In the Night Garden

It was not unlike any other mouth, except that it opened in the middle of her body, and the voice which issued from it was lower than any woman’s voice.

“This Anchorite wonders if you want to get it out of her body, or kill it altogether? A very different procedure, depending on which it is you aim for.” A dark pink tongue slid out of the mouth and licked its lips.

I looked down in shame at my foot, whose once-thick hair had grown sparse with grief. “I want to kill it. I want to destroy it.”

“Well enough. I won’t ask you if your love is true or any of that rot—it’s not my place to judge. After all, I’m a naked woman chained to a wall; I’ve no business questioning the lifestyles of wine-makers or anyone else.”

“Did you choose this prison, my lady?”

“Don’t ?my lady’ me, little limp-leg.” She chuckled, settling herself against the wall so that her chained arms cupped the speaking belly, almost as an expectant mother would cradle her womb. “Of course I chose it! Do you think the priests of the Basilica could keep me, if I did not wish it?”

The Anchorite slipped her wrists from her chains as easily as a child undresses for her bath. She shook her hands at me teasingly and pushed them back into the manacles.

“I am not here for them. I tell them nothing, I give them nothing. Shadukiam is a necropolis; it is only that the streets do not know they are dying. It is a slow poison, a rot that takes centuries to kill. Love of silver, love of beauty, l

ove of seeming. The oligarchs do not care what justice is, only what seems just. They do not care what mercy is, only what appears merciful. Thus justice and mercy will always escape them. I am the canker; I am the sore on the flesh of this dying pig. I am for you, and for the others who dwell on the fringes of Shadukiam, who can be saved from its ruin. What knowledge I can give to those who are treated with what seems like kindness, but is unkind, I give. When a Monopod comes to me, I open my hair and show him my true mouth. When the Hsien come, I let them cover me in their wings and I tell them secrets in a cloud of feathers. When a priest comes, when a banker comes, I roll my eyes and piss on their shoes, and they think I am mad.”

I knelt—which is not easy for us—and pressed my lips briefly to that secret mouth, in sacrament and thanks. When I pulled away, I saw tears shine in the Anchorite’s eyes.

“Then I have no thanks enough, and whether you like the word or no, I will call you Lady. Tell me how to kill the Yi.”

The mouth smiled, and the smile was as full of pity as a spring well is filled with rain. “The only thing that can destroy the spirit of a Yi and force it to the underworld, the only thing that will bind it and keep it from taking the body of another dead wretch, is to pierce the Yi through the eye with the golden talon of a Griffin.”

“Then I shall seek out the Griffin.”

“Ah, I am sorry, my boy, but there are only two left in the world. The Arimaspian hordes have slaughtered the rest in their lust for gold. The female, called Quri, dwells in the Boiling Sea; the male, called Jin, at the peak of the Red Mountain of Nuru, whose slopes will blind you before you approach its smallest peak. And neither is in the habit of severing his or her talons for grieving lovers.”

“Nevertheless, I will seek out the Griffin. I cannot do less for my Tova. I cannot leave her like this, to be used up and discarded when she no longer even bears the face I know so well.”

“Then I suggest the male,” she said with a sigh. “The female would dine on your liver before you had hopped three steps onto her beach. Go, if you are determined. But go now; the parishioners approach and the Yi is even now turning the flesh of your woman to crags and craters.”

The Anchorite closed her gown of hair over her mouth and huddled once more against the wall, keening back and forth in an impressive display of madness. That very day I left the Rose Dome and turned my foot toward Nuru and its red cliffs.

I WALKED ALONGSIDE CHAYIM, WHO HAD GROWN slower in his halting gait as he told his story.

“I am sorry my people have made this more difficult for you. It is true we hunted the Griffin and took more than our share. We are ashamed of this.”

“But you still hunt the poor beast. And how can you take your share of something that is not yours?”

“You do not understand; you are not of the Oculos. Our mistake was not in hunting the Griffin, but unbalancing the war between us. The Griffin’s gold is ours; we are blessed by the Fourth Blink of the World-Eye. It is ours by right and by strength of arms. But we should have been satisfied with the world as it was, and not sought more gold than we needed. Without the Ocular, we are nothing. It is the golden eye that makes us Arimaspians. How can we be denied that which we are? How dare any Griffin deny it to us, even to the last of their kind?”

Chayim scratched his grimy hair. “What exactly does it do?”

“When forged according to the Ritual of Ob and pressed into the skull of the King, it grants him the strength of ten men, and a lifespan three times his natural length. The Ocular can see far beyond our kingdom, into cities and wild lands on the other side of the world. It allows him to guide his people, to influence them and give his vision to the tribe. He sees far beyond the space of one tribe, and far beyond the life of one man, for his own life sees the death three times over of all he loves. The Ocular draws the Stare of the World-Eye, and ensures the survival of our nation. Without it, the Eye would slide from us, and we would perish from the face of the earth.” My voice shook with passion—these are the deepest faiths of my father’s fathers.

“And with all that perspective, no King of yours could see that the line of Griffins would end, and there would be no more gold for your Ocular?”

I shrugged. “The Eye will provide. They ate our herds by the hundreds and thought nothing of it—why should we be counted as less than they?”

Chayim shook his head—like most outsiders, he could not accept the superiority of our claim, or the obvious need for the Griffin to submit to us. I was a little disappointed. After all, I understood his need to put his woman to rest perfectly. “I had hoped to simply ask for the gift of a talon, but after such losses surely Jin will not part with one. It will have to be stolen.”

I put a comforting arm around my compatriot. “One must always steal from Griffin. They cannot be reasoned with. You would not try to beg a gift from a wild hog—a Griffin is no different.”

We walked in silence for some time, and the red silhouette of Nuru grew before us like a living flame. It had begun to prick at my eye, to scratch at my lashes and pull tears from behind my lid. I rubbed at it, trying to clear my sight, and knuckled away the tears as they swelled up. I could see that Chayim was also weeping; only a little at first, but then more and more until tears streamed down his face and mine in salt rivers. We could not look at the jagged peaks, or the sunlight filtering through them in thick red-violet shafts. I fell to my knees; Chayim crumpled and lay on his side, breathing shallowly, unable to raise his head towards the glowering mountain.

“It is like a riddle,” he gasped, his hairy toes twitching. “How do a man with one leg and a man with one eye climb a mountain without looking at it?”

My chest was tight as a skin stretched over the barrel of a drum. I loosened the leather straps of my breastplate, trying to catch my breath as my eyes clouded with tears. As I pulled it away from my body, I glimpsed the mountain reflected in its polished surface, and found that I could look at the image in the metal without pain. I turned to the Monopod and smiled.