Hitherby Dragons

The forest is dry. Its soil is brittle. Its air is sharp and clean. The pine trees smell like antiseptic. Spirits live in the forest. They invite Jenna to play.

“It’s great fun to look for truffles,” suggests Boar. “Also, if there are any knights around, we can gore their sides.”

“Take to the air as a duck!” offers Duck. “Nothing flies as elegantly as a duck.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” Coyote says dubiously.

“It’s not a lie,” says Duck. “There’s an implicit ‘exactly’. Nothing flies exactly as elegantly as a duck.”

“I can’t come and play,” says Jenna. She’s chewing on a hamburger and writing in a black and white composition book. “I’m writing a book of examples of filial piety.”

“Oh?” says Duck. “Can you read some to us?”

Jenna swallows, and recites:

In 1983, the giant spiders were very hungry. One had a clutch of eggs, so she was extra-hungry. They tried to eat me, but I’d always bonk them on the nose. So the mother grew very thin. She thought she might die. “Don’t worry, mother,” said the little spiders, hatching. “You can eat us!” So she did. By keeping their mother alive at the cost of their own existence, the little spiders fulfilled their filial duty.

“That’s very moving,” agrees Boar. “But is it really virtuous?”

Jenna considers. “I don’t know,” she admits. “I think the sacrifice is beautiful, but does it compare to the beauty of a giant spider’s life?”

“I don’t know,” Duck answers. “What is the beauty of a giant spider’s life?”

“I’m biased,” Jenna says, “since they keep trying to eat me. But I think it’s the way that they’re cruel without hating. They do monstrous, horrible things. But inside their heads, it’s cold, clear, and empty. They’re not ugly like demons. They’re pretty. Like the winter. And they have potential.”

“You should read another,” Coyote says, slouching.

Jenna recites:

Vicious Lily was a robotic assassin created in 1925 to advance the cause of Impressionism. “What is your o-pin-ion of Mo-net’s pain-tings of the Thames?” it asked me. I assured it that all of Monet’s works were masterpieces. “Good,” it said. “I will let you live.” Then it turned to the wall. “What is your o-pin-ion of the Rou-en Ca-the-drals se-ries?” The wall made no answer. Vicious Lily’s laser arm clicked. A dial spun. Vicious Lily blasted the wall until nothing remained but rubble. “Take that in the name of ro-bot jus-tice!” it said. Not a moment went by that Vicious Lily did not think of its creator, Monet.

Boar grunts. “It’s a robot. It can’t help it.”

“Robots can break their programming,” says Jenna. “It happens all the time on TV. Plus, I heard that if you flip your Transformers toys into a special third configuration, they come to life, embezzle your money, and flee the country in disgrace.”

“Point,” says Coyote. “In a way, a robot that doesn’t break its programming exhibits filial loyalty. Still, I’d think that a true example of robotic loyalty would be a death machine that, having broken its programming, decides to go around killing people for the agency that created it anyway.”

“That would be more impressive,” says Jenna, “but I haven’t seen an example of that. Do you think I should fictionalize my work for greater impact?”

“Not really,” says Coyote. “I’m just sayin’.”

Jenna takes a few more bites of her hamburger, swallows, writes a bit more, and then recites:

Mei Ming was born in 1975. The monster pulled her from the shadow’s womb. The shadow kept her in the tunnels to protect her from the world. Mei Ming wasn’t scared of spiders, but thieves—that’s scary! I tried to look at her with my flashlight helmet, but she shrank from the light. “It’s best to live in the shadows,” she said. “That way my mother always knows where I am.” She gave up light for her mother’s peace of mind—that’s how pious she was.

“What did she look like?” wonders Duck. “I mean, was she all shadowy?”

“A little,” agrees Jenna. “You could definitely see the filial resemblance.”

“You should stay away from her,” counsels Coyote. “The tree never falls far from the branch. Bad eggs like that only lead you into trouble.”

“It’s an interesting issue,” Jenna decides. “I don’t think she can be a bad egg, because if she’s evil, that’s just being loyal to the shadow. And if she’s wonderfully sweet and nice, then that’s not very much like a bad egg, either.”

“Nor like a deviled egg,” Boar points out. “Those aren’t sweet. They taste of mustard.”

“I want mustard,” Jenna says unhappily. It’s hard to find condiments in the tunnels sometimes.

“It’s not about taste,” Coyote answers. “It’s about security.”

Jenna recites:

I met a girl standing over her father’s grave. She was wearing a jacket. “He had a hundred plans,” she said. “But none of them ever worked. So I’ve decided to honor his memory. If you can catch me, your next plan will succeed.”

“It’s dangerous to make promises like that,” I said.

“I know,” she said. “When you make a promise that humans can’t fulfill, you can’t be human any more. I’m okay with that.” By making this promise, she put her filial duty to her father’s memory above the human condition.

“The human condition’s not so great,” Coyote points out. “Now, me, I’m great. Compare and contrast as you will.”

“Humans live out in the world,” Jenna points out. “You hang out with Duck, Boar, and me.”

“See how my fur shines? That’s classy. The human condition doesn’t have class like that. And my teeth are just glorious.” Coyote smiles. “Case closed.”

“What are you going to do with the book when you’ve finished writing it?” asks Duck.

“I’m going to take it to the market and trade it for three magic beans. Then I will plant them, climb to the top of the beanstalk, kill any nearby giants, and, making a block and tackle from their ligaments and bones, lower the castle into the forest.”

“That’s a stupid plan,” Coyote says. “Why don’t you just trade Cow?”

Jenna lifts a finger to answer, pauses, and turns bright red.

“What?” Coyote asks.

Jenna ducks her head. “My lunch had no foresight,” she embarrassedly admits.

It is 1715 years before the common era.

Near the city of Sodom lives a man named Lot, and he takes many guests within his house. Yet when he serves them meals, and offers them salt, his wife says, “None yet, my husband. There is none.”

Zachariah, a guest, asks her, “What, none?”

And Lot smiles.

“It is a thing my wife says,” Lot explains.

“Why so?”

Zachariah is looking at the shelf on the wall. It has salt on it. The jar is labelled. But Lot only shrugs.

“When we argued with Abraham,” he says, “and then came to this place, she shed no tears. And when the men forced themselves on her, she did not cry. And when our daughters were born, there were no tears; nor when the first of them was slain. So I asked her, ‘Flower of my heart, are you so stingy with your salt?’

“‘This is not pain,’ she said. ‘This is life.’

“‘And what is pain?’ I asked.

“‘Something that our guests will bring.’ And since that time, when I bring in a guest, and ask her for seasoning . . .”

Lot shrugs expressively.

“I do not see why I should be deprived on account of your wife’s strangeness,” Zachariah complained.

“It is a meal,” Lot says. “And I have learned to favor meals that do not so much depend upon the salt.”

So Zachariah eats.

“Can you show me the children?” Zachariah says, after a while.

“I am scarcely a man of Sodom,” Lot demurs.

Zachariah gives him a keen regard. “You would not be here if you had no sympathy for them, nor they for you.”

Lot glances at his wife. She shrugs expressively and scrubs out a pot.

“Come with me,” he says.

He takes Zachariah out into the city, and down its hidden ways, and to the nursery, and there they look in on them. The building is crowded with beds, clothing, pots, and children. The children are between six and thirteen years of age, and the undertone of their skin is gray. Some are playing; others, resting. There’s an undertone of malaise.

“They do not seem like much,” Zachariah admits.

“Ah.”

“It’s just . . . I’d expected more.”

Lot looks up. “Amiel,” he says. “Lia.”

He speaks to two girls sitting side by side on a rough cot and playing some game involving the postures of their hands. They turn, and look towards the entrance. Their eyes are like a shock to Zachariah, and he stumbles back.

