The Habitation of the Blessed - Catherynne M. Valente [59]
Forgive me, wife. I was so young, then.
I gulped for air, I tried to ask after Thomas the Saint and to tell them my name all at once, but it came out on top of itself, backwards, and they did not seem to mark me well. My weakened body betrayed me and I shrank back on the stone with that monster over me, her lash-fringed eyes huge, interested and amused, and somehow their amusement enraged me. I saw, more clearly, that she had no head, but carried her whole face on her torso, and it was intolerable. I could not look her in the eye without witnessing the shame of her nakedness. She wore wide black silken trousers with a thick band of blue at the waist, but her navel was a red mouth and her breasts, her breasts tortured me already, and I could not look at her, but I could not look away.
The other woman, with a serpent’s many-colored eyes, laughed at my discomfort and moved in, her motion too smooth and easy—I glanced down and groaned, for the lady possessed nothing like legs. From her waist she was a serpent, the copper and pinkish-green patterns of her tail coiling and uncoiling. An awful bustle echoed around me, as of many souls in transit, and after so long alone it assailed my ears, my heart, and I prayed fervently to be delivered from this new hell.
“Does it do anything interesting?” said the snake-woman.
“It said: ‘My name is John,’” mused the eagle—which I saw now had long, feathered ears shaped like a horse’s, the long golden body of a lion, and deep black-violet wings folded neatly onto his back. “That’s interesting enough. I don’t know anyone named John.”
“It wants something called an Ap-oss-el,” piped the red lion, whose voiced seemed unusually high and gentle for such an enormous beast.
“Oooh!” exclaimed the serpent. “Is that a machine or a vegetable?” She moved her massive, heavy hair back from her face. Her torso shone, clad in coins that jangled when she moved.
“I think it is a person,” the horror of horrors said thoughtfully. “It called him Thomas. It mentioned a tomb.”
“I’ll wager it’s a ‘he,’” the snake-creature smirked, and pawed at my clothes. I shrieked a little, and immediately felt ridiculous.
“Don’t make assumptions, Grisalba,” the red lion scolded her. “We know nothing about its people. It could be female, or hermaphrodite, like the tensevetes. If it wants to tell us, it will. Until then, use your manners, and the neuter pronoun.”
“Who will look after it?” said the gryphon—for my sodden brain could at least recall that, swirling with old pictures drawn in delicate detail in margins, wings of gold paint, eyes of red. “Someone has to claim it.”
I tried to slow my breath, but my body pounded and shuddered horribly. I needn’t have worried. No one spoke up for me.
“It will have to be me then,” the gryphon sighed with a pert nod of his great head. “I claim this lost beast as my foster until such time as it can take care of its own damned affairs. Witnessed?”
The others acclaimed, and it was done. I belonged to a gryphon.
“Thomas,” I whispered. It was all I could hold onto, the terrible vision of him beneath the sphere. “Take me to St. Thomas, I know he is here! Leave me be, demons, I want no traffic with you!”
The snake, whom the others called Grisalba, sidled up to me and draped the tip of her