The Habitation of the Blessed - Catherynne M. Valente [82]
In truth I barely understood the map I carried. Delicately drawn, veined as a leaf, the mountains were tipped in silver ink and the names of the cities we meant to pass through drawn in a rich cuttlefish tincture. When I picked it from the branch, I ran my hand over the stiff parchment—almost, but not quite, as stiff as a toenail—wondering where, in the alchemy of the earth, the slant of the penmanship on this map was decided. Babel, it looped. Ultima Thule. And more mysterious still, it showed the banyan tree, and the field of red-silk cotton flowers, and small figures whose shapes I did not want to guess at.
“Do you love the priest, even though he wants to convert you?” I asked. I did not know if I sought the gryphon’s answer or my own.
“I pity him. Pity is a cousin to love. When he forgets himself, he can be dear, like a baby. He made me soup one afternoon, all onions and no meat, because, he said, he did not know what could be killed for meat here, as according to his God I am a beast, but at least he knows that I should not be eaten. It was not a good soup, but it was meant well, and I think that is John in sum.”
We walked in companionable silence, and after a while, Fortunatus picked me up by my belt and hauled me onto his back. I smiled—gryphons are not vocal with their affection, but you can’t miss it, when you’re ankle deep in golden fur. Nor are they so sensitive about being ridden as red lions.
Not long after that, we came to a high cliff, which dropped away below us into a hazy mist, and a soft rushing sound. Trees jutted from the rock, twisting up to get at the thin light that filtered down. We all peered over the edge. Hajji, to whom I had not yet said a word and would not until she spoke to me, tossed a chip of rock down. It tumbled end over end in the air until it sank into the mist—where it hung, stuck, suspended in the cool fog. It still descended, but so slowly we could barely see it move.
“Thule,” sighed Hajji, and rolled over onto her back, her ears stretching out on the weedy grass. “A friend with very steady eyes once told me about the place. There is no longer any land or air or sea, but a mixture of all of these, which is in consistency like the body of a jellyfish, and holds all of Thule together. Something happened here, to mix up the world this way. Thule is reachable, findable: but once found, it is impossible to move, to step further than a few stumbling feet onto the glassy shore. It is impossible to penetrate the heart of Thule, impossible to progress, pilgrim or no, impossible to leave. At least, I have heard it is impossible. I do not know everything under the sun.”
I knew of it, dimly. I wanted to know more, to beg Hajji to tell us everything, to tell us about the smallest soul who lived down there, or her friend with steady eyes. Anything. But I kept quiet. It is only manners, and manners are all we have. Still, it was the most I had ever heard her say.
“Perhaps if we flew in very fast,” Fortunatus mused. “A well might open up—all air possesses patterns, currents, even this gluey fog, and certainly at some time or another the aether must billow aside, must part, and allow some leaf or nut to drift down onto some parapets—rounded, I should think, and bulbous, palaces built to bear the weight of the miasma. I could fly; I could spy out a bubble that might carry us down, to see what is there—” he paused and remembered his friend John, who had little interest in new and exciting locales of which one could tell wonderful tales of back home. “To see if they know anything of the Ap-oss-el, if anyone is living at all down there. At any rate, going through is always faster than around—this chasm cracks for miles.”
“You might also get stuck like that pebble, and then we should