The Habitation of the Blessed - Catherynne M. Valente [76]
Mother said: Love, sometimes, ends.
For the third time her cub was afraid.”
In the morning I asked Hadulph to explain further about his mother and the grieving tensevete. He claimed to have told me no such thing and was very abrupt with me throughout the day, though the sky swelled terribly hot and I would very much have liked to ride instead of walk, as Hagia sometimes did, but Hagia had privileges I did not, and God in His Heaven knows how she earned them.
At noon the sparrows descended.
[If this war between my eyes and the page continued much longer I felt I would scream. I could not read any faster, yet the rot battled me for sovereignty over the page. My eyes raced my brain and both of them panted, exhausted. Fat globs of soft, furry mold swarmed up and took a great swath of words, and I felt tears prick my heart. When the text picked up again, Qaspiel was already telling its tale, squatting by the fire, I imagine, those long dark wings brushing the red earth, long yellow beans in a clay pot, all of them chewing tea leaves to make the evening pleasant.]
“…so the man Herododos, whose beard was so black it shone blue, but whose head was entirely bald, and who liked tamarind beans specially, and who told excellent jokes about elephants, had a pet bird, which some say was a mynah and some say was a parrot. In either event it could speak, and in either event Herododos also had brought with him a half-wife, as he called her, from a place called Lydia, and her hair shone blue, too, and her name was Sapham. The blemmyae put passion-flowers into her braids, because the red petals looked so radiant against her hair, and she sang them a song about a man who knew everything in the world, but told it more beautiful than it really was, so that a poor Lydian maid became a queen, and marmots became giant, noble ants with souls of incorruptible gold. Everyone gave the wise man food, and everyone loved him, even if they knew he would leave them behind when he returned home to his whole-wife, no matter how many clever songs his half-wife sang. Sapham winked while she sang, but she also wept. The blemmyae took her knuckles in their mouths, for this is an affectionate gesture among them,” and there Qaspiel paused and extended its own knuckle to Hagia, who bit it gently and smiled, if you could call it a smile. “The blemmyae loved her, because she knew a very large number of clever songs, and some of them were lascivious, and those are the best kind. The mynah-or-parrot began to sing duets with her, and the blemmyae called the bird Pham, because it echoed her, and fed it plum-seeds so it would keep making its pretty harmonies.” Qaspiel spoke as though it could not bear to end a sentence, each one going on and on. It used the word and like a desperate hand, reaching back to haul its words forward.
“But one day Sapham grew sick, and no custard-apples could rouse her to her old songs, and no knuckle-chewing could delight her, and no sight of Herododos herding the cameleopards could amuse her, and her face swelled up red and sweating, and her hair fell out, and when her half-husband took her to the mussel-shell, which had only just sprung up out of the white pool, so the old twins who guard it were then young, she said she did not want to be healed, but to stay here where the blemmyae loved her and put passion-flowers in her hair, and not go back to Lydia where she would be left, lonely, while her half-husband went back to his whole-wife and had a brace of children who looked nothing like her. She made all of this into a song, as was her habit, and the twins on either side of the mussel-shell marveled, and begged her to come in and be healed, but she would not.
Sapham died, and everyone was very sorry because this does not happen much and they had all told Herododos how no one died