The Habitation of the Blessed - Catherynne M. Valente [54]
He had not yet called her a whore and tried to make her do penance with a taper in each hand. She had not yet sunk her teeth into his cheek, and sent him purpled and pustulant back to Hadulph.
Hadulph had not yet licked him clean, roughly and patiently, as cats will, and called him his errant cub. He had not yet fallen asleep against the scarlet haunch of the lion.
He had not yet retreated into the al-Qasr to study our natures and embrace humility, ashamed of his pronouncements and his pride. I had not yet brought him barley-bread and black wine, or watched over him through three fevers, or showed him, when he despaired, how my collarbone opens into a sliver of skin like clouds stretched over a loom.
He had not yet come crawling through the dark, shame-scalded, to hear my belly speak, and read to him from the green pepper-papyrus of my daily calligraphy, just to hear the way I said my vowels. He had not yet said that my accent sounded of seraphim.
This is how memory works, when you live forever. You look back from a perch of years and it all seems to happen at once.
“My name is John,” he said, “I… I think I have become lost. I know that I came searching for Thomas and his tomb. The Apostle, where is the Apostle? Take me to him, if you are a Christian soul.”
Hadulph and I exchanged glances.
“What is an Apostle?” the lion said.
THE SCARLET NURSERY
In the wake of any visit from the phoenix, the children descended into an orgy of new ambitions and phraseologies and wild dreams, all balanced on the pyramid of toys and baubles Rastno brought them, half of which would be broken inside of a month, the other half ensconced among the most treasured toys of our little creche. I never devised a method of predicting which way any single glass ball or cage or crystal lamia with her tail flaming bright orange and blue would go. He was a great glassblower, Rastno. He reasoned that his glass should be finest of all, since he feared no flame but his own. And true to this he filled the capital with beads and baubles and bowls and chalices, plates and amphorae and children’s toys. And mirrors, mirrors of every shape. The children prepared for weeks for his visits. Nevermind that he came to meet their mother, and inform her of much sadness and more fear; for my dears he came only to dazzle them. His scarlet and cream feathers arced and curved in a dance for their delight; the golden plume of his brow bobbed in interest when they shared their small triumphs and betrayals. He was hardly bigger than Lamis, if you excused her hands, but to them he was big as a mountain.
The dead moon slid low in the sky; we had prepared a night-picnic for her rebirth. Ikram had boiled mint and berries all afternoon to make jam—it appealed to her nature, the fire, the bubbling, the pain of scalding her thumbs. Lamis had rolled out little cakes as round as the living moon, the dough eggy and yellow, very quietly and diligently, as if with her own virtue encouraging the new moon to rise. Houd had brewed coffee for all of us in a silver pot, crushing the beans with his prodigious fist, already as strong as a mallet. He peered at it with some excitement: dark, bitter, hot, smelling deeply of cinnamon and earth and even a little of the blue flowers the queen keeps ever at her bedside. All because, as Houd said: the moon likes these things best.
And so we sat under the stars, on a hill behind the al-Qasr, just high enough that we could peer over the sardian tips of her towers, and their crowns of bronze stars that silhouetted against the real and blazing ones. The cakes tasted a bit of anise, and I praised Lamis,