A Dirge for Prester John

He saw me too, and some days later at the quarter-moon, he cornered me behind a huge amethyst pillar, strong and high and violet.

Houd, Who Danced Like a Flame: I miss you, Butterfly.

I demurred. I whispered he could not call me by such old, familiar endearments.

Houd, Who Didn’t Care: I will never obey that rule.

I reached up and touched his face. His skin was warm.

Houd, Who Had Grown So Tall: Come to my house tonight. Come. Swear you will.

And he was my child, and I belonged to him, and I promised. When I arrived, in his little house with a thin roof, the others were there too, and I could not speak for the joy of it, and they all held out their hands to me, wanting my weight on them, and I kissed their cheeks and we all laughed, so relieved to be together, though the room was not scarlet, nor silk.

Ikram, Who Would Dive For Sapphires in the Mountains: Oh, Butterfly, it’s so hard! I see my mother in the streets and I cannot speak to her.

Lamis, Who Would Dwell as a Lamplighter in the City of Thule: It is like we were never born. And here, with you, it’s like we never grew up.

Oh, but the pleasure of meeting in secret, children. Is it not fierce and wonderful? We could not have such delight without the Lottery your mother made.

Houd, Whose Sole Black Stone Voted Against the Whole Business, But Who Yielded in the End: I do not want to speak of it. Comfort me, instead, Butterfly. Tell us about fate, and stories that must come true because they were always true, and that everything that happens has a purpose. That is what I need to hear.

And I sat in his palm, for the first time. The girls laid their hands on the floor and put their heads on my lap. A fire bloomed in the hearth, and they were still so young, and I loved them so.

Fate is a woman, I said to them.

In fact, she is three women. Young, like us, so that they will have the courage to be cruel, having no weight of memory to teach temperance. Young, but so old, older than any stone. Their hair is silver, but full and long. Their eyes are black. But when they are at their work they become dogs, wolves, for they are hounds of death, and also hounds of joy. They take the strands of life in their jaws, and sometimes they are careful with their jagged teeth, and sometimes they are not. They gallop around a great monolith, the stone that pierces our Sphere where the meridians meet, that turns the Earth and pins it in place in the world. It is called the Spindle of Necessity, and all round it the wolves of fate run, and run, and run, and the patterns of their winding are the patterns of the world. Nothing can occur without them, but they take no sides.

I could also say there is such a stone, such a place, but the dogs who are women died long ago, and left the strands to fall, and we have been helpless ever since. That in a wolfless world we must find our own way. That is more comforting to me. I want my own way, I want to falter; I want to fail, and I want to be redeemed. All these things I want to spool out from the spindle that is me, not the spindle of the world. But I have heard both tales.

Ikram, Who Would One Day Pass Beyond the Gates of Alisaunder: I want to stay here, with you.

Lamis, Who Would One Day Become a Queen Like Her Mother, Shrouded in Mist: I want to be a child again, and fear nothing.

Houd, Who Would One Day Die in Jerusalem: There, Butterfly, there. Beginning tomorrow I will love you for all the rest of my life.

[There is more, so much more, but it all dissolved into nothing, in a slither of green and pale blue fungus that tears the living page from my hand and left me with nothing, nothing, no end and no answers, only that lonely boy and his need, and no bud for me, either, to follow Hiob into stillness and dreams and escape the disappointment, the loss of it. I had been widowed by these books, and abandoned. The soft weight of the spine cracked as I threw it, useless, against the wall. I wanted to know, curse them. I wanted to know everything.]

ADDENDUM TO THE CONFESSIONS OF

HIOB VON LUZERN, 1699

Brothers, I send this back to you knowing in no fashion what tomorrow might bring. I send back Marcel and Abelard over the mountains to bear back this manuscript. Hiob felt at ease speaking to God, comfortably, two aged grandfathers exchanging tales. I can speak only to the page. I write knowing in no fashion what tomorrow may bring. For my own part, I will stay. Hiob cannot be moved, and I cannot leave him.

I have asked the woman in yellow to bear me back to the Tree of Books, so that I may attempt this tale again, make it more whole, fill the places the mold took from us. It is my intent to build a small hut there, on that plain, so as to lose no time transporting the manuscripts back here. It is not for love of Prester John I do this, but for love of Hiob, who should wake to illumination.

Oh, but I lie. I also want to know the rest, I also burn to learn what followed, I also find my heart grown bitter with having those books stolen from me too soon by the mere villainies of air and light. How those volumes corrupt in their turn, so that I feel within me tendrils of green, and red, and gold, swarming over my heart, eating me whole. Take me back, I said to her, take me back, I cannot bear it.

The woman in yellow, Theotokos, I suppose I must call her, looked intently at me for a long while.

“I will consider it,” she said finally.

“Abbas will support me. It is not yours to decide.”

The woman turned her head to one side, and I believe she almost smiled.

“It is my tree,” she said softly. “It belongs to no one but me. Not Abbas, and not you. Go to him if you like. He rules at my pleasure.”

And she made a curious gesture, stroking the skin of her neck, the space just above her collarbone, unselfconscious, bare.