“Lot,” says Amiel. Her voice is chimes and wind, a thing of unnatural beauty. It is not suited to her throat, and as she speaks, Zachariah can see the pain that word causes her. He thinks, though he cannot know, that it must rub the inside of her throat raw. Lia places her hand protectively over Amiel’s.

“This is Zachariah,” Lot says. “He’s visiting. He wanted to know about you.”

“I—” Amiel gets out the first part of that word, and nothing more, before Lia’s hand is clamped over her mouth. Lia shakes her head, firmly, and then looks towards Zachariah.

“We are gods,” Lia says. “They call us Nephilim and say that we are the children of angels. But they do not know us. We are gods.”

“I had heard,” Zachariah says, “that some survived the flood. But . . . there are dozens of you.”

“Hundreds,” Lia says. Her voice is matter-of-fact. “This is not our only house.” She looks at him. “Shall I tell you your future?”

Zachariah shakes his head.

“Thank you,” Lot says. Lia nods, and Amiel too. So Lot leads Zachariah back to his home.

Zachariah sits a while in thought.

“When they are of age,” he says, “this city shall be invincible.”

“An empire,” Lot agrees. His wife turns and gives him a harsh look; but he only shrugs and smiles at her.

“And those of us allied to it, . . .” Zachariah adds.

“Why do you think I have shown it to you? . . . I am drawn here,” Lot says. “To these people. To the children. They are a wonder of our time. I cannot betray them. Yet when they sweep out in conquest of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, the Jebusites; when Jordan falls, and Egypt, and even Babylonia; then the tribe of Abraham will not be spared. That is why I bring my people here, to meet the people of Sodom, and sometimes show them these wonders. We must be here, standing behind the scythe, lest our people die like wheat.”

“Where did they come from?”

“It is the Lord’s way,” Lot says, “when he destroys, to leave a remnant.”

His wife snorts. Lot ignores her.

“It is Sodom’s way to breed with such remnants, by force if such it requires, and create the god-children you have seen.”

Zachariah turns his gaze to Lot’s wife, who flushes and turns her head aside.

“My flower bears only mortal children,” Lot says, quietly. “They leave her be.”

It is the night. The fires are low. Zachariah wakes and goes outside. He finds Lot’s wife seated against the wall. He takes a seat beside her.

“It is a night of ill omen,” she says. “You had best be on your way.”

“Pardon,” he says. “But I do not know your name.”

She sighs.

“Well,” he says. “I do not.”

“He calls me his flower,” she says. “Isn’t that enough?”

“No.”

She flushes again. There’s a pause.

“My name is Maya,” she says. “I am the desert, and the desert wind, and the sky, and the sea, and life, and death, and the beating of your heart. I am the perfume of a spring morning. I am the abattoir stench. I am everything in this world.”

“You have fallen low.”

“No,” she says. “I have not.”

She holds out her hands, palm down. “I have known hardship and loss,” she says, “since I came to Jordan, but it is not pain. I am Maya. Even the brutal ways of these men are not pain to me. They are simply life.” She turns her hands upright, and moves them together to cup the air. “And in exchange for this suffering, I may have Lot; and I can tend the children; and these things make me glad.”

Zachariah waits.

“He is a good man,” she says, defensively. “He is not schooled in goodness, he has no great philosophy of virtue, but he is good at heart.”

“You could have palaces in the sky,” Zachariah says, “attended by thousands of men or maidens, and sup on the best of all the world.”

“I have done so,” Maya says, “and will do again; but that is not pleasure. That is simply life.”

“I would lay with you,” Zachariah says.

She sighs. She rises. “You’ll come to a bad end if you do.”

He hesitates.

“Leave,” she says. “You have the chance. This is a favor. Do you understand? It’s not that I’ll stop you. It’s just . . . you’re Lot’s guest. He wants you safe. If you do this, you’ll die horribly, and not at my hand.”

Zachariah looks disturbed, and then he nods. “Thank you,” he says. He leaves, hurriedly; and dawn comes, and turns to evening, and the creatures of beauty, that some name seraphim, come down the road.

Lot is sitting outside his house, outside the city walls, when they approach. He rises to his feet.

“My lords,” he says. “Please turn aside to your servant’s house. You can wash your feet and spend the night and then go on your way early in the morning.”

They regard him with a cold and casual regard.

“We will spend the night in the square,” one answers. Lot shivers, hearing the creature’s voice.

“Please,” he says. “They will do you harm.”

There is an indefinable hesitation, and a sense of pressure in the air. Lot’s ears hurt, deep inside. Then the feeling fades.

“Very well,” they say, and enter Lot’s house. Maya gives them a sardonic look.

“More guests?” she says.

“My flower,” he protests.

She looks them up and down. “Leave,” she says flatly. There’s a pause. Then her eyes shadow. “Please.”

The men turn and look at Lot, who smiles jovially. “Ignore her,” he says. “She is ill-mannered; but you are my guests.”

Maya scowls and goes to the cookpots. She feeds them a meal, and does not stint the salt.

“Tell me,” she says. “Is there any way that this city will be spared?”

One of the creatures smiles at her. “If there are fifty,” he says, “fifty virtuous men, why, then, Sodom shall live.”

Lot looks uncomfortable. “How do you mean?” he asks.

“Or forty-five,” the other creature points out.

“Yes. If there are forty-five virtuous men. Why, even forty should do.”

“You mock me,” hisses Maya. “You know there are but three.”

Stung, the creature looks down.

“We had hoped,” he says. “We had hoped there would be ten.”

Lot has gone very quiet; but Maya laughs, and her voice is bitter.

“They are all beautiful,” she says. “The children. And the men! Their ambition is ambrosia. And the women, who keep their men and raise their own cubs in the shadow of such gods: they are heroes too. Oh, this place is a jewel, thou seraphim. But virtue is a measure ill-suited to it.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Spare them,” she says. Her voice is flat.

“The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is too great,” one seraph says. “If what we see is as we have been told, this place must end.”

Then the walls began to shake from the pounding of fists, and a voice rose up from outside: “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them.”

“If you ignore the first impression,” Maya says, thinly, “they do have redeeming qualities.”

“Bring them out!” cries the voice.

“Can they get children on us?” the seraph asks, in a voice of faint distraction.

“I do not know,” Maya says.

“Bring them out!”

Lot goes outside and shuts the door behind him. “No,” he says. “I pray you. Do not do this thing.”

“It is our way.”

Lot tilts his head to one side. “I have two daughters,” he says. “They have never known a man. Take them, in my guests’ stead.”

Inside, Maya winces. A seraph catches her gaze, and says, “They will be safe.”

“It’s embarrassing,” she says. “I love him for his good intentions, but I’ve met spiders with a better moral compass.”

“You could drive them away,” the seraph suggests.

“It’s not my nature.”

Outside, the leader of Sodom’s men shakes his head. “We seek power, Lot; and so, I think, do you. We won’t be bribed with mortal sex.”

“Then,” says the seraph, inside, “it falls to me.”

The seraph spreads his wings, and his jewel-like eyes blink once, and a great light shines forth within Lot’s house, and from every window and under the door. It blinds the men of Sodom, and they stagger about. Lot, with the quiet step of a child who has erred, walks back inside.

“There is judgment,” the seraph says. “This city shall die. Gather those that are yours. Take them from this city. In the morning, Sodom and Gomorrah shall be dust and ash.”

“The children,” Lot says.

The seraph snorts. Then after a moment, he sighs, and shakes his head.

“There are no innocents,” he says, “in Sodom.”

Maya breaks for the door.

“Maya!” Lot says. But he cannot stop her. She flees into the night. And through the night he went to those he had brought there, and told them to leave, but they did not. And in the morning, the seraphim put their hands on his, and on his daughters’, and take him from the town.

In the shelter of the children, the air is very still.

“What will happen?” asks Lia.

