I took the Key in a shimmering hand, caught into fire by the afternoon sun, netted into a sphinx’s paw by shafts of pikelight. Well wrought the delicate shell, serrated edge of claw forming the Key ridges, where it would fit and swivel. The Door seemed to hold its breath, chest swollen with amphibious lungs full up, peering to see if the correct sequence would be followed, the correct procedure observed, if custom and usualhow would dance as they were used, hand in hand.
Holding it like a blade I stood statuesque, arm outstretched like an orator to deliver scathe and curse.
(—Thee it behooves to take another Road—)
And I plunged, delved, dug, stabbed it deep into the brittle surface, oh and the severing blow of fracture and slither (ininininin!) into the soft place between my coin-breasts, where there is a fine down like a gasp, and oh, the grinding as it chews inward, the molten gold blood sluicing from the sucking wound which is so like a mouth, so like the opening to a jeweled womb, so like an iris. (Ininin!) Rushing blood warms the Keybody, it is deeper than inward and I cannot see for the pain, the pain of opening which is always present at these little penetrations—
(—Forth issued from the sea upon the shore,
Turns to the water perilous and gazes—)
See how soundless, accommodating, finger-crooked, the Door moves open a sliver, not enough to bite and tear, but enough for me to slip inside, like a Key. Its breath winds out like a thread soaked in gasoline, sour, tonguing the skein of air between us, searching for me, for the blood it smells. See it wait, still so patient, expecting that if I will not step I will certainly fall if I bleed just a little more. (Ininin!)
But, oh, oh, see that the blood is not gold any longer, any longer, and how I have side-shifted the spectrum one last (but it is never the last) time, one last chloroform masquerade, one last ball with slippers worn through, one last night on the town under all those lights! I have flashed trans-parent, trans-lucent, cut glass, clear as the rivers of Babylon, and how the sun shines through me as though I were a goblet at the feast! Oh, how the clouds reflect milky in my brow, in my Grecian eyes, my singing foot! Fled color and now there is only light, light, light. I am made of light, brooks and streams, hair cascading like snakes from a glass-blower’s pipe, pure and clean and clear at last, but it is never last, never last. I can move in any Direction, I hold all Direction within, and oh! See now it lying prettily within, the Compass with its thorn-needles and bouncing glacial norths! My little child, my little dusk-daughter so nestled in the glass belly, flushing all your greens and pinks, indignant at the disappearance of flesh. I am glad to see you, little one! Where shall we go, where shall we go? Forward is the only remaining place, I’m afraid, we must suffer to be eaten again, ininin and down, here we fly and fall. Into the Door at neverlast, slip of light we!
(—I cannot well repeat how there I entered—)
And I step within, hush inside, whisper through, and there is a vanishing, of a perfect crystal foot as the deep azure of the Door closes with a coquettish latch.
34
“I suppose you think you’ve arrived somewhere.
That you have won a thing, that you have passedthrough, achieved a fetching Grail.”
Comes her voice like a grinding Stone, on her fishing-Wall as I knew she would be, covered in her opals like eggs, watersurface-shimmering, wings curving over her long back to the icy earth. The wound and the Key had together vanished from my glassy sternum. Her court of mercurial trout heaped themselves still along her white thighs as she exhaled that same noose of nettle-smoke, watching me with eyes like gutters trimmed in icicles.
“Hic monstra, hic monstra, puella. I suppose you think you have come all this Way and found me out, found a Lair, found a wicked, wicked Creature, a femme fatale, a Villain.”
I sucked in my breath, blood ticking in my temples, and replied, “Angel, I have come through a Door. I suppose nothing more than that. But it did not capture me, I chose it.”
“And now,” she hissed, “you think I will wave my magic rod and reel, and heal you, you who disdain my frescoes and chuck my lovely navel-Stone down the gullet of a Monkey. Wretched girl, ignorant glass-piece, for your pleasure I will do nothing.”
“I did not think you would. And I cannot make you do it.”
I walked slowly to the foot of her alabaster Wall, through the familiar pale of her courtyard.
“I have no artifice, no companion, nothing to seek after. I am here blown clear as the southern sand, offering only myself, and you know you have been expecting me.” I smiled my most charming smile.
“Why do we not at least fish together awhile, since I have come all this Way?” I held out a crystal hand to her, crossed wi
th lines like longitude or—(in this sign thou shalt conquer) to be helped up onto the slippery Wall.
“You have come no distance at all, girlchild.”
But she hefted me up and by her side, handing the rod to me, and smoking resentfully. “They are biting on Grasshoppers this afternoon, young and crisp,” she added. The Angel puffed her pipe like a squid sluices its ink. The fishing line trailed down to the icy Road like a web, into the neatly cut circle and frothing Roadwater. I held the arch of the rod gingerly, not knowing what next to say to her who regarded me with a catlike stare.
“Ask yourself, infant, how many times we have sat thus, among all these writhing fish. Ask yourself how many times we will yet smoke together under this tumor-white sky. And still you think it is an act of moment for me to heal your pathetic little death. You always do. I tire of patching you like corduroys.” She exhaled from her carved nose.
“I have sat with you but once, Angel, when you gave me this sickness like a slice of cake.”
“Yes, of course, dear. I am terribly wicked. And this petite scene has been played only once, only once. Why, we hardly know our lines! We must practice, a thousandthousand more times, until we choke on their dust.”
I fixed the rod into a crack in the Wall, ignoring the thrashing pulls at the line.
“I have gone mad for you, as you wished me, as Ezekiel said it must be, lost in marshes and under red robes, I have lost my eyes and eaten my name and it has all been because you could not let me be, you could not let my walking lie, you wanted me and so I have become what you wanted. Why do you mock what you made?” I stared blank-eyed at the repetition of Wall-rims endless to the horizon and further on.
“It is my entertainment, to watch you flop and gasp like one of my little trout. You would not rob me of that, my puella, no. Do you not see what you have achieved? Completion, End. At least a facsimile of it. It is so beautiful. And your singularity is the best of all. You cast a shadow neither sunward nor back, it is only alwaysnow, for you. That is enviable. But you have done it without Purpose, without intent, and so it means nothing. You still and always understand nothing of what I could have given you. I would have made you a Hero, you would have been made entirely of blaze, and eaten the Labyrinth in a swallow, so great would have been your need. As it is, you have found your Way to the End, and you do not even know it, because you would not accept the Quest. The function of a Quest, my function, is merely to make the End significant—you squandered me.”