wide stretching place, edges curving into the distance, the land reflecting the sky and the sky reflecting the land. The sound was all around her, as if she were a tiny grain of sand within a great thumping drum.
What if she lost herself in all that emptiness? How could anyone find her? How could she find herself?
She could see the veins of the earth, its sinews and structures. With the topsoil torn away, peeled back, she could see the shimmering traceries that lay hidden beneath, imagined but never seen—veins that glowed with orange and gold and yellow and red. Mirrorlike, the sky reflected the light, shimmering and shifting, cloudy and ethereal.
“It’s so beautiful,” Emily whispered in Miwok. Her words, spoken, sent light in a shimmering ripple along the glowing tracery, along thick broad veins and small feathery capillaries. To her surprise, Emily found that she could feel the movement of the light, feel it all through her body. It was ticklish and maddening all at once, like having her spine stroked by a velvet glove, like having her ears licked by a cat, like having her toes rubbed with ice by a warm hand. She gasped with delight, closing her eyes.
It is Ososolyeh, Komé said.
Opening her eyes, Emily saw that the old woman was before her, her naked old body withered and shrunken. Her body was entirely black, as if she were made of stretchy shining tar. She stood perfectly motionless, arms crossed over her sagging breasts, her head down.
Ososolyeh, ancient and vast, wanderer from the stars, the great spirit of the earth. Komé’s voice rose and fell counterpoint to the thrum of the earth around them.
“Then it does live,” Emily whispered, feeling the certainty of it.
It lives, Komé exhaled. It needs you, Basket of Secrets.
“I don’t understand what it wants,” Emily said.
It has been trying to tell you. It has been trying desperately.
“I haven’t heard it.” Emily’s despair made the light around her ripple with sad shades of blue and purple.
It speaks in the music of the wind. The shift of grass and branch. The shape of clouds. In all of these, Ososolyeh speaks. It has told you its will in every bird that has flown over your head, every mote of dust that has swirled before your eyes, every piece of earth that has turned from beneath your foot.
“I don’t know the language of grasses and birds and dirt,” Emily said. “Why can’t you just tell me yourself?”
Ah, that would be a story that would take millions of years to tell in words, Komé said regretfully. And the foulness binds me, and I am tired.
“You have to help me understand,” Emily begged.
The mind of Ososolyeh cannot be imagined. To hear Ososolyeh’s voice, you must allow your mind to stretch to the size of the stars, for that is the size of Ososolyeh’s dreams. You must forget that time exists. You must forget that you can die.
Emily didn’t think she could forget that, looking at Komé’s body, at the oily ugliness that bound her. She fell to her knees before the old woman, bending her head.
“I can’t do it.” She put her face in her hands. “Mother, I can’t.”
Yes, you can. Komé smiled and brought her hands down, placing them softly on Emily’s head.
And Emily’s head exploded.
Her tiny weak human skull inflated like an Aberrancy, a grotesque balloon, a cosmic ball of igniting gas. Memories flooded her, memories of a mind whose thoughts were too large and old to comprehend, memories that could only be felt and absorbed, memories of stars and infinite distances and eons of traveling, drifting, seeking. Her body exploded, too, becoming immense and spherical and bright, oh so bright, taking and returning the sweet force of life, cycling it back and forth in a beautiful complicated dance. The pleasure of it was unbearable.
Do you see? Komé asked finally, as eternity receded from Emily’s mind.
Emily found that she didn’t need to speak.
YES.
She saw that the heartbeat that surrounded her was her own. She saw that she could make the colors dance with the smallest impulse of thought. She made reds and blues shift, and discovered that she’d made them shift in the exact same way in one perfectly remembered moment a billion years earlier. She longed to remember more. She longed to stay here forever, now that she knew what forever was. But Komé gently lifted her hands from Emily’s head, and the dream began to fade.
You cannot stay here, Basket of Secrets. You must go