“Brimstone and fire will rain out of Heaven,” Maya answers.

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” Maya says. “Flaming rocks are traditional.”

“Will we die?”

“Yes,” Maya says. The stillness deepens.

“Don’t die,” Amiel says. The voice is clear and beautiful. The flesh inside her throat tears and bleeds. Lia glares at her, then hugs her tightly.

“Please,” Amiel adds.

“I won’t,” Maya says.

Then the fire comes. Maya rises over the city like a veil, her skin shining with the night and the stars, but Maya is illusion, not substance, and the fires come down through her and render all Sodom ruin. She watches as the towers fall. She watches as the nursery crumbles, and the children die, and the men of the city, and the women, and the rats that scurried near the walls. And in the end, only two remain, battered and red, but breathing; and she manifests again at their side.

“Lia,” she says. “Amiel.”

“It is the way of the Lord to leave a remnant,” Lia says. Her voice makes Maya catch her breath. There is nothing of the divine in it, only emptiness, and her godhood has burned away in the crucible of Sodom.

“. . . so cruel,” Maya says.

Lia turns Amiel over, and listens to her heart. “It’s all right,” she says. “Amiel is still herself.” She looks at Maya. “I suppose,” she says, “that my better part was deemed unworthy.”

“It’s not a judgment,” Maya says.

“It’s not?”

“It was deemed better,” Maya says, “that all these die; and you be scoured; and Amiel burned. But that doesn’t make it a punishment. There’s never correlation between one’s suffering and one’s guilt.”

She takes their hands, and leads them away, and at some distance, she looks back.

“You’re crying,” Amiel says, and then begins to choke.

“Help her,” Maya says. And Lia does.

Maya’s tears do not stop, and the salt flows from her like a tide.

It is 703 years before the common era.

Ella lives in the castle of King Sennacherib. Its upper levels are a thing of great majesty and glory, and the King and Ella’s sisters live there. Below that are the humbler quarters of the servants and Ella herself. In the warren beneath are cages, endless cages, full of fiends. And deeper yet, there is a dark and private place, full of a fetid, feline stench. When life is too much for her, Ella goes there, and finds the hidden rag doll she calls Tanit, and talks to it in the dark.

“Tanit,” she says, “I will tell you a story.”

“Story!” cheers Tanit. “Story!”

“There is something that even the monster fears,” she says.

“Ooh.”

Ella imagines that Tanit’s eyes are round.

“When Sodom fell,” she says, “there were two sisters who survived the scourge. Their names were Lia and Amiel.”

“Yes,” Tanit agrees, wisely.

“And Maya looked back on the city, and saw an oracle there that made her cry. It said: Amiel and Lia will love one another forever. But Lia will die, and her children will die, and all her line be mortal. And as Lia dies, Amiel will promise her, ‘I will guard your line, and our families be entwined forever.’

“And this she promised.

“And the oracle said: And these words will be false, for the guardians will prove false. Amiel shall have a daughter, and she a daughter, and she a son. And he will bear a line of men turned monsters, and they shall prey on Lia’s brood, and bring them every misery and sorrow.”

Tanit stomps her foot, or so Ella imagines. “But the monster is afraid!”

“Before she died,” Ella says, “Amiel returned to Sodom, and cracked the pillar of salt; and Maya came forth, and spoke her oracle; and Amiel set a curse on her own line. That as long as there were monsters, there could be heroes.”

Tanit considers this.

“Do you see?” Ella says. “Somewhere, there is a hero. Someone who can kill him. Someone who can fight him. He’ll come here. He’ll save me.”

She picks up the rag doll and hugs her.

“Like a prince,” she says.

Ella is prized among Sennacherib’s maidens. She is a treasure of his realm. But she takes no joy in it. He makes her do hard work from morning until night. She gets up before daybreak, carries water, lights fires, cooks and washes. She sleeps in the ashes of the fire, for she has no bed. Her sisters spill her meals there, or fill her drawers with spiders. Sennacherib cuts her, sometimes, with a thin silver blade. And one day, he names the duty: “You must clean the fiends’ cages.”

Where the fiends dwell, caged like animals, it is dark and cold and quiet. They have the faces of men or monsters, but they are not either. They are madness given form. And she lowers the grate that divides their cages, and scrubs out one half; then lets them back and scrubs out the other. She does this in silence, for she is terrified of fiends. Yet she cannot help naming them, for they are her only companions in this darkness. Razor, she calls one. Tsebanath, she names another. The worst she calls White Lion, for its great bulk is leonine in its way. Its face is the least human of them all, and its mouth larger than her sleeping hearth.

One day, as she cleans its cage, White Lion rumbles:

Ella, Ella, maiden raw.
Come and sleep between my jaws.

She turns and regards it, her heart rate rising. Only one word comes to her mind, so she speaks it: “No!”

White Lion’s eyes close, softly. “I will wait.”

Weeks pass, and months. Ella’s sister Aishah finds Tanit, Ella knows not how, and makes a show of disemboweling the doll before the court. Laughter beats against the boundaries of Ella’s mind. And, as she does every week, she goes down below to clean the cages of the fiends.

Ella, Ella, end your grief.
Let me taste you, root and leaf.
Maiden shining, maiden raw.
Rest your head between my jaws.

“No,” she insists, voice breaking with fear. And White Lion’s eyes close.

“I will wait.”

Weeks pass, and months. Ella dreams of a hero, but the dreams are cold and distant. It is harder to cling to such dreams in days like these.

Ella, Ella, fair of face.
I know a special, secret place.
Let your winter turn to thaw.
Come and sleep between my jaws.

She sits down, exhausted, on the floor.

“Please,” she says. “Do not do this.”

It regards her, silent.

“I don’t want to die.”

“Ah,” rumbles White Lion.

“So I don’t want you to eat me.”

White Lion hisses, and its fetid breath casts clouds of dust across the room. “Child,” it says, “I do not wish to devour you. I wish to know you.”

“Pardon?”

“You know how we are made,” it says.

“My sisters,” Ella says. “Aishah. Zenobia. He . . . emptied them, and broke them. Then he used their emptiness to make you.”

“There are angels in this castle,” White Lion says. “They are born to fill Zenobia’s emptiness with hope. And fiends, to answer Aishah’s hurt with madness. And demons, and ghosts, and dragons, besides. Yet we are not whole. He keeps us from them. In that separation is his strength.”

The fiends in their cages are still now. They are listening to White Lion.

“I wish to know you,” White Lion says. “To become yours. And then to know you further. Then I will not be weak. I will be complete. And I will be free.”

“I won’t,” she whispers. “I don’t want you.”

So she goes up to the hearth, and curls up in the ashes, and shivers herself to sleep.

“Good morning, Ella,” says a voice. It’s a girl’s voice, but still Ella starts awake, and thinks of heroes. It is with two sickening shocks in turn that she sees the truth: not a hero, nor a girl, but rather a tiny fairy maid, leaning against the hearth. In defiance of the dirt and ash, the fairy’s blue gown is as pristine as the sky.

“No,” Ella whispers.

“My name,” the fairy says, “is Tanit. And I have come to deliver you from this place.”

“Please don’t be real.”

The fairy looks dispassionately at her. “It’s not for you or I to decide such things. I exist; I am here; we must both learn to cope.”

Ella holds out her hand, and the fairy steps into it, and Ella holds her up. “He wants me to break,” she says. “He wants to drain away the pieces of myself, until my soul is a patchwork of gossamer. Then he will use the emptiness and use it to craft gods. If you are real, then it means that I am breaking. That I have begun to resemble the void. And that you are the first child of it.”

Tanit sighs and sits down, cross-legged in Ella’s palm.

“Do you know what fairies are?” she asks.

“No.”

