Myths of Origin Four Short Novels - By Catherynne M. Valente Page 0,83

there are no lessons in it. Only a story.”

“My story?” I whispered.

“In a way. It is the story of your dream-women. In it are written their names.”

The Fox scratched at her cupped red ear. “They have no names. Only the hermit-Ayako has a name,” I protested.

“It is only that you do not know their names. But if you do not open the book, you will not finish the dreams, you will not reach the sea. Do you not recall what the Sphinx said? All women are one woman. If you do not seek out the shells they leave behind, you will not shed your own.” The Fox trotted over and stood before me.

“Who are you? Why are you here at the top of my tower?” I rasped, my voice dry as rice in the sun.

“I have many names, as you do. This is my pagoda, I have always been here. I am the Stone, too. Once it bore my face. I am Mercy, I am Compassion. I am the flowing water that carries you. You cannot step into me twice, and yet, each of your footsteps drags four behind them. I am nothing more than a door through which you will pass. I am here to show you the End.”

Foliage Turns Yellow And Falls

Outside the dream-pagoda, leaves drifted down with thoughtless grace, green, gold, brown. The air had sharpened, swallows sang down the sun.

“Is this the dream of the Fox? Or the dream of the Fifth Floor?” I asked.

“In all probability. I have no revelations for you, only the peace that comes with understanding. You did not strive to reach the top of the pagoda—you fled to the pinnacle without thought of ascension. Because you did not seek it, it is yours. You dive into the water and become a clam, a pheasant, a book. This is about metamorphosis—this is about solitude. Look how you have built your temple! Look how high and bright the spires!” The Fox laughed, a deep sound in her throat like skin being stretched over a drum. “You must listen to the dream of the Sphinx. She tells the truth—she cannot do otherwise. Her body carries the physiognomy of true things—only a true answer will ease her hunger. Thus, she is emptiness. Not the expanse of pure emptiness in which wisdom grows, but the gnawing absence of knowledge, that which burns.”

“But are all these women me?” I begged, confused.

“All women are one woman. You are the I-that-is. They are the I-that-is-possible. Open the book, and follow the voice-threads where they lead. Out of the black silk harvest they came, and they are yours. You have a responsibility to them. The multiplied “I” can not be reduced back into itself until all its light-paths have been followed. The Sphinx would say this has already happened. If it has, it should not be difficult for you.”

And the book lay between us, bulging and dark, promising. The Fox retained her beatific face; I opened the cover with a careful hand and read these things:

Insects Tuck Themselves Away

If all women are one woman who has already lived out each of her infinite possible lives, if all their stories are already told, if, in fact, all possible events have already occurred, the one infinitely copied photon has completed all conceivable pathways, then we approach not only the unfortunate conclusion that all Riddles have already been asked and answered, but must accept that we reside in the Wasteland of Quantum Exhaustion.

“Do you like that, Oedipus? I am delivering a paper on the subject at a conference in Alexandria next month,” the dream-Sphinx mused, and Prince Oedipus picked his teeth with a sliver of bone. He is bored.

In the Wasteland of Quantum Exhaustion, the woman-who-is-all-women would stand at a central point, one of her possible selves would be a commonality around which other possible selves would revolve. Of course, each of the women in then in and of herself a commonality, and thus there is no center per se to the system, only an infinitely expanding series of centers, which negates the idea of a center altogether. As we all know, a center cannot be within the system and govern it simultaneously.

On the other hand, the wavelength of each potential self is determined by its distance from the fulcrum-crone. But if we understand any of an infinite series of women and ur-women to be fulcra, the wavelength of each self is also infinite, both infinitely short and infinitely long, infinitely red and