The Habitation of the Blessed - Catherynne M. Valente [118]
I believe, if we are civilized and do not ask after the other’s age, that I am younger than you. But you lived in Nimat, among the panotii and the lions, and a peculiar peace has always held sway there. Here, in Nural, in Pentexore, when I was young—it was a vicious place. Two of my brothers killed each other over a racing debt; kings and queens changed like hands of cards. I saw more of this than most, because of my mother. She would bundle me in a long green swath of silk, and I heard her cases, too. Afterward, she would say: Abir, what would you have decided? And I would say: That bad man stole from the other one. The other one should get to steal anything he likes that belongs to the first man, which is a child’s idea of justice. Or she would say: Abir, would you steal, if your friend had more than you, and you envied her? And I would say: Yes, but I would not get caught. The Fountain made everyone certain they could do anything they liked; they had no fear of death, no shame. They had lived so long that life became boring, and more and more cruel pleasures were needed to make them feel alive. I recall one male pushed another cametenna against a wall while he was in estrus—the male shattered and died. After the mating season had passed, my mother demanded a reason. The male said: I wanted to see what it would look like.
People have not changed since I was a girl, not really, but I felt the savage blood of Nural so keenly then, sitting with my mother at her podium, and it frightened me, when a blemmye-man looked at me lasciviously, that perhaps if my mother were not looking, he would take me, for I was not much less pretty then than I am now, and who would stop him? I was small and weak, I could not hurt back. I wanted to hurt back. I was no different.
But children grow up, even when they are afraid. And I went to the Fountain, and my hair grew so long I braided it into ropes, and I watched, and learned. I watched the queen, I confess, more than I ought to have. I watched how she ascertained those who lied to her, those who meant ill, by smelling with her prodigious nose their sweat, their anxious, mean humors. She could even smell their dreams, their ambitions, and when she looked at me, when she breathed, she grew disturbed, and grave. But still I watched her, and wished I had a nose like that.
I was chosen to be a greatmother early, because my mother had birthed so many, because my brothers had died that year, because I was strong and unmarried. I remember the nervous preparations—the baths and endless soaking, to prepare my skin and make it porous. I remember unbraiding my hair until it fell to the floor, and entering the hall, where I could choose males of my liking. And they were all so beautiful, the bold frost on their shoulders, their quiet hope and adoration. I chose, I fell among them, all twelve, and their kind eyes rejoiced, and more I shall not say of this, for it passes the bounds of decorum.
You must understand, when a cametenna is pregnant, she possesses a strength hardly imaginable. All the vigor of her children yet to be and their dozen fathers moves in her, and if she is not careful her feet will rend the floor and her idlest gesture will shatter bones. This is why she cannot give birth in the hall. She would kill her mates, though she never meant to touch them. I carried my three offspring, that you know so well, not being so prolific as my mother. My head swam with the power my body concealed, and closeted with my mother, who knew all this well,