A Dirge for Prester John

it,” called John, and held up his hands, still scarred and pink from the desert. Grisalba chewed a vanilla bean, bored. It jutted smartly out of her mouth. “Wait,” he said again. “I came here seeking the tomb of St. Thomas, and I have not found it. My memory is still sore, but I remember that. I wish to go out into the wilds of Pentexore and find it still—I cannot truly answer any question put to me until I am satisfied that it is or is not here. Let me go, give me a sack of food, a wineskin of water, perhaps even a companion or two, and when I return ask me again. Too much newness makes a man dizzy. I cannot think.”

Qaspiel folded and unfolded its long bluish hands in distress. Its wing-tips flicked back and forth.

“How will you find it, John?” The anthropteron said. Its voice quivered with such intense desire, a desire I knew so well: to give no offense. This is one of our chief motivations, and I realized then that John did not at all understand why we behaved in such unfailingly kind fashion toward him, no matter what bizarre rituals he encouraged us to practice. Among the immortal, good manners are as important as bread and water. When we cannot forget anything, courtesy behooves us all.

“The Lord will guide me, Qaspiel. He will show me the way through the mountains, through the desert, through any trial.”

A murmur passed through the throng. It was all well and good to learn Latin, but to trust one’s precious body to those mountains, those deserts, with only John’s alien God who very manifestly did not speak or appear or do much of anything? I am not faithless. My mother taught me the secret hymns of the Navel of Heaven, which connects us all. I believe, on good days when it does not rain or freeze, that in my very need that connection will shine, and preserve me. But I also believe in maps, and cartography, and magnetic north, and a good, not too ornery, camel to carry me along. John stood firm, but we saw for the first time that he might not have come from the Rimal unscathed, that his mind might be bruised, half-jellied. The priest could not go alone. He would be killed, immediately.

Hadulph yawned. Fortunatus held still, a rictus of concentration. Grisalba belched. And I saw my chance. I would not be left out again. He could not ignore me anymore.

I stood up, so there could be no mistake, and called out clear as prayer: “I will go with you, John. I will protect you and keep you living on this road.” And I will bring a map, I added silently.

The priest scowled, and I had won. He could not reject me in front of everyone—how small and mean he would look! But Astolfo beside me, my husband of the voiceless love and jaw like a barrel, looked up at me, his eyes filled with loss. “I will come back for you,” I said softly, and brushed the hair from my love’s brow. But we had learned too well to converse in silence. He would not hold me to it.

Hadulph, in the end, agreed to go as well, and of course Fortunatus. Qaspiel, too, and the little panoti, though many protested that she would be no help and should stay where she could be loved and cared for. She hissed through her perfect, tiny teeth. I looked at Grisalba, but she brayed in laughter. “Not on your life, my decapitated love,” she said, shaking her head.

All our talk done, the sun threw its golden arms up and surrendered behind the far hills, where we would go, all of us, together, and return nothing like ourselves.

THE SCARLET NURSERY

Once, Lamis came to me when the night rung like an old, empty jar, almost dry of dregs. She held out her huge hand, her lip trembling, wanting closeness, afraid to ask, as she was not supposed to be awake, not supposed to trouble her Butterfly when the stars were tucking themselves into bed.

Lamis, Who Was Only Lonely: Tell me a story, Butterfly. One only for me. Tell me where you come from.

You ought to be asleep, my lambfleece love.

Lamis, Who Wanted Something Her Siblings Did Not Have, Something All Her Own: If you tell me, I shall fall asleep.

A child in need is the worst trap the world can lay.

Well, I began, here is the truth of it: I am not like you. I was made of other things than street-dust and spices, other things than cities can forge in their endless and wending hearts. My people did not come with the rest upon the Ship of Bones. We dwelt here in the years before bread and salt, dwelt in honeycombed snow, frozen bees crawling in the rafters of the world. You are all foreigners here, even your mother, even those stone men Catacalon dreamed of, but this is my home.

