Dragonfly: A Tale of the Counter-Earth at the Cosmic Antipodes (5 page)

8 Goddess in the Leaf

Three years had passed, three cycles of the sun since the goddess laid her finger on my heart, one for each of the wheeling ages dividing this day from the primeval exodus. Unspotted Sharon lay before me at last, a garden-gorge like a brooch of emerald and ivory dropped into an icy deep.

Desolate stairs plunged into the abyss at the roots of the arctic zone, black like death and glittering with ice. The way was open. Legend spoke falsely, my dream truly. No many-eyed spirit of flame barred the gate with ensphering sword.

The low sun circled without setting as I descended. Green ice and black cliffs stood against a rose-gray sky. The air was filled with the glaciers’ groans. I paused at a pilgrims’ station to rest, then rose again and continued on my way.

There were red lichens now and patches of moss, pale green and blue-green and velvet-vermilion. The air grew warmer. One by one I shed my shaggy garments and let them lie where they fall, careless of them.

Even so had I cast off my companions. One fell victim to grinning sail-beasts in the midnight moss-forest of Elodia; another wetted a cyclops’ tushes under black basalt towers; the third succumbed to madness on the blasted plateau and lay now in a frozen grave with open, ice-glazed eyes. Their names had no place in my memory.

It was wrong of me to have let them come, those men of baser metal. For it was me whom the goddess had called forth from the rust-stained city of the south, mankind’s omega. It was I whose blood flowed from dust-crumbled Eldena and thence from Sharon of old, the cradle of man’s infancy, the garden before me.

I was naked now. I was a skeleton wrapped in white skin. The journey had taken its toll. But it was enough to know that I dreamt not in vain.

The staircase had vanished beneath tapestries of moss. The song of rills and runnels filled the fragrant air. Before me rolled the twilit champaign, green-gold swells bounded by high, winding walls. Spired fountains of milky quartz spouted everlastingly into pellucid pools.

The turf caressed my frost-bitten feet as I set out across the valley. Flocks of gentle, big-eyed creatures watched me curiously like a child’s playthings. I climbed a hill crowned with a plant like none I’ve ever seen. Tempting clusters of white fruit dragged its boughs to the earth. A virgin scene!

I tried to pluck one of the globes. The soft stem refused to break and the skin was too tough to tear, but my handling squeezed some juice out. So I reclined beneath the bough, my head on the lap of the earth, and took the base into my mouth.

The fluid was thin but plentiful and refreshing. A great peace came over me, and I slept. This went on a long time, a cycle of sleeping and waking and drinking and sleeping.

I rose to go on my way at last, a skeleton no more. How long had I lain there? Was it hours? Or weeks? The orbit of the unseen sun had tilted: the shadows wore a different aspect.

The gorge walls contracted as I continued. A mile-high ice bridge made an arch of the strait, the gate of the garden-land’s inner sanctum. The way was flanked by carved chimeras, but I passed between them with averted eyes. I knew well what the old stories said.

A lake filled the pit of the basin beyond. Its serene waters reflected a host of shimmering spires, the ruin of a mighty fane. I circled around to it. The deeper dusk of the thickets received me.

Through beds of fern and moss and horsetail I pushed my way toward the heart of Sharon. Living aspergilla showered me with dewdrops. The air trembled with inaudible music, a siren-song drawing me tenderly onward. She was near. I felt it.

Suddenly I stepped into the open. Headless pillars and broken buttresses rose from the carpet like old towers lapped by a green tide. I passed down shadowy avenues, dwarfed by gigantic piers. My feet tended toward the sanctum sanctorum.

The encircling apse was almost intact, supported by the verdured cliff-wall behind, overshadowing the seat of a solitary plant. Seven stems like serpents’ necks all sprung from a common base, each ending in a thick double leaf, green below and scarlet within. The midmost was the largest and hung to the earth, open to the nave like a vertical mouth. The white goddess reclined between the two halves as between two velvet cushions.

Her flesh was like ivory, her face beatific. She remained silent and still as I approached, her pale lips drawn in a smile. Her golden eyes had neither pupil nor white; they were bottomless, like wells of amber, but vacuous, too. They seemed oblivious to my presence, yet there was no escaping them.

Trembling, I knelt on the couch and ran my hand over her side. Her flesh was warm like a sun-ripened fruit, her skin taut and resistant. Her head had followed me like a flower tracking the sun. I bent down to kiss her parted lips.

As I embraced her I realized she was part of the leaf, an outgrowth of its petiole. Her arms touched my back with imperceptible movements, and I started to tingle all over. Shuddering, I looked down at our bodies. Amber-colored tendrils were creeping over my flesh. They burrowed under my skin and flushed ruby-red as they tapped into my capillaries.

For a moment I struggled, but her hands had merged with my back. She drew me down, inexorably down, and forced me to nurse. I recognized the juice of the white fruits and grew calm again. Yes, I rejoiced and drank deeply. The scarlet cushions folded against us, pressing us together, wrapping us in moist darkness.

As before I stepped out of the stream of time. Soon I no longer suckled, for my viscera were gone. Her sap flowed through my veins.

