Myths of Origin

“I will tell you the storyriddle I think you need. I will tell you how I Devoured my name. Long was the time I lived young within the pretty stone arms of my Temple, and I was alone. I enjoyed alone, it enjoyed me. I swung from the thick red-berry vines, and felt their length firm and sure in my golden hands. I danced on the altar, I sang the songs of my birth-tree and my mother’s strong fur in the choir, echoing all through the dome as though my brothers and sisters were all around me in the forest. Hoo! I was content. I did not think about the Center, I did not care.”

“Once I was like that, too,” I whispered sadly.

“We all are. And then there is a day when we are broken into, like a rich house, and rifled through. Everafter we look sidelong over alabaster shoulders and know that we will never be so pure again. Mine was a pleasant spring morning, the rain fell like a grey sweater unraveling, and I played in the yarn-drops as I was used. I was not myself then, just as you are not yourself, but empty and happy. But that day, and not another though it matters not which, a Snail crawled into my Temple to escape the wet. He was very beautiful, with a great, grey double-spiraled shell like mother-of-pearl, sparkling even in the dim stormlight. His body was like living oil, goldensilver, rustling and slippery, large eye-stalks waving gracefully, visiondancing.

I hooed in a more or less friendly manner, but he ignored me, moving within his ponderous shell towards the thickest and most delicious of my vines, slowly breakfasting on a fat leaf. I marched up to him and rapped imperiously on that iridescent shell, whereupon his oilskin rippled slightly and eye-stalks swiveled vaguely in my direction.

“Leathe me alone, thwiftfurry thing,” the Snail yawned. “Of course, my Darlingred, I

was indignant, began to hop mightily and grow purple-faced in a most unbecoming fashion. I insisted variously that he ought to be more respectful than to gobble up my vines without a word, that he ought to vacate the premises immediately, that he ought to know he was eating in my Temple. Again, my only answer was the bored motion of glistening eye-stalks.”

“Lithen, mate. I needn’t take orders from thome thilly primate who hathn’t got a name.”

“I don’t need one, you lisping mollusk. My mother knows my smell well enough, and the Labyrinth has no use for names. Hoo! Now run along.”

He munched thoughtfully on one of my red fruits. “Doethn’t it though? If you hathn’t got a name, you aren’t much of anything. Thith Temple can’t be yourth, you hathn’t got thome thort of deed, and even if you have got a document of thome fathion, to whom would it be made out? Tho the vineth are ath much mine ath yourth. Leathe me alone.”

I was at a loss, and covered in snail-spit. He seemed logical enough, if one forgot where one was. My pride, which in those days was great as the vaulting Road, was wounded. I growled at him and bared my yellow teeth, but the Snail snuffled further onto the emerald vine. “And I suppose you have a name, wretched slug?”

The great Snail drew himself up to what I assumed to be his full height, his damascene flesh rippling in opaline waves. Across his broad chest a word floated uncertainly, but clear as your red limbs. It was quite sloppy, for a Snail cannot be very good at letters, but in its oozing alphabet I read distinctly: CALIBAN. He rustled and reduced slimily, with a triumphant little smirk. I stamped and hooted.

“Where did you find that?”

“Not that it’th any of your bithness, but I went though a green-and-clam-thell Door, downdowndown, and I found it, playing with thome ugly trout. It wanted to come to me. It’th mine. You can’t have it. Go Away.”

(Now, Darlingred, you must understand that Snails know very little about anything, and are quite slow and rather silly. I think now that he must have stolen it. He was too fat and lazy to Wrestle such a fine name. They are officious and greedy, and they walk the Labyrinth believing themselves its masters. Snails are tiresome creatures.)

“But why do you need a name, Snail?”

“It maketh one Important, it makes one a Creature of Influenth. It denoteth Worth and Thubthtanth, pinpointeth one’s Plathe in the World. The value of name cannot be overethimated. It is one’th invitation to the banquet. My banquet today ith your vineth, becauthe I have a name and you do not.” He crawled even further onto the vine, which of course caused him to lose balance and tumble to the stone floor. He was not harmed, really, but scolded me anyhow. “Hateful little monkey! Your wretched vine tripped me! No wonder you are thuch a no-account, foul-thmelling thcoundrel! I thall never come back, never! Beast! Ruffian! Rathcal!” This train of Snail-speech followed the opalescent moon of his shell past the threshold and onto the Road.

It mattered little, for by then I was not listening. I was fired like a field of dry wheat with the idea of a name, the desire for it. I cared nothing for being Important in the wobbling eye of a Snail, or my Place in the World, nevertheless, the need filled me like rising bread, a growing hole in my chest.