I am not like you. I sleep curled on the floor of the nursery. I hear the sounds of the palace moving all around me, every one of them: onions chopping in the kitchens, and limes, too, crocus-hearts drying into orange saffron in the scullery. I hear your fathers, all twelve of them, dreaming and snoring. I hear lovemaking above me, the body of the queen moving in the dark. I hear the stones of the walls breathing, the wind slowly wearing them to dust, too slowly to ever see, but I hear it. I hear the lamps being snuffed out, for dawn is coming, and I hear the sound of dawn coming too. It’s like a bell ringing, very long and very low. I know everything that happens in this valley, because I hear it, all the time, every night, every day.

Listen to me, now. The panotii learned to listen; it is this gift we brought to the city. My sacrifice for those children, the sign of how dearly I loved them and their mother, too—was that all those evenings, all those days, I spoke more than I listened.

Close your eyes. I can make you like me.

Once a child was lost in the crags of the mountain which was once called the Axle of Heaven, and also Chomolungma, and also Sagarmatha. She had grey hair though she was a child, not the grey of age but the grey of stone, and her eyes were colorless, prismed like hard crystal. Her name is recorded, and though all things written down are flawed, we believe this: the child without pigment in her eyes was called Panya. Her family loved her, we think. We hope that she was loved, that she slept near a warm yellow horse with a soft nose that nuzzled her when she dreamt of fire. It is pleasant to think so.

But the snow took her mother and the ice took her father and the child clutched the stones with blue fingernails, her milk-teeth chattering, her lips wracked white. And yet she climbed upward, for the child listened, and in listening she heard a music the color of bridal flowers—the closer you get to the heavens, the more jumbled are all things of earth. Music has color, stones have voices, smells have weight and taste. Having no one to scold her and tell her to come down like a good girl, Panya clawed from crag to crag. The music played to her, and only to her, who could listen so well in the white shadows cast by death.

By the time she finally reached the lip of the world and the peak of the great mountain, Panya had grown up. But she had eaten only twelve frozen rice stalks in all her years of growing, so only her eyes had grown large. She was pale as a diamond worm, and wound her arms around the stone spires of that place that are not unlike the copper spires of this place—and she found there the source of the music, still fainter than whispering, and it covered her with love the color of a horse in the darkness.

Panya had found a Stair.

The Stair was neither violet nor golden, neither green nor black. It yawned up, taller than she could ever hope to reach, carved for a giant’s stride, and clouds clung to the top. The Stair wound out from the mountain’s peak in a long spiral, and if she squinted in the terrible, freezing sun, she could see the next Stair beginning. At the foot of the Stair Panya stayed, and listened to its music until it filled her up. In time, she gave birth to a son whose eyes had no color, and a daughter, and a son again, until the village of her children dwelt at the base of the Stair, and ate the frozen milk of her body, and listened.

They listened for so long that their ears grew wide and flowing as sails to catch the quiet, reluctant music of the Stair, and they wrapped themselves in those ears to keep warm, but also to listen to their own hearts. They began to learn, and in learning they began to understand that the Stair is the place where the First Moveable Sphere of the heavens touches the Sphere of Gross Earth. Where the two join nestles our village, which is truly a monastery, and all of us who are brothe

rs and sisters listen there, to the music of that meeting, and to each other, and to ourselves.

I was born there, in the village of Nimat, which contains the Stair as some villages contain a lovely little square with a statue or two, and I supped at the sound of snow falling.

And as she fell down into sleep I told Lamis, the smallest of them, that in the morning I would wake her and her siblings and give them bread brushed with cream and yellow fruit because Lamis liked yellow best, even though Houd preferred violet. I would light the red tapers in the evening, and set out roasted meat and celery-leaves and salty soup, so that they would grow strong and clever. And I would tell them all the things I knew, so that they would learn to listen like Panya, like me. We lived in a city full of spangles and distractions. I opened their ears and curled into your palms.

I sang the story of myself, which is also their story. Listen, I whispered to her. Become like the panotii, who alone have heard the evening ablutions of the stars.