When I looked down I saw that my limbs had atrophied. They continued to shrink until my curled form rested wholly on her bosom. My bones grew soft and pliable even as my head swelled, obliterating what was left of my face. Her life was my life, and I needed nothing she did not need. It was good when my withered members fell away.

I was a head attached to a long, muscular spine. The sap communicated new vigor to my form, and I began to wriggle. One by one the tendrils detached. The walls pushed against me, forcing me away from her body, up toward the base of the leaf. Hot tears streamed from my molten eyes. The pressure of the walls and the undulations of my spine forced me down the hollow stem.

As I plunged toward the heart of the plant, its villi embraced me and drew my remaining flesh apart. My soft skull was split open and my brain withdrawn, unraveled like silk thread from a spool, even as my baser members went toward the nutriment of the plant. The tangled skein of my mind was drawn back up through myriad channels toward the goddess of the leaf, making her pregnant with my being.

And with profound joy I now understood my fate. The goddess had needed a mind, and I was to be her mind, her mansion for lovely forms. Her body was mine and my mind was hers.

As I was wonderfully and fearfully knit back together in the womb of her face, I looked out from her golden eyes at the throngs of votaries waving under the quiet sky. I was no longer
I
, but
she
.
He
was only a figment in the dwelling-place of my memory.

I was the Goddess in the Leaf.

*          *          *          *          *

I awoke, and lay there in the golden dusk, looking at the lines laid across the brick walls by the bars. The ceiling seemed to recede before my face, so that I was at the bottom of a deep well. The pipes behind my head set up a rhythmic music.

It was the voice of the elemental forces of the universe.

9 Behemoth

I was a marked man now. The other inmates hated me, for I had shown myself not to be one of them; and they would have hated anyone who defied their tormenter. Talan himself had murder in mind. Things came to a head at exercise one evening.

We had finished our circuit training and were running the gauntlet. I was traversing it as usual, creeping through a thicket of swinging scythes, when a crescent-shaped blade I’d never seen before flashed out of the darkness. It took a small circle of skin off my left shoulder blade. An instant sooner and it would have split me in half.

I whirled. Talan had his hand on a lever. There was a knowing smirk on his face. “Something wrong, Keftu?” he called. The other inmates were all laughing.

Quickly I weighed my options. If I took no action, death would come soon in one form or another. I decided to act. I gathered myself for a leap and shot straight up into the still-moving parts of the machine. Swinging from bar to bar, I made my way to the darkness above it, streaking myself with black grease.

Now I was in the trusses, above the hanging gaslights, practically invisible from below. “Come out, come out, little man,” Talan sang, strolling out among the equipment. He reached the middle of the room and looked up, tossing his baton in his hand. The inmates remained in their places at either end of the gauntlet, watching the fun.

I leaped silently through the rafters until I was over Talan. From there I dove into empty space, caught hold of a chain, pivoted, and landed on my feet. I planted a blow on Talan’s sternum and another on his jaw. His head snapped back and he dropped his baton. I caught it and flipped it in my hand.

Now Talan’s fist was hurtling toward my cheek. I stepped outside its arc and clipped the arm with the bar. The bone snapped. A tap on the face finished the job.

The two helots lounging beside the door hadn’t intervened. The gymnasium was too crowded and dim for them to see what was happening. I dashed toward them, leaping over beams and dodging machines. They hadn’t time even to draw their own batons before they crumpled under my blows. I took the keys and went through the door.

Now I was in the corridor. I made for the gate I’d noticed and struck down the porter. Beyond was a hall, huge and dim. Helot shanties were tucked here and there into corners. There were heaps of rubbish and hawkers of wares and fires in big barrels for light.

I searched the ring for the key. Nothing fit the lock. I began going through the porter’s pockets. Now footsteps sounded behind me. I turned. Seven helots were approaching incautiously, confident in their numbers. I made them less so by felling four before the rest bore me down. A blow crashed into the back of my skull, and a black curtain descended.

*          *          *          *          *

It was the pain in my shins that drove me awake. I was slumped in a tall, narrow cage, just large enough to let a man stand, but not sit or lie down. I couldn’t even turn or bend over to rub my legs. I was in a big, dark room full of junk.

Bare feet flapped against the floor behind me. Granny slouched into view, wrapped in a dirty quilt. “You’ve done for my boy,” she whined. “He’ll never work again. It’s the choppers for him now.”

“What did you expect?” I said. The old woman didn’t answer. “What are you going to do with me?”

“Granny paid a lot for you, and she’s going to get her money’s worth. You’ll go into the pit today. It won’t be pretty, but it will be entertaining. Enough for a small profit, anyway. Enjoy your last hours.” She smiled thinly, making folds of her pendulous cheeks. Her rheumy eyes wrinkled with glee.

“I’m not finished off yet,” I said.

“Yet,” she replied, grinning, showing her white gums. She waddled back out the way she had come.

The hours marched by. I continually shifted my weight and flexed my muscles to keep from getting cramped or stiff. I was going to be ready for the final spring.

