Hunger's Brides (69 page)

Please …? Do we ask too much of you?

Which of your gifts do we need more, treasure most—best measures us? Attending us in childbed—reliever of birthpangs, Nephthys, Artemis, Citlalacue. Protecting us at the night's crossroads haunted by the demons of women lost in childbirth, taken prisoner—O Proserpine who shields us from malice, O Chicomecoatl, who cries out our anguish for the child lost there.

You who wander sacred groves, cause roses to blossom in winter, who raise the New Eden—unwalled city, forest without scar. Regent Nemesis, who escorts her son the sun in his transit, and his sister the moon. Who makes each give way in turn—dawn to dusk to dawn and so to forever's end. Cybele of the axe, Ceres, harvest mother, or she who shucks the corn, harvester of hearts. Mother of the sweet corn, the tender
corn, on your back you carry the flint knife swaddled, from its scabbard you draw the blade of paradox and leave it in each tender corncrib.

Who are you—are you all of these? Queen of the Night Sun, the Fifth Sun, the last—liminal swamp mother intercessor, mother of sorrows, of the fled the orphaned the failed—rushweaver, barkbuilder, boarhunter, houndslayer, wearer of the necklace of skulls. Cihuacoatl, secret silent commander of the armies of the Speaker—sister of the daysky, queen of the night, sister of the dark twin, mother of the light.

Monster, mystery, betrayer—diseased alien whore of the gorgon hair—vagina dentata, mother cunt-tooth—who are all things to all—one thing to them, another for me—
feed me now
. Feed me the life in your mouth, strain the bitter fruitsap between your filed teeth, let it drain and trickle into me. Incubate the flint rough like a cob in my wound. Teach me not to fear you, to spin out my life on a cornsilk thread, to eat their disease, to eat my death—with joy—and vomit
life
. I hunger I thirst I burn. I am alone here now, filled with you, in a place far from home.

If I make this prayer will you come?

Teach me, touch me. Help me touch
her
—see her through my fingertips, taste the lips she spoke with. Give me ears to hear her silences, breath to quicken them again. Anything to bring her back to me—even for an hour—let me take her captive, anything not to fail her she is slipping away…. I can't hold her, can't follow her. Not in there, not to the end. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.

Please by all the names in all the tongues in all the voices you are called let me start again, make a new beginning to this old end. Show me a new alphabet—how to piece together the name of love from
letters spelling everlasting ruin
—these are her letters, her words. Can't I give them back their tongue? She swallowed fire!—can I not lift her a single instant from these ashes in my hands? This is the palingenesis this is the ultimate magic, to lift the Rose from its ashes.

And if we can't love this Love without need show me at least how to love without hope

stay love

stay hopelessly in love.
Show me
how to love to live with living ruin long enough to finish this for her.

Then only then give me peace. Rest. Dust.

Sombra … Polvo … Nada

I
SIS
        

D
REAMING
.

Dreaming, she dreamed her self.

Dreaming she dreamed herself at the heart of a great roiling in an all devouring blackness in the eye of a vortex drawing her down, down to the bottom of a turbulent, lightless ocean. The turbulence was all around her and within her and was her. And she thought,
I am this dream, and this dream spins out of me. I am this Creation
dreaming itself spiralling down through a cyclone in the all consuming darkness …
and I am alone
. In the word was the beginning of her pain. The pain of her loneliness spun a whirling fever threading through her mind as she dreamed herself, arms split wide and bent, spinning like a flat disk, while with each dizzying turn she dreamed another thing which did not yet exist.

And though the tangle of pain had not yet unravelled, at the end of the first night she dreamed herself come to rest in the clay at the bottom of the primordial waters. And she slept….

She dreamed she woke. She dreamed herself awakened to her hunger. To her hunger for the clay. Her hunger for the clay wound around the pain in her heart and though her gnawing hunger grew with each deep sweet swallow of mud, she forgot for a time that her pain was her solitude.

Her hunger for the clay was devouring her. She hungered for the smell of the earth that upheld her. She hungered for the feel of its smooth oily texture filling her mouth, opening a passage down her throat. For the gnash of grit against her teeth, for the taste of warm clay filling her mind. But these things did not yet exist, and the pain grew.

She would never get enough. Though she ate mountains of clay, oceans of clay, worlds of mud, still she doubted. For if she did not really exist but only dreamed, there would be no end to her hunger. She could never get enough, never. Her doubt coupled with her pain, her hunger strengthened and nourished it. Until she began to hope, to
wish
she did not exist.

And so in her belly in the belly of a dream, the pain grew. Beyond fear, grew beyond doubt. Her pain became her certainty, and while at last she believed she existed, she wished she could die.

But death did not yet exist.

When at last her pain had grown until she could bear it no longer, feeling within her a vast rift splitting—a sear, a vent in the husk of the void—she vomited up the sun. Vomiting she tore light from the veil of darkness,
she drew flame from the scabbard of night
and the silent waters were filled with light….

She gazed at what she had made,
at the sun
, her firstborn. She thought,
I am not alone. I exist, for I have made another
. And there, at the end of the second night of dreaming, she slept.

