The Habitation of the Blessed - Catherynne M. Valente [47]
“They will not be like me, Imtithal. Not all men from my world are kind, nor ever stood in the light of my brother’s love. They will come with swords and they will come with many loyalties that you will not understand, nor will they try to make you understand.”
“Like Alisaunder, you mean?”
And a look crossed his face as he considered the name. It seemed to sit on his tongue like a brand.
“Do you mean Alexander?”
Our languages clashed often thus—squabbling cousins.
“Alisaunder the Red, who closed the Gates, and trapped the tribes beyond the mountains, and made our land safe. It was a long time ago. Long before me, or even my parents. Before even the sciopods founded their great forest away to the east. Did he come from Yerushalayim, too?”
Didymus Tau’ma shook his head, troubled. I touched his face, grown old, but no less dear.
“They will come,” he sighed, “and they will not be called Alexander, nor called Thomas Didymus, and they will not make you safe. You must be wary, and not leap into their arms like you leapt into mine.”
“I am not a child anymore. I do not leap so often.”
And he laughed a little beneath me.
“I know now,” he rasped, “that this is part of God’s great scheme, this place. I think perhaps there was never an apple here, nor a snake.”
“We have many snakes and apples. And I never liked that story. I don’t think it’s true at all. Nothing in it is right.”
“Not right for you, not here. But the men in my world, they can be so wicked, Imti, so wicked. You will live so much longer than me. They will hurt you, because that story is true for them, and they cannot help the terrible instincts in them, to eat everything, and know everything, and destroy whatever is not like them. If a man should come walking over the sand, treat him carefully. Be wary, like a wolf.”
“I will,” I promised.
And after we had lain together thus for many hours, I said: “Let me bury you here, Tau’ma. You do not have to go a Heaven for men who are wicked. Let me bury you, so that we need not be apart.”
And though he had always refused, in dying he yielded to me. The temptation, when a man from that world stands at the black door, is too great.
“All right, Imtithal. Bury me deep.”
Houd, Who Was Also Wicked: And did anyone else come? Did they bring swords?
It has been many centuries since. Perhaps there is no other world, and my friend was only a bit mad. Perhaps he wasn’t, but it is just too difficult to get here from there. But it is wonderful to think about, isn’t it? Another world, right next to ours, filled with such fantastical things?
THE HABITATION OF THE BLESSED
Our land is the home of elephants, dromedaries, camels, crocodiles, meta-collinarum, cametennus, tensevetes, wild asses, white and red lions, white bears, white merules, crickets, griffins, tigers, lamias, hyenas, wild horses, wild oxen, and wild men—men with horns, one-eyed men, men with eyes before and behind, centaurs, fauns, satyrs, pygmies, forty-ell high giants, cyclops, and similar women. It is the home, too, of the phoenix and of nearly all living animals.
We have some people subject to us who feed on the flesh of men and of prematurely born animals, and who never fear death. When any of these people die, their friends and relations eat him ravenously, for they regard it as a main duty to chew human flesh. Their names are Gog, Magog, Anie, Agit, Azenach, Fommeperi, Befari, Conei-Samante, Agrimandri, Vintefolei, Casbei, and Alanei. These and similar nations were shut in behind lofty mountains by Alexander the Great, towards the north. We lead them at our pleasure against our foes, and neither man nor beast is left undevoured, if our Majesty gives the requisite permission. And when all our foes are eaten, then we return with our hosts home again.
—The Letter of Prester John, 1165
THE CONFESSIONS OF HIOB VON LUZERN, 1699
The nail in my candle plinked onto the tin plate, and I stirred myself from that terrible tale. I could not believe, not quite believe, that Imtithal’s friend had been Saint Thomas lost in India, the