A Dirge for Prester John

“I appreciate your permission.”

But I did not even hear her. Not her bitter sarcasm, not her warning. “This is Eden, Hagia. This is the navel of the world. Somewhere, somewhere here, I promise you, there is a gate of gold, and a sword thrust through it, blackened and burnt, its flames long since gone out. Somewhere there is an apple no one was ever meant to eat. Just because you have never found them does not mean they are not there. This is the country God kept for men, before we fell.”

And I kissed her, so full of the joy of it was I. An innocence like desire in me, so big and pale I could not contain it. I lay so that my mouth could clap the mouth in her belly, and my hand found her waist.

“I am not a monster, John,” she said gently, and not without affection, I imagined, her words dropping into the darkness between us.

“Didn’t you hear me? I know you’re not.”

“I did hear you. Now you think I am divine, like your Ophanim, and so your God might permit a kiss. That is no different. It is just another way of saying: this thing is not like me, and so does not deserve what I deserve, nor need what I need.”

“That’s not—”

“I am happy for you, that you have found a way to fit us into your story, John. But you do not fit into ours, and I fear what you will do when you discover that.”

And she turned away from me. The stars over her shoulder were so bright and warm that they seemed to grow out of her skin, all that light within her, hidden, secret. She turned away from me, but when the night grew full, and I moved toward her again, the blemmye said nothing, but arched against my desire, and she tasted like sand as I shut my eyes against her skin, moving together, as innocent as an apple, whole, untouched, unseen, not even dreamed of.

THE BOOK OF THE FOUNTAIN

I had decided not to love him. I felt certain in those days that it was possible to decide this. Somewhere between kisses and promises, there is a small space where such acts of will may be performed, between a field of red silk flowers and the ruins of a tower. I could enjoy him and not love him. I could preen before Grisalba, who hadn’t managed it. I decided. There would be no more discussion, nor would I waste my heart worrying over nights secluded away from the others, with a moon too full, shadows too deep.

I hung back, let the priest and Hajji range forward over the broad Babel stones, and I hated a little that I could not have come to that place alone, known it for myself, without having to explain it to a stranger as though I were a book he read in a pleasant old chair. It is possible to close every door that once lay open, to check the locks, to pull down the hatches and stand sentinels. I did all these things. I would not love him—love cannot exist between an animal and an angel. With his kisses still fresh on my shoulders, for he had not yet been able to bear the sight of my front half while he loved me, I knew how the country lay, in his heart.

“I wish that I had visited your mother,” I said to Hadulph, astride his back, my cheek against his mane.

“She is not infallible, Hagia. She would say that if you must have him, you must. It is the only way to rid yourself of love. And if you have had him twice, you will have him a third time.”

“He is cruel and hard, and he thinks I am an animal.”

“You are. So am I. Only he thinks sourly of it. I like being an animal. It means eating and mating and living and light. I don’t know what he thinks he is, if not an animal.”

“Hadulph, I have done with him. I will only tolerate so much talk of God and my own ugliness. We will go where we are going and I hope to leave him there. He can worship a grave till he dies. I have no more patience for sneering in the daylight and ardor by moon. That is a child’s game.”

“He is a child. Only forty! Can you imagine? Can you even remember forty? At forty I still had my mother’s milk for breakfast! No wonder he is so rude; no wonder he believes uncivilized things.”

“I remember forty. Astolfo could still speak; we made love in the sun and he did not avert his eyes from me.”

“I do not avert my eyes,” growled Hadulph kindly. “But I forget, you have had only one Abir, you are still young yourself. The coming Lottery will be exciting for you—do you think we will still go into the pepper fields together, afterward?”

“I don’t know,” I said, turning my gaze to the blue sky so deep, and dusted with green leaves flying. “I cannot imagine life on the other side of the Abir. That is the point of it, I suppose. A door the other side of which is unfathomable.” My eyes grew heavy; the clouds wisped apart above me, joining again, and drowsily moving apart. “Do you suppose, Hadulph, that the world itself has Abirs? A day when everything spins around and comes out backwards, inside out, mixed up, and when it is all done, nothing is as it was? Do you suppose we could all keep living on the other side of those doors as we had before?”