At last it was time. A few of Granny’s helot servants came in and hoisted up my cage and set it on a trestle with wheels. I was drawn through the cell block and down the twisting corridors and out into Hela. The byways were crowded now. Most of the men were returning from the fields or the factories. They were thin and short, with stringy, hard-looking muscles. The women were fat, and paler than the men, as though they never went outside at all. There were no children.

I began to recognize where I was. Soon I was bumping down a familiar flight of stairs and rolling into the room lined with benches. It was full of misfits like those in Granny’s dungeons. I recognized a few but not all.

My handlers stood my cage up in a corner and went out. No one spoke to me. One by one the misfits went through the three doors into the pit, then returned, some on their own feet, others on stretchers or in bags. Those who could be salvaged underwent surgery on the table in the middle of the room. There were two surgeons—former phylites by the look of it—and they worked with an array of jagged metal instruments. At one point one of them came over and looked into my eyes and examined my teeth.

And then it was my turn in the pit. I was ported out in the cage. A dull roar struck us as we crossed onto the floor. The darkness round about was filled with throngs screaming for blood. Here and there a stray shaft of light showed the pinched, vindictive face of a man, or the flabby, eager face of a woman. The air was thick with smoke and sweat and fetid breath.

My handlers stood my cage upright and faced it toward the great gate. This was two stories tall, set in an open recess overlooked on three sides by climbing rows of benches. They fixed a long chain to an eye-bolt in the floor. At its other end was an iron collar, and this they fastened around my neck.

A voice projected itself over the hubbub: “Behold! An alien! A savage pygmy! An atavism in the Age of Peace! Note the collar and chain, helots! This is for your protection! Were he not chained to the floor, he would be up and among you in an instant! Who knows what havoc he would wreak before the guards brought him down? Just look at the shape of his skull! Is he a man, or a beast? You be the judge!”

The handlers unlocked my cage and hastened from the pit. I pushed the door open and stepped out. A shower of foul water and offal and eggs rained down on me. I stood still with my fists balled, letting it pelt me.

A tremendous noise, half squeal and half roar, rolled out of the darkness before me. Guards unbarred the gate from above and swung it open with chains. The shouting subsided. Everyone was watching. Slowly a vast bulk shambled out.

Four legs like four pillars in an antediluvian temple stalked forward on big-jointed, padded feet. A wide mouth flanked by cracked ivory tusks and lined with flat teeth split its huge head. Scaly, gray-green hide streaked with dull orange and black hung in heavy folds from its sides. Its small red eyes blinked furiously.

It was a bull behemoth, and it was not happy.

The creature fixed me with its beady eye, squealed, and came at me, jaws agape. I circled around its flank, taking care to keep my chain from getting tangled in its legs. Round and round we went. The audience jeered and booed.

The marks on the behemoth’s back told me that it had been goaded to madness. They had probably kept it masked until the moment it was released. I’d seen behemothim from a distance in Arras, for a herd—
the
herd, we had called it—had lived to the southeast of the Wabe, wandering from well to well. We’d held them sacred, and only hunted them once in a generation. This one was of a smaller breed.

Grown weary from our unvarying cyclical dance, I sidestepped too slowly at last, and the beast trod on my chain, jerking me off my feet. I struck my chin hard against the floor, chipping one of my teeth. The crowd roared. Somehow a link of my chain got caught on the behemoth’s tusk, and it tossed its head to shake it off, throwing me across the pit. I crashed against the standing cage and knocked it over, narrowly escaping a broken neck.

With a bellow the behemoth bore down on me. There was no time to get out of its path. I rolled off the cage and pulled it up before me. The beast drove into it, flinging me back against the wall, wedging its tusks in the iron bars.

I struggled to my feet, coughing painfully. The behemoth was squealing and beating the cage against the floor, trying to free its hideous maw. This was my only chance. I dashed over to its side, laid hold of its fleshy dewlap, and pulled myself up. A cheer went up as I mounted the beast’s back.

It succeeded at last in getting rid of the cage and began to seek me out, turning round and round in confusion. Quickly I slipped down the far side, ducked under the dewlap, and climbed up where I had before. Now my leash was looped around the behemoth’s neck. I stood upright, pulling against it for balance, tightening the iron noose.

The monster began to buck and rear, but I held my place, rocking back and forth on the chain. Its attempts to dislodge me became more and more frantic, but the loop only drew tighter. Soon it was swaying in place. For a moment it stood there, shaking its head from side to side, as though trying to remember where it was. Then its legs folded slowly. I stepped down its ribs to the floor as it rolled on its side.

The cheering reached a crescendo. A guard on the wall tossed me his spear. I took aim and threw. The point entered the beast’s hide between its forelegs. I leaped forward and drove it further in, leaning against it with all my weight, seeking the behemoth’s heart. Suddenly a torrent of black blood gushed out, drenching me. The thick legs stiffened, then relaxed. The beast was dead.

The crowd was deafening in its applause. Rods of silver and gold fell like rain. My handlers came out with buckets, rinsed me off, and toweled me dry. They led me out between them. There was no talk of cages now.