So Tanit speaks:

Each person has a world.
It is just so long,
And just so wide,
And just so tall.
Yet there are things beyond its boundaries.
Wildness and magic.
Power.
A fire.
When emptiness looks on the beyond,
The fire casts reflections.

“That is a fairy,” Tanit says. “We are the reflections of that fire. The radiance of the beyond. And I can offer you freedom.”

“No,” Ella says, and her eyes fill with tears. “I’ve tried. I ran, once. I ran all the way to the castle gates. They were there. In sight. And I stopped. I could not make myself go further. I sat down. I waited for him to find me. To punish me. Because I was not strong enough.”

“Ah.”

“I could only choose two things,” Ella says quietly. “To hate myself, or to say, ‘There can be no freedom.’”

Tanit looks down at herself. Her wings shimmer. “Yet I reflect something,” she says. “For I am here.”

Ella tilts her head to one side. “You smell of cat,” she says. Then there’s a mad rage in her eyes, and she flings the fairy to one side, and Tanit flutters dazedly about and scarcely misses the wall.

“No!” Ella shouts.

“Ella?”

At the sound of that voice, Ella goes still. Tanit becomes the drifting of disturbed cinders in the air; and if this is voluntary or involuntary, Ella does not know. She does not care. The voice is Aishah’s, and Aishah is walking in.

“Ella,” Aishah says, “you must not shout so, early in the morning.” She smiles. It’s a crooked, bent smile. “It is not surprising from a filthy cinder girl, but it is still improper.”

“I’m sorry,” Ella says. She ducks her head.

Aishah’s eyes widen. “Dear Ella,” she says.

“No,” whispers Ella; but Aishah walks to her, and lifts her chin.

“Why,” Aishah says, “there’s a hollow in your voice, and in your eyes.”

“No.”

“You are becoming like us.” Some of the coldness fades from Aishah’s voice. It is layered, for a moment, with a bright, mad joy.

“No.”

“Sister,” Aishah says, “it is a thing to celebrate. If this is so, I can give aside my torment of you, and spilling your meals in the ashes, and filling your drawers with spiders. At long last! We may be siblings again. I can dress you in finest raiment, and we can braid one another’s hair, and we can talk of fine and precious things.”

“I am not like you yet.”

Aishah’s eyes shutter. “No,” she says. And she walks to the door. “Yet still I will hold to pleasure, in my heart. For I have longed for this. I have longed for him to raise you up, to join us at his side, and no more the fiends, and no more the knives. I have missed you; and you have been too stubborn in your self to care.”

Then she is gone. And as Tanit reforms, Ella snatches her from the air, and Ella flees like a beast down into the castle’s depths.

“White Lion, White Lion,” she says.

White lion, white lion,
Would you taste of my skin?
Rip the King open from torso to chin.
White lion, white lion,
Do you want to be mine?
Rip the King open from stomach to spine.
White lion, white lion,
This maiden is yours
If you’ll kill the King whom my sister adores.

White Lion studies her for a time.

“I will tell you a secret,” it rumbles.

“What secret is that?”

“In all the years since Lia and Amiel,” White Lion says, “there has not been a hero.”

It is a cold white shock.

“Why are you not a god, Ella?” White Lion asks. “Why are you flesh? Why can my teeth cut you? Why can my claws cleave your bones?”

Ella hesitates. The pressure of its gaze is on her, and a blinding headache rises.

“Because there is a price.”

It pads forward, and its cage cracks and breaks. It sets its paw on her chest and she sinks like paper to the ground.

“Listen,” it breathes, and its stink washes over her. “We are as we define ourselves, whether fairy, fiend, or maid. If you wish a hero, then become one.”

Its mouth comes down over her, and swallows her in darkness and pain.

“What price?” she asks the darkness.

But in the end, it does not matter.

“I want to kill him,” she says.

Wrong.

The stench makes her dizzy. She is on the verge of fainting. She thinks about what she has chosen; and then makes a small correction.

“I promise,” she says. “I will kill him.”

“Sometimes, things just are,” Micah says.

He’s sitting in front of his house. He’s waiting. It’s been about two hours.

“There used to be gibbelins,” he says. “They lived outside the world. They ate people. And to lure people to them, they had a cellar of emeralds, and a cellar of sapphires, and a cellar of gold.”

He has surrendered, and so he has no power. His mother has phoned the monster. The nightmares will come for him, and take him away. The air is very cold.

“And a man carved down into their cellar,” he says, “from under a river, and flooded it, to raid their emeralds without going to their door. And he emerged from the water with a sack full of emeralds, and there were the gibbelins, and without saying a word, or even smiling, they killed him. It didn’t make anyone happy. He died, and the gibbelins weren’t even particularly pleased. But sometimes things just are.”

A car pulls up. A man gets out. His nametag reads “Thysiazo,” and below that, “Acceptance.”

“Micah,” he says.

“Why?” Micah asks him. “Why do I have to do this?”

Thysiazo blinks. Then he shrugs, and gives an honest answer. “Power,” he says. “For a monster, power is defined as the point where they no longer need to create gods of their own—when they can conjure them forth from others. The monster has desired to break you to his will from the moment that Liril made you; and only certain failings on our part prevented it thus far. It is generally a benign process,” he adds, “although there are unfortunate circumstances at present.”

“Oh.”

Micah hesitates at the door, thinking about something else to say, but Thysiazo casts him an inquiring look, and Micah bitterly climbs in. Thysiazo sits in the driver’s seat and starts the car. There’s a long and quiet drive.

“What are you?” Micah asks.

“A demon,” Thysiazo says.

“No horns,” Micah points out. “Also, not red or ugly.”

“No,” Thysiazo admits. “I’m more of an easy-on-the-eye evil.”

Micah frowns.

“Not as a person,” Thysiazo clarifies. “In my own person, I’m capable of both goodness and hypocrisy, and through one road or another I find myself a morally acceptable creature. But it would be a mistake for a demon to deny the fundamental evil of his nature. Folly has no merits.”

“How are you evil, then?”

“We’re going to Tina’s home,” Thysiazo says. “Do you remember her?”

There’s a long pause. “Vaguely.”

“Are you all right with going there?”

Micah is silent.

“There’s a little place in you that’s terrified,” Thysiazo says. He turns the wheel gently as the road curves. “You won’t admit it, but it’s there, in your heart, and it’s casting out a radiance of emptiness. It’s asking the rest of your mind for help. It’s asking the world for help. It’s calling out to the gods. And this is my answer: that you should sit, and wait, and accept what comes. You have to, Micah. You surrendered of your own free will. To protect others. It’s just a necessary sacrifice, something that you have to live with, something that’s part of your world now. I can’t help giving that answer. It’s what demons do. We teach you to accept whatever is necessary to bear. And our answers go straight into your soul.”

“Oh,” Micah says.

“See,” says Thysiazo, “if I started pretending that that was a good answer, then I wouldn’t be a demon. I’d just be a dork.”

“Please let me go,” Micah says.

Thysiazo drives.

“I’ll make you finger sandwiches?”

“Yum,” Thysiazo says. “But, no.”

After a while, they pull up in front of a house. It’s white. It’s got big brooding windows and a little fence out front. Its roof is painted a light blue. It’s got a small grassy yard. Thysiazo leads Micah to the door, and knocks, and then leads him inside to a small fuzzy brown-green-gold couch.

“Sit,” Thysiazo says, and then fades away to lean against the wall.

Micah can hear someone washing their hands in the other room. There’s a swish of fabric. Then she comes out: Tina, a woman with pale blond hair and a white lab coat.

“Hi,” he says.

She tilts her head to one side. She stares at him for a few moments. Then she looks up at Thysiazo. “He spoke.”

Thysiazo shrugs.

She looks down at Micah. “Don’t speak,” she says. “Not without being asked. You’ve gotten ill-trained.”

Micah chews on his lip.