Well do I remember now, in these shadowy hours I spend in my minaret, the last thing I said before Hadulph’s steady, thumping gait sent me entirely into dreams:

“I am only thankful John will have no chit in the barrel, and no poor soul will be saddled with him.”

I guessed that we actually walked parallel to the Fountain road, though a long way west of it, since I knew these spiky, fragrant weeds, and the flecks of snow that drifted aimlessly through the bright sun, portending, but not yet threatening a far-off cold. No markets sprang up here, no hyena-woman with a bauble for my penny. No draughts to refresh, no tables draped with fantastic cloth to dress my waist. It was lonely, though six of us walked that other road, that shadow road, leading not to life but to death, to tombs and graves. For many days I had suspected that we drew near the Gates of Alisaunder, near the high mountains that kept those old ghosts back. The map said so—my history lessons said so. I longed to question Hajji about the snowy lands ahead, where the panotii lived, where she must have lived. But I kept my peace.

We saw a glimmer, finally, far ahead, some weeks out of the ruins, which had stretched further than even I could have imagined. A long plain stretched out, full of black sand—not rich nor scorched, but simply colorless, lightless, dark as a sky. On one side of the vale icy mountains rose up sharply, without foothills, as if dropped there by a careless child. And in a cleft, the sunlight shone through such diamonds that rainbow prisms fell on every stone, and on our skin, and on Hajji’s ears, and on John’s half-bald pate, and on Fortunatus’ beak. Qaspiel spread its wings as if to drink the light, and the glittering refractions played a jittery chase over its feathers.

No one had carved or shaped the gems to be pleasant to visiting eyes; no one had smoothed them and chipped them into intricate designs, but only piled them loosely, crudely, and made them fast. Yet if I had not known

its purpose, I would have thought the Gates more lovely than anything I had yet seen in my days. Their rough, strange grandeur outshone entirely the city that spread out below them, the lights of candles and fires sparkling already in the young evening that brought us to the mountains, huts and houses, even estates—no camp this, but a city, not so big as Nural, but something like Shirshya, with a well sunk, and a fountain gurgling, and an amphitheater for the summer rites. We, grubbed, hard-traveled outsiders, walked those streets in wonder, while everywhere the rainbows of the diamond Gates danced and darted. Yet these paths were empty—no one greeted us, or asked us our business, offered food or demanded we leave at once. Only three broad streets intersected in the center of the town, and we walked unimpeded up the grandest one—its dirt was most compacted, most often stamped down by feet and wheels. We walked through the quiet to the very threshold of the Gates, and there I climbed down from Hadulph’s great back and reached out my hand to touch the adamant door.

The gems burned me; I drew back my hand with a cry.

“Hot, eh?” came a voice behind me, and all of us looked to see an aged, aged peacock, so old his tail drooped and had gone black, splashed with vivid, searing green. His eyes still gleamed, but weariness spoke in his every feather. Those who drink from the Fountain usually stay young—at least as young as they are when they drink their third swallow of that brackish slime. But some few by chance or an ornery nature did not drink until they had already reached a stately age, and these folk grow instead into a kind of regal senescence, still hale, but colored strangely, or their voice goes rough and deep. This bird had done all this and more—his tail so full and heavy it spread behind him like an emperor’s robe. And it was by that I knew him, for what did I not know about the old peacock who chronicled the generations of the cannibal tribes so faithfully? The old rooster had not found his way to the Fountain until he was advanced in his avian years, due to a habit for blackbulb nectar, and a lazy disposition.

“That’s them you feel,” the peacock said, “the pair of them, always leaning on the Gate, hoping it’ll fail. Old bastards. Haven’t you got anything better to do back there?”