himself tries to wash them away, frothing under their weight, blue on blue. But they sink within him and he cannot move to stop up my eyes like wine bottles. I am heavier, heavier by far. My salts scald and bruise him—I am warmed by his screams.

He sets the wind to dry them, but they can only soak up the thick waters, and send them earthward again as rain. The dams begin to swell up with my sorrows, the sea is black and deep. Great storms erupt on the hipbones of Mountain, drenching his gray skin with borrowed tears.

He set the glaciers on me to freeze them, but they are hot and thick, rolling over my body in a great gray slough, over my dark-treed belly, the skin of boughs that covers my secret womb, and on this skin is written in the sap and tears:

This is the Book of Dreams.

Wild Geese Come as Guests

I dream I have found the last of him. In the deep river currents where no reeds grow it floated like an abandoned cradle. I am ready now, to take the river into me. I do not want to, but now there can be no more delays, and I can see the colors of the water changing. I am draped in his body—intestines, blood, leg, clavicle, cheek, eyes, jaw, scalp, hands, skin, spleen, heart, skull. I am dressed for the ball, for a second wedding, for the insensate ritual of taking my dream-husband’s corpse into myself.

I know what is coming, what the river will leave in me like sandy deposits in the delta. I am resigned, I want it done. I want to leave it on the banks and never think on it again. The hawk-headed child looms large in my vision. I can feel its feathers already prickling the walls of my womb.

I stifle revulsion as I clean the last of the dream-husband’s organs in the cool river, which has inundated the valley and given life to the amaranth crops. I am the body of the sky, and I will give birth to light from light. I cannot tell if it is still a dream. If the child I will take from his mute body will be a dream-son or if he will be real. I am the amaranth, and I am the river.

I hold the last of him in my hands, mottled gray and shot with hardened blood. And on