Myths of Origin Four Short Novels - By Catherynne M. Valente Page 0,91

maple leaf. She was taken, taken from us by a beast with eight heads—it will swallow her as it swallowed our seven daughters before, and now we will never see our Kushinada more.”

I considered this. Maidens are prone to kidnapping, and the loss of theirs was no more or less tragic than the scores of sailors whose brains I had dashed out on the brine-pink reefs—but Kushinada seemed to me worthy enough, and to kill a thing is always pleasant work. My sister never understood that, but destruction is a peculiar skill, and I longed to practice it, to know if its flavor was different in the skin of a man.

“If you wish, I will go after this beast, and bring the maid Kushinada back to this very river, to make your rice-mash, and your eye-soup, and pour your weak tea for all her days.”

The ancient couple fell again upon their faces and wept.

“We dared not pray for such an honor as this! Surely nothing can stand where the Tide-Lord rises! We cannot pile up the jewels a god deserves, or weave for him a robe fit to be worn at the throne of his sister, the Queen of Heaven!”

The woman wrung her robe between her hands and spoke through teeth yellowed and grinding. It was then that she baited the trap they had cleverly set with their fine words and high praise for the virtues of the missing girl.

“Bring her back to us and we will give her to you to wife—she is the best of all women. Her limbs are young and will please you; she will make your rice-mash and serve your tea, and smile only when you permit it.”

I laughed, but that gurgling belly seethed at my sister’s name. This body could not turn from such bait, even when the teeth of the trap were plain.

“Tell me what sort of beast it was and I will disappear it, I will pass over it like a cloud and it will be no more. In your virtue, you called me by name, and I will repay it.”

The wife looked at her husband and shook her silvering head. “It was a serpent—but it was not a serpent. Its heads were terrible, and each different. The husband of our other daughter said that he could not keep his eyes on it; they slid off of its skin as though he were staring into the sun. It seemed to be plumed in fire, yet its body was wet and slick as a worm’s, mottled green and brown, with patches of blue, patches of black, patches of gold, patches of slime and flame. Its eyes were red, sixteen pupils like black chrysanthemums, and it had a tail for each head, thick as a woman’s waist. Its body muscled and knotted in the center, with its mass of heads and tails spreading out before and behind like a doubled fan. On its back grows a strange snarl of trees and grasses, and some say there are eyes along its spine, blinking. Yet it does not slither on the ground like a snake, but has legs like a bird—save that there are four—gnarled with muscle, green as bile. It drags itself along the ground by these legs, and from its belly a great font of blood flows, and stains the land.”

I bowed only slightly—in acceptance, not deference, you understand. I thought nothing of the beast itself, only wondered vaguely if that blood would be warm or cool flowing over my wrists.

They fussed over me, insisted on piling my hands with rice-balls—the last of Kushinada’s excellent cooking—and draping me with their own rough robes. They tied sandals onto my feet and belted my slim waist tightly. Only when I was thoroughly uncomfortable did they let me go, directing me southward, into a range of mountains lying on the earth like a severed jaw, its jagged teeth sawing the sky, crusted over with ice. Beyond Mt. Hiba, they said, the beast snorted and feasted its nights into day. Beyond Mt. Hiba, Kushinada lay naked on a stone table, her sweet skin ready to be carved into meat for each of the eight slavering heads.

And so I went out from that first river, that first knot of grass.

Behind my heels trailed wisps of grey sea-fog, curling into the summer air like ink dissolving into water.

EIGHT

Call me Monster.

I am exactly as you imagine I will be. Green on black on green on black, whicker-snack in the dark, slapping