She dreamed she woke. She woke to her terror that the sun would be gone. But opening her dream-encrusted eyes she found him still there with her. From then on she would know him before sight by the warmth on her face. And while still great, her pain was diminished.

But it was not over.

She vomited up the sky, and felt release. She sundered bright sky from dark, day sky from night. She vomited the moon and all the glittering stars. She vomited up the earth, and felt relief. She vomited the horizons, east and west then north and south. She vomited oceans. She vomited mountains. She vomited the great river and at its headwaters the great lake. She vomited up the shapes of all the things under the sun. And when at the end of the third night she had brought forth all that was within her, had turned herself inside out, her heart, her belly, when her very self had spun down the silk of her entrails and flung them out across the sky, she slept.

She dreamed she woke. She woke to feel the sun warm on her upturned face, to feel its rays enter her battered frame. She opened her eyes to the light of the first new day, to the storm broken, to the waters receded … the wide world glistening in every direction below and around. She opened her eyes to a fine rainbow mist clinging to each hidden valley, the sight of her sun blazing in a fine blue sky. She had not expected the colours … blue sky, red earth, gold sun … and in the mists danced the promise of still more colours to come. The smell of the warm red clay baking moist in the sun surged through her body like a current of joy….

But soon this gave way to first sorrow, for when she looked about her she saw in her creation no life. There were the gravid shapes of grain and fruit, the fragile lines of plant and web, the forms of animals and birds,
but they did not live. In the beautiful new world all around her not one thing moved.

Just then she felt a desperate hope—perhaps somewhere? Somewhere in this bright creation there would be,
must
be life.

She would find it.

She rose into the air on the wings of a vulture, wings spread half as wide as the world, a great vulture with the tail and tongue of a serpent, with the sun for her left eye, the moon for her right. She soared over a world still glinting wet beneath the sun. All day long she flew south along the great river, her brilliant eyes, her serpent's tongue, questing for the merest trace of life.

When the earth was finally firm enough to walk upon she veered west and landed on the western shore of the great lake. Her wings could no longer bear the weight of her first grief and remorse. Though she had been unable bear the birth pangs an instant longer, she should have, should have waited. Time itself had not yet ripened.

They say then that even as the world lay deaf to the roar of her grieving, to the sound of her weeping,
death was in her mouth
. Half-mad with her anguish she began destroying the brittle things she had made. The air boomed with the clatter of clay that shattered and ground in the terrible beak of the vulture. But there was no one to hear.
Death was in her mouth
as she swallowed the bodies of her children, the images of her dream … as she wrenched even the eyes from her head and devoured the moon and sun.

And filled with a great weariness, at the end of the fourth night, she slept….

At first her sleep was so deep, so dense and so dark that her dream could not enter. But at last a slow frail bubble rose in a tremble to the troubled surface of her mind. She dreamed she woke. Flooded with the light of her hope, buoyed on its currents, she rose once again, clutching the crushed forms in the hellish, coiling bowels of her belly. Her great wings banked on the south wind, she flew north and then east to a point near the beginning, where she landed on a high cliff above a breathless sea.

She braced herself. It began again. She vomited up the sky. She divided bright sky from dark, earth from heaven. At the eastern horizon she vomited the dawn. And the sun rose with the new joy of its motion! Bathing the world with an ochre lustre, the sun was beautiful in its movements. As
she brought forth each new thing, she imparted to the glistening lumps of clay not just shape now but colour. First black, white and red, and then all the colours of the rainbow mists that hung about her. Then all the myriad combinations of these. Then scent, now texture, with some rough and some smooth. When she had waited patiently for the things of the world to harden and dry into the shapes she had made for them, she held each thing up before her face and gave it a name.

And the world shook at the naming of the names.

They say then
life was in her mouth
, for when she had named every separate thing, she lifted some and holding them close to her lips she gave them breath.

And the sky smiled at the warmth of their breathing.

When this was done, she raised up some of the panting creatures and gave them voice, and to a very few of these she then gave song … to the birds of the air, to the whales of the sea, to the people of the land. The air trembled gently to the quavering of their songs, and
the world heard them
.

At last she raised the people, to whom she had given form and colour and name, given voice and songs and life itself, and pressing each to her forehead
gave them dreams
. The dreams unstopped the silence in their souls and poured forth words. She spoke their lives to them, but it was their dreams that gave her heartspeech back to her.

They were alive
. At the sight of their living and speaking and dreaming she wept, and they wept with her. Her second joy was greater for containing her first … and for containing her first sorrows. Tenderly, she bade them look around at the wonders she had made, and in a voice like the rolling of rock said:

All these things are ours, yours and mine, and we are each other's
.

And when with the milk of her breasts she had fed them, hesitant, they began to speak to her:

Every thing has its shape and colour and name. Every living thing has breath. Some have voice, some song. Thou hast given us dreams. But Thou hast no shape and no name. How shall we call Thee?

And she answered:

And because Isis meant
the sound of weeping
, in the tongue she had given them, they asked if hers were tears of sorrow or of joy. She smiled her first smile. Then a few looked about the tear-streaked world and understood.