But I could not leave my Temple, the Labyrinth would swallow it whole behind me and I would never see its warm Walls and cozy altar stone. Already I had left my birth-tree and lost it, along with the bristled, hot smell of my mother’s russet fur. So I laid a trap. Each day I left the Temple, just a bit, trailing a length of spider’s thread, sparkling like a strand of a star’s mane in the mild sunlight, to find my way home. I let the Doors catch my scent, let them pick up my trail in the blackberry brambles, leaving a bit of fur in the thorns. They would sniff around the Temple at night, creeping like mangy coyotes up to the vaulted entrance. But they are creatures of outwith, of the dark wild air and the external void, they would not come in, for the nature of a Door is a conduit, and they were lost like a wolf in a snare in the paradox of a Door entering through a Door, DoorswithinDoorswithinDoors. And I waited, watching them like a besieging army, fanned out like playing cards. I waited for the Door which would lead to my name. I was certain I would know it.

And I did. A very fine old wrought-iron gate, designs of baobab trees, banana leaves, and lush hibiscus, a heavy steel knob in the shape of a panther’s head, complete with real fangs, stolen away, the milk teeth of some savage kitten. With a joyful snarl I leapt at it, trailing a length of strong vine behind me. Did the Door but no swifter than I, I looped the end of my emerald lasso around the massive knob, swinging wildly wide, entering the snapping Door. I shrieked and groped blindly, reaching out for the name, calling it, beckoning with my paws. I snagged something on my fingers on the backswing, slipping out of the Door’s grasp, nearly losing my tail as it clanged angrily shut. I fled back into the Temple, clutching my prize, accosted by the cacophony of thousands of Doors slamming in fury and gnashing their hinges. Hoo!

What I held against my heaving chest was a gigantic sturgeon, swollen with silver scales and squirming in my grip. Her mouth gaped helplessly and its pupilless (so like yours, my own!) eyes blinked their transparent lids in fear. I did not lose a moment, but slit her Gautama-belly with my teeth and plunged my paws into the writhing black mass of salted caviar, searching, searching, searching.

With the last gulping heave of the great Fish’s gills, I seized and pulled from her corpse the body of my name, all entangled with translucent entrails and strips of silver skin, scarlet and flowing moonstone, clinging to the shredded womb of dark eggs and golden flesh. It was furious, and began to bite at me with the sharp branches of letters. I knew I had little time and gripped the vicious thing in both paws, shoving it down my triumphant throat, the sweet tang of starfruit and water-moccasins. Hoo! It was mine, I held it within me.

After this, I began to understand things, as the Snail could not, since I alone ate with intent. I was wholly Other. I had Devoured a Center and it arranged my organs into ascension, made clear the Paths of the Labyrinth, and I ceased to fear it. I ceased to be myself, and yet I was myself, whole, and no other.

At this the Monkey began a slow grin that split his face, terrible and feline, punctuated by his long yellow teeth. He reached into his belly, pulling aside the golden fur like theater curtains, the skin and muscle Wall parting like an ocean, and behind it the dark and secret moon-shape of the Stone. He held open his body so that I could see, pushing against the oily flesh of his stomach like some misshapen fetus, the outline of his name in a savage jungle-calligraphy, still trying to escape the calm pool of his gastric perambulation.

EZEKIEL.

19

“I could never do that, Ezekiel,” I murmured as he closed the sheath of his skin.

“I know,” he said, closing himself as though buttoning a suit. “You are not strong enough. There are ways within ways. You follow the way of the mad. It is different.” He shook his head at me. “But I am here, hereandnow, I will not leave you.” The Road had slushed almost entirely to deep, rich black mud, and we were slogging through it one sucking footprint at a time. The Monkey’s fur was streaked in dirt like war paint, my arms like ruby stalactites circled in bracelets of earth.

“Why are we walking? The Labyrinth will change around us, the Door will swallow us. Why do we not trust in it? I want to lay down, I want to Stop. It will carry us to her, or it will not. I don’t care.”

“We must keep up appearances, Darlingred. We cannot stop. Forward motion, endless if, but still we must.”

“I don’t care.” I stared ahead, unblinking, scarlet eyes drinking in the wide marshes and waving reeds. “Once I was the Marsh King’s daughter, and my wings were brown. I sipped at tadpoles with a delicate beak, scimitar-curved, and when I took tea with my father, I crooked my little finger like a scythe. I was a blade of flesh and nail, I was murky and obscene as the delta water.” Dew formed in blood-droplets on my eyelashes.