“Why did we leave him alone for so long?” she asks Thysiazo.

“Liril,” Thysiazo says.

She tilts her head to the other side.

Thysiazo shrugs. “It was cheaper to farm her for gods than to use the kind of pressure we’d need to get her or Micah away. We tried, but . . .”

“Ah.”

She looked at Micah. “You defended her?” she says.

“Yes.”

“How?”

“When I tried to fight,” Micah says, “it usually worked. Liril helped a lot.”

She nods towards the wall. There are shackles dangling from it.

“You’ll want to put your wrists in those,” she says. “So you don’t fall down.”

Micah blanches. “I thought . . . there’d be the monster,” he says.

Thysiazo drifts away from the wall to stand by the couch. He offers Micah his hand. Micah takes it, and Thysiazo helps him rise. Leaning on Thysiazo, Micah goes over to the wall.

“He’s supposed to be here,” Micah insists.

“He’s gone,” Thysiazo says, comfortingly. He locks Micah’s wrists to the wall, one by one. “He went to a show a few weeks ago, and he hasn’t come back.”

“He’s supposed to be here,” Micah says. “I was going to denounce him. Wait.”

Tina disappears into the next room. Micah can hear a metallic ringing as she drops something and it skitters across the floor.

“Please,” Micah says.

“Would you like me to save you?” Thysiazo says.

“What?” Micah does not hesitate for long. “Yes!”

Thysiazo nods, and sets his hand on Micah’s forehead. “Peace,” he says.

The world goes out of focus, and the air shivers, and Micah cannot think. Then there is fire, and a blond woman smiling, and he thinks his limbs are tensing in great convulsive unity, and lightning dancing in his mind. He tries to fight, but when he reaches for his power, Thysiazo speaks a word, and it all spins away.

Then there is fire, and a blond woman smiling, and he thinks his limbs are tensing in great convulsive unity, and lightning dancing in his mind. He tries to fight, but when he reaches for his power, Thysiazo speaks a word, and it all spins away.

Then there is fire, and a blond woman smiling, and he thinks his limbs are tensing in great convulsive unity, and lightning dancing in his mind. He tries to fight, but when he reaches for his power, Thysiazo speaks a word, and it all spins away.

In the end, he wakes, and Thysiazo is there.

Thysiazo reaches for him, and Micah cringes away.

“Peace,” Thysiazo says, and Micah relaxes. Thysiazo strokes his hair.

“It had to happen,” Thysiazo explains. “You’re a threat, as long as you know how to fight us. But I can keep you from feeling the pain while it’s happening.”

“I know,” Micah says.

Thysiazo unshackles Micah, and picks him up in his arms, and carries him down to the basement. It’s concrete and bare, with a couple of mattresses on the floor and a few old bloodstains on the walls. It’s dark, and it has a door, and Liril and Tainted John are there; and they are still and quiet and dressed in grey, and for a moment Thysiazo does not process their presence. He sets Micah down, and says, “We’ll take you to Central soon, and then it’ll get a little better.”

Then he looks up, and frowns. Tainted John has no eyes, only wells of blood, luminescent in the darkness. Without saying a word, or even smiling, he cuts Thysiazo apart; and when a third of Thysiazo falls to land on Micah’s side, there is a moment of peace, and Micah does not scream.

(See also The Hoard of the Gibbelins, by Lord Dunsany)

Once upon a time everybody was mortal.

Just being born—it meant that you would die! And you’d probably suffer first. That’s how horrible a time it was.

The Buddha took one look at that world and said, “No, sir.”

No sir!

That’s not the right way for things to be.

Once upon a time, if a banshee howled, somebody would wither away. That’s the way banshees did things. They weren’t slackers! And mermaids were just as energetic. If they called you you’d hear them, no matter how far away you were, and you’d walk right down to the water and you’d drown. There wasn’t anything you could do about it if a banshee decided to wail your death or a mermaid to call you or if Coretta’s Lion decided to hunt you down and eat you slowly over the course of three full days. It was the nature of the banshee, the nature of the mermaid, the nature of the Lion. They’d made their decisions! That was that!

The worst of it was the monster.

He’d catch you. He’d hollow you out. He’d hurt you unbearably. Then he’d blame you for it, make it your fault, and you would generally agree.

But—

“No, sir!”

That’s what the heroes would say to that. No sir! That’s not right, Mr. Monster! That’s a poor methodology for a world.

So 539 years before the common era, all that mess got sorted out.

The Buddha said, “I’ll be a Buddha.”

He didn’t ask the world’s permission. He just did it! And the world had to change. A world where you’re always suffering couldn’t have a Buddha in it. If Death and Time and banshees and Lions could be masters of your fate, then so could the Buddha—and he said, “You’ve got a choice.” That just blew up the whole system, like bolting a jet plane to your car, and nothing ever after was the same.

He saved the world from suffering; and he was not alone.

539 years before the common era, the hero Mylitta made an answer to monsters forever and ever.

They were unanswerable!

Until she did.

Maybe she didn’t know there wasn’t any way to fix things. Maybe she just got confused. People have been saying for the longest time that he beat her, that she failed us, that that’s why the Lord got so angry he smote everybody down. But that’s not how things looked to her. She took that impossibility and jammed it back down the world’s throat, and then there weren’t any monsters any longer and there couldn’t really be monsters again.

So there was that.

And even Belshazzar—bless his black and twisted heart!

Even that fell beast did one thing bright and brilliant at the last. He was the one who ripped the world open and let all the suffering drain out the hole.

He opened a gateway in his flesh and soul. He became emptiness for our sake.

And if it was the Lord’s judgment on him—

For so the tales say—

Then let us remember that he accepted it with joy.

And Chen Yu, in China; and Nohochacyum with the jaguars; and him, and her, and them, and those people over there:

539 years before the common era, they delivered the world from sorrow.

The poor mermaids! The poor banshees! That poor Lion!

It was like twenty-five hundred years before it could hunt a man again.

It is before the First Kingdom, and time has no meaning.

A woman named Maya kneels beside a dying man. She takes his hand. “I will end such suffering as this,” she says.

“Each of us,” he says. “Our pains are our own. You cannot know them. You cannot end them.”

“I will know them all,” she says. “I will end them all. I promise.”

Time passes.

Let us call it, for convenience, one hundred thousand cycles of the world.

It is 577 years before the common era, and

The power of the Ultimate Monarch has fallen into Maya’s hands.

**

In the palace of King Suddhodana, Maya speaks:

The world is cut, to north, south, east, and west,
It wells forth its black blood in wounds.

I am Maya. I am illusion. And all this world is mine.
And I must watch it cut to shreds.
And I have seen too many children die.
And I have seen the fullness of their pain.
And I would make an end to it.

And so I call the demon-slaying King;
The wheel-turning sage of all the world,
Ruler of the treasure wheel.

Come! Take birth in mortal form!
Deva Setaketu!

“Ah!” answers the Deva Setaketu of the supreme divine Heaven.

The womb that calls forth such a man—
It would be a woman’s, who has labored 100,000 cycles of the world
To dedicate herself to the ten perfections.
Only a woman of such supreme virtue can bring forth such a man,
A wheel-turning sage king,
Making answer to the suffering of the world!

Are you such a one?
It is not so.
It has been 100,000 cycles of the world
Since last you turned your thoughts to virtue.
One cannot cure the world with such come-lately sorrow.

Maya!
Trouble me not with your desires!

Maya answers:

What must be done, I must.
The treasure wheel of that King is mine.
It is jeweled, great Deva, and thousand-spoked,
And where it goes it conquers,
And where it conquers, it spreads its doctrine,
And if it rolls to the east,
The Kings of the East make obeisance to it.
And if it rolls to the west,
Then the Western Kings, the same!

Yet what good is this supreme treasure to Maya?
I am the king of illusion. I am the queen of desire.
It rolls to the east.
Kings succumb to illusion!
It rolls to the west.
Kings succumb to desire!
I am no virtuous thing, great Deva; such is not my nature;
Nor have I a doctrine of virtue to teach.
It must go to a man who can heal the world of pain.

She holds up her hand. There is a wheel burnt into her palm.

I command you, with the wheel in my hand,
Come to earth! Be my heir!

The Deva Setateku stirs in his Heaven, and endless Devas and Brahmas come to stand by his side. To them, he says:

It is as I have said.
The woman who shall bear this King
For 100,000 cycles of the world
Must seek perfection.

In all the world, is such a woman known?

“Glorious Deva!” they say. “In the continent to the west, there is such a woman.”

Ah! exclaims the Deva.
Truly, from such a woman, I might manifest,
And bring great glories to the world;
But not in the west.
I would be eaten by jaguars.

“Glorious Deva!” they say. “In Babylon, there is such a woman.”

Ah! exclaims the Deva.
Truly, from such a woman, I might manifest,
And reign as a virtuous wheel-turning king;
But not in Babylon.
I would be eaten by a fiend.

“Glorious Deva!” they chorus, and say:

It is not worthwhile to take incarnation in the world
If one is only to be eaten.
A wheel-turning King spreads his doctrine and conquers the world.
This cannot be done from some creature’s stomach!

But in all the world, there are no others
Who have given themselves for 100,000 cycles of the world
To pursuit of the ten perfections.
Such women! They are rarer than fine jewels!

And Maya looks up to the sky, and says,

I have no power to stop the horrors I have seen.
I am illusion.
Though I reign with the treasure wheel over all the kingdoms of the world
I have no power.
I see the cruelty and I see the pain
I cannot stop it.
I cannot forbid it with the treasure wheel
For I am Maya.

They turn to me for hope.
I give them hope
But I cannot free them.

What use are the ten perfections,
O Great Deva,
If suffering is the master of the world?

The Deva speaks:

And are you not, then, Maya,
Resigned to it?
Have you not learned
That suffering is the nature of the world?

Have you not laughed
At men who raped you;
Or cut you with their knives;
Or practiced their tortures upon you;
And said,

“This pain is life;
And less than all my joy?”

For such I have heard of you,
Queen Maya,
In my supreme Heavenly abode.

And now you hold the treasure wheel,
And thus you rule the world.
And now you are a bride
To the handsome and kingly Suddhodana.
And now you may have every pleasure of your desiring;
Why choose now to trouble me?

Maya does not look down from the Heavens.

It is easy to be helpless
When one is an ordinary woman.
Then you are alone.
Your suffering is your own.

It is harder to be helpless,
O Great Deva,
When one is queen of the world.
You hear others’ screams
And not your own.
Somehow, you cannot laugh.

Am I so worthless to you, Deva?
Do you so quickly forget
The oath that gave my nature birth?

The Deva turns. He sighs. He looks at those assembled, and says:

Bathe her, then, in Lake Anotatta,
And dress her in celestial costume,
And put her to sleep,
And shake the earth;
And I, in the form of a white elephant,
Shall enter her womb from its right side.

And I shall name her Mahamaya,
Answer to pain.
In honor of the oath that forged her,
Though she is a demon and I am a saint.

And it is done.

“There’s a little place in you that’s terrified,” Thysiazo says. He turns the wheel gently as the road curves. “You won’t admit it, but it’s there, in your heart, and it’s casting out a radiance of emptiness. It’s asking the rest of your mind for help. It’s asking the world for help. It’s calling out to the gods. And this is my answer: that you should sit, and wait, and accept what comes. You have to, Micah. You surrendered of your own free will. To protect others. It’s just a necessary sacrifice, something that you have to live with, something that’s part of your world now. I can’t help giving that answer. It’s what demons do. We teach you to accept whatever is necessary to bear. And our answers go straight into your soul.”

Demons are a kind of god. They illumine a path by which one can strip experience and purpose from the world. They help you reduce reality to a wash of inchoate and directionless sensation. The power of a demon is sufficient to protect people from torturous experience and shatter misconception; hence we say, demons teach acceptance. In practice, it is a rare demon who teaches anything more than nihilism, dissociation, and banal passivity.

Is the acceptance of a demon the same as the acceptance taught by a liquor bottle? And is either of these the same as the hard-learned acceptance of calm and spiritual practice? At this time, we cannot say.

Known demons include

Maya, queen of illusion, who laughs at pain because pain is part of life; and
Thysiazo, a servant of the monster, slain by Tainted John.

But enough about demons! (Though you can find more here.) Let’s look at something else!

It is 583 years before the common era.

There is a garden of people. They hang by their wrists from structures of stone, and all around them flowers grow. There are trees, and the soft trickle of a brook, and a gentle wind.

Maya moves from one person to the next. Her expression is rigidly controlled. She looks up at each, studying each face. Then she shakes her head and moves on.

At Prajapati she stops.

“You’re alive,” she says.

Prajapati shakes her head. It’s a refusal. It’s a denial.

“There’s something left in you.”

Maya sits down. She knows she should cut Prajapati down, but she doesn’t have the strength for it. Not yet.

“It’s okay,” Maya says. “It’s okay. He can’t hurt you any more.”

Prajapati frowns, distantly.

“My servants ripped his heart in two and scattered him to the four corners of the world.”

Prajapati licks her lips to moisten them.

“I don’t have anything left,” Prajapati explains.

At the edge of the garden is a bloody mess. It is all that remains of Prajapati’s monster.

**

It is May. It is the full moon. It is 576 years before the common era.

In the garden, the trees are in bloom.

“Here,” Maya says.

It is the tenth month of her pregnancy, yet she is light on her feet as she steps out of her palanquin and into Lumbini Gardens. She turns, and beckons, and lady Prajapati walks forward to stand beside her.

Prajapati says:

Not Brindovan, not Ashokavan,
Not Nandavana Gardens
Not any place in Earth or Heaven
Compares to this:
The blooming trees and their fragrant flowers
The bees in their five colors
The birds in all their kinds.

I hear the trickling of a brook.
I feel the soft wind on my face.
Ah! Maya! Truly, this is a Paradise.
Yet I find it somehow tainted
By my memories of sorrow.

Maya says:

Today I bring forth a demon-slaying King
Wheel-turning sage of all the world
Ruler of the treasure wheel
Answer to the suffering of all people.

Have I treated you well, Prajapati?

You have treated me well, answers Prajapati.

Maya continues:

Today the Devas roar in Heaven
Gathering,
Singing,
Carrying gifts,
Their umbrellas covering the vault of Heaven,
Their music filling the spheres.

Have I treated you well, Prajapati?

You have treated me well, answers Prajapati, again.

Maya says:

The fires in Hell are extinguished.
Light spreads through ten thousand worlds.
On every pond the lotus blooms.
Ah! Prajapati! And still I wonder,

Have I treated you well?

Prajapati says:

You ask so awkwardly, Maya,
The question in your heart.

I have never resented
That you came so late,
With all my people dead,
And I so hurt.
There are wounds you cannot heal, Maya,
Even should you be
The Queen of all the World.
There are things you cannot do.
There are things you cannot fix.

You have treated me well.

Maya reaches her hand upwards. One of the tree branches bends down and wraps about her hand. She says:

If my son should know suffering too well, Prajapati,
Then he shall flee the world.
He shall abandon the quest of the wheel-turning sage king
And instead become a Buddha.

Do you understand, Prajapati?

I must go, Prajapati answers.

Maya shakes her head. There’s a trembling in the earth and the sky, and a spasm strikes Maya herself. She shakes it off, and says:

If my son should know suffering too well,
Sickness,
Frailty,
Abominable acts,
His limitless compassion shall empty him.
He shall become a Buddha.

Do you understand, Prajapati?

I must go, Prajapati answers, again.

Maya shakes her head, and says:

I ask a crueler thing than that.

Prajapati’s eyes go blank. She stares at Maya. The rumbling of the earth has become a slow and steady susurrus. Then Prajapati nods, and says:

I will keep him from the wounded.
I will keep him from the sick.
From the old.
From the lame.
And even from the empty.

Your son will become a wheel-turning sage king, Maya.
A demon-slaying lord to rule the world,
And bring an end to suffering.

I will give you this.

And are you not yourself empty? asks Maya.

Prajapati answers:

Not for all the pleasures in the world,
Would I do this thing.
Not for doe-eyed boys,
Sensual massage,
Rare perfumes,
Victuals or silks.
The gifts of Heaven are empty to me,
I have birthed devas and they are nothing to me,
Not for the seven treasures
Would I make a god again.

But I will, for Maya.

There is a burning in the air. There is the fluttering of a dove. It flies up to a high branch. It moves like a wounded thing. It stares down at them both. It keens. Prajapati says:

I name you Yasodhara.
You shall be my fetch.
My secret-keeping god.
To hold my heart
Where it is not seen.
Fly far from here, Yasodhara.
I have no wish
To see you once again.

Then Maya shivers with the pains of birth, and cries out, and only the tree branch wrapped around her hand keeps her from falling. And in that place, the garden where Prajapati once hung, Siddhartha is born; and the devas catch him in a silver net, and he steps down and cries:

I am the foremost among the living beings in the world.
I am the greatest among the living beings in the world.
I am the noblest among the living beings in the world.

And such a world!
All around me
Are fragrant blossoms,
And gentle breezes,
And the shining of the water,
And the singing of the birds,
And the humming of the bees,
And the sweet face of Prajapati,
Transfixed by love
And the distant fluttering of the wings of a dove,
And Maya, dizzied by the pain of birth,
Her body bleeding, weak, and fevered,
But with nothing save fulfillment in her eyes.
There is pain in this world
But there is no suffering.
I shall lead it in its great golden age
I shall be Prince Siddhartha!
The Wheel-turning King!

Maya sinks to the ground. Her head is spinning. Her hand comes down in a pool of blood. From the distant palanquin, servants come running. She whispers:

Is it done, then?
Have I brought him forth?

Rest, her servants urge her.

She is carried away, back to the palace. She asks King Suddhodana:

Is it done, then?
Have I brought him forth?

Rest, he urges her.

Fever takes her. She fades in and out of consciousness. She wakes to see Prajapati by her side. She seizes Prajapati’s hand, and demands:

Tell me!
Is it done?
Have I brought him forth?

Prajapati answers:

Six Brahmins have come to see him.
And each said this:
If he leads the life of a Prince,
He shall become a Universal Monarch.

Maya closes her eyes. In the distance, she can hear the wingbeats of a dove, and over them, a voice:

He shall certainly become a Buddha.

**

It is 561 years before the common era. Prince Siddhartha lives in peace and plenty. He accompanies his cousin Devadatta on a royal hunt. An arrow flies.

“Why, Devadatta,” Siddhartha says, “you have shot down a dove.”

It is 560 years before the common era.

In the room below, women flock to Prince Siddhartha. To each he gives a gift from his table of gifts. There are those in the court who watch. There are those who take notes. One says,

Ah! He gives this one a peach.
He loves her like a peach.
He finds her firm and succulent.

And others say,

A peach?
He thinks her hard and twisted at the core.
To Princess Adevi he gives a jewel.
She glitters brightly in his eyes!

Minister Rajik is withering. He says,

What matter jewels?
He has ten thousand of them
But look at Umi
Princess of the west
Who holds the only flower in her hands.
She is not pleased.
She wished a richer gift.
But is it not a measure of his heart?
He gives her what he has no riches of.

Pravin argues,

It has six petals.
He loves her not!
The one he gives a stallion
Shall be the one he wants to take to bed.
Glorious is the innuendo of Siddhartha!

Sefreen laughs, and suggests,

Perhaps he shall give to one his dove.
Brought home just three weeks back
And treated with great tenderness.
To favor love with horse or halter
Takes a lewd man’s disposition
Siddhartha is as gentle as the wind.

Yet all agree:

In the end, it matters not.
May he find a girl worth marrying!

There are two women who watch from the balcony above. Their interest is of a different character.

Maya, says Prajapati. I have missed you.

Maya smiles wanly at Prajapati. She says:

I did not want him to know me,
Prajapati.

He has grown up strong, says Prajapati.

Maya says:

I would make him weak,
Prajapati.

Maya, says Prajapati, You need not lie to me.

Maya looks up. She is startled. Then she laughs.

The mother of Siddhartha.
They called me that
Though you should bear that name.

They took me skyward
As I lay rent
After the birth of Siddhartha.

The Devas roared in Heaven
Gathering,
Singing,
Bringing me gifts
Their umbrellas covering the vault of Heaven,
Their music filling the spheres.

And all around me
Nandavana Gardens
Brightest of the Heavens
And they said, “This shall be yours
But do not go back.”

Ah, Maya, says Prajapati. You are too stubborn.

Maya answers:

The mother of Siddhartha.
They called me that
Though you should bear that name.

They took me skyward
They showed me things
I had forgotten of the world
They gave me hope
That I could be redeemed

And said,
“This shall be yours
Queen Maya
But do not go back.”

Ah, Maya, says Prajapati.

“I was weak,” Queen Maya says. “And tarried.”

Ah, Maya, says Prajapati. He has grown up strong.

Maya asks,

Which, do you think, shall he choose,
Prajapati?
To that one he has given a wreath.

Prajapati giggles. She says,

A wreath of pretty flowers
That smell bad.
It shall not be that girl.

“To that one,” Maya notes, “he gives a firefly.”

Prajapati purses her lips. She says,

Few can see a firefly
Before its sun has set.
It shall not be that girl.

“To that one,” Maya says, “he gives his mother’s gown.”

Prajapati reflects on this. She opens her mouth to speak.

A serving boy enters with their tea. He stumbles at the door. Hot water spills. It scalds Prajapati. And Prajapati screams.

Everyone present finds this quite surprising.

The world moves slowly now. Maya speaks. She is intent:

You cannot scream.
He must not know.

Prajapati regains control. She has gripped the front of her dress. Her knuckles are white.

“I am using all my strength,” she says.

Maya is intent:

You cannot scream.
He must not know.

Prajapati says,

It is opening the floodgates in me.
Maya. Maya, she is here.
She must be here.
Yasodhara, my secret-keeping god.
I can no longer hide.

There is a mist in the room, and the hot water is gone, and the scald marks are gone, and the errant servant too.

“The pain is gone,” says Maya.

Prajapati’s face is white. There is a scream trembling within her lungs, trying to break out. She says:

There is nothing real but pain.
I have learned the monster’s touch.
And learned this too
That peace
Is nothing more
Than the interval between two sufferings.

Be strong, Queen Maya says. The pain is gone.

Prajapati answers:

It is in me, Maya.
He placed it in me
With the emptiness
So I should always live with pain.

“Be strong,” Maya pleads.

I am strong, says Prajapati. You can hear: I do not scream.

Then Maya stands. She looks to the room below. She looks beyond, and through the palace, with great faculties of sight. Her voice is soft, but like a falcon’s scream:

Where is she?
Where is the dove Yasodhara?

And down she flies like the darkest cloud of hate. And all through the room the people shiver, and the girls draw back, and the ministers blink and rub their eyes. Siddhartha stares as she passes, and alone of them all he seems to see Queen Maya.

“Ah,” he says, in an uncertain tone. “Ah, mother, what is wrong?”

Then Maya is through the doors, raging like a wind, and they slam closed behind her. Then she is in the halls, and the rooms, and Siddhartha’s room, where the dove Yasodhara sleeps. She catches the bird by the neck, and says:

You must leave now.
He must not know.

The bird changes in her hands. It becomes a girl. Her hair is long and black. Her body is fit. Her clothes would fit a princess well. Her voice is soft like a dove’s purr as she says:

He is a kind man.
A good man.
A hope in dark places.
Must I hide from him, Queen Maya?

Maya says,

He is a good man.
A kind man.
He shall turn the wheel
And end the suffering of the world

But he cannot do this
If he knows.
To save the world
Requires innocence.

Yasodhara says, quietly,

It is not good
To dwell in silence
Hiding wounds from doctors
And ignorance from the gurus.

Must I hide from him, Queen Maya?

Maya answers,

The way of innocence
Is the way of sovereignty.

He will trust
That people are good.
He will find
The way of ruling
That brings that from their souls.

He will hope
For his people,
And love them well.

Even the monsters.
Even the beasts;
And honor
Even the murderers and thieves.

You are a lie, Yasodhara,
I am a demon
And everyone around us is a beast.

They are prey to evil
Prey to their wounds,
Faulty, damaged, horrid, sad.

If he knows,
He will not trust them.
He will not love their sad and broken dharmas.

He will not see
What I can see.
He will see only dukkha,
And break my world
To find an answer
To their suffering.

A Buddha is a man
Who ends the natures of the world.

“To cling to the things that hurt you,” Yasodhara says, “is a child’s act.”

And Maya says:

And more so
To wish them all destroyed.

Yasodhara sings, softly,

If he knows, then,
He will free us
From the things that cause us pain?

No longer, then,
Will we be bound
To the things that hurt us?

For Maya, I have always thought
Our natures
Were nothing but a curse.

Has not Prajapati suffered?
Have not I?
And have not you?

We are bound
To endless rounds
Of incarnation
And always driven
By our natures
To the same pains once again
And I ask, Queen Maya,
Would it not be good
If he becomes a Buddha?

If he ends the natures of the world?

I have kept my secrets
For sixteen years
But sixteen years of duty
Felt not so clean
As five seconds in his hands.

I could tell him my secret
And break my soul
If he’d become a Buddha.

“This outcome is not desirable to everyone,” Maya says.

Yasodhara says,

No.
The monsters
They love this world.

I know every touch
The monster gave to Prajapati.
And how they pleased him so.

And I wonder, Maya,
In all this world,
Why is it only the monsters
Who are
Truly happy with who they are?

Maya is silent.

Yasodhara leaves the room. She walks into the room of betrothal. Siddhartha sees her, and the beauty of her, and something in that beauty he has never seen before.

And Yasodhara hears these words, spoken by Maya into the silence of her soul:

It is not myself
In whose nature I find happiness.
But Prajapati,
And Suddhodana,
And Siddhartha,
And . . . you
For I am not without pride in you,
Yasodhara,
Though better I had killed you
Then I had let you go.

The room is silent.

Yasodhara straightens her back. She looks Siddhartha in the eye. “Have you no presents left for me?” she asks.

Siddhartha looks behind him at the table of presents. It is empty. He fumbles for the necklace he usually wears, but it has been mislaid, and his bracelets are not on. Recent events have unnerved him. He does not remember where the backup table of presents is kept. He thinks, quite hard and desperately, in the way a young man ought.

“I have a dove,” he says.

Tina wakes up.

“Thysiazo is dead,” she realizes.

She stretches. She looks at her clock. She sits up and puts her legs over the side of the bed. She puts her feet in a pair of bunny slippers. She stands and stretches again. She pads over to the mirror.

“A mother should never have to bury her child,” she says to her image in the mirror. “I will have him cremated.”

She walks out into the main room. She knocks on Iphigenia’s door. Iphigenia opens it.

“Mom?” Iphigenia asks.

“Burn Thysiazo’s body,” Tina says.

“Mo-om,” Iphigenia protests.

Tina gives her a glare. So there is heat and there is light and in the basement of the house Thysiazo ignites.

“Did I ever tell you,” says Tina, “that when I was young, I went to school, and they taught me of your kind?”

Iphigenia brightens. She has never been to school. “Was it like Harry Potter?” she asks.

“No,” Tina says, flatly.

“Or Grease?”

Iphigenia has had a sheltered upbringing. It does not entirely surprise Tina that Iphigenia’s image of school involves singing wizards with slicked-back hair.

“I called the ways of your kind dark arts, and I lusted to kill everyone born of the soul. Eventually they threw me out and threatened legal action if I should ever seek to return.”

“Oh.”

“I was right,” says Tina crisply. “And they were wrong. They had no answer to that, so for all their blustering they could not control me.”

“What happened?”

“They paid for my home education,” Tina says, “and for my college.”

Tina takes off her pajamas and dresses herself. She puts on her coat. She walks down to the basement. There is blood on the walls. Some of it is fresh.

“Do you know what did this?” she asks Iphigenia.

“Something Micah brought?”

“He did not comport himself well,” says Tina. “I should have hurt him more badly.”

“It smells of ghoul.”

Tina looks up. “Does it?”

“Yes.”

“And Liril,” says Iphigenia.

“Ah.”

Tina goes to the phone. She picks it up. It is dead. “We will have to follow her,” she says. Tina goes to the car. She gets in. It will not start. She gets out. She starts to walk. The wind rises. Soon she is struggling. She stops, and stands still, and the wind fades.

“I am blocked,” she says.

“We could leave her,” says Iphigenia. “I’m really kind of busy being the sun.”

The image of Tina in Iphigenia’s eyes seems to pulse. Iphigenia sees, with a certain mad clarity, how thin a line separates her from Micah in Tina’s eyes.

“I mean, if we had some other way to cut her off,” Iphigenia corrects.

“We need an oracle,” Tina says. She turns. She marches back into the house. She goes down to the oracle’s room. The oracle is a crouched and maddened thing surmounted by a large eye. Tina keeps it chained to a radiator. “Tell me how to catch her and confront her,” Tina says.

“You won’t,” says the oracle.

She kicks it. It is a measured blow.

“I knew you would do that,” says the oracle.

Tina raises a penciled eyebrow.

“I can’t help being contrary,” says the oracle. “So I’d rather you didn’t kill me.”

Tina kicks the oracle again.

“The wind’s changed,” says the oracle. “So if you want to catch her, you’ll have to give up what you love the most.”

“Why that?”

“Because you can’t change the course of events by doing what you want to do anyway,” says the oracle. “If you could, then it wouldn’t be the course of events; it’d be a byway.”

“I could cut off a finger,” says Tina. “I don’t want to do that; it would disrupt the flow of things.”

“That would probably help, if you were a yakuza.”

“I’m not.”

“You could join,” Iphigenia suggests.

Tina does not have to look at Iphigenia. The set of her shoulders is a withering glare.

“In what fashion will giving up what I love allow me to pursue her?” Tina asks.

“It will let you move freely through the wind.”

“Burn him, Iphigenia.”

The oracle sighs. “I liked the radiator,” it says. “It was nicer than death.”

There is a light rising in the oracle’s vision, a sun-shaped disc burning, and its fires spread through the oracle’s soul and the oracle is gone.

“And now yourself.”

“Mother?”

Iphigenia is sweating. She is not simply standing next to Tina. She is in the sky, commanding the horses of the sun, and they are pulling harder than is their wont.

“I would rather have lost a finger,” Tina says. “So you have that, at least.”

The heat is too much. There is nothing to breathe that does not burn Iphigenia’s lungs.

“It’s stupid,” says Iphigenia. “Why should my death matter?”

“Because while I love you,” says Tina, “I am something that the enemy may comprehend.”

“It’s not a sacrifice if it’s someone else!”

But there is a wind and a flame and Iphigenia is gone.