Authors: Elizabeth Hand
But mostly, there were snakes. Docile rosy boas, western racers like wands of brushed steel, eyeless worm snakes so small a hundred of them would not fill a teacup. Puff adders, coachwhips, tiny ring-necked snakes that children could wear as glossy jewelry; lyre snakes, whose bite causes gongs to ring and clamor, and night snakes, whose rubbery fangs hold no more venom than a honeybee. As though they were being disgorged from the earth’s very core, as though rivulets of magma spewed forth and then cooled into living coils and veins of serpents: in every direction the ground seethed with snakes.
“Children, children,” murmured Angelica. The air was filled with a sound as of an entire forest of dried leaves taking flight. Still they came, forked tongues tasting the air, their supple bellies reading the stony earth, like so many fingers brushing across a loved one’s face. As they passed the other creatures rustled and shivered, but did not flee.
At the very last the greatest of all the desert serpents appeared. Diamondbacks and rattlesnakes, the immense and terrible sidewinders. The ground shook beneath them, and the noise of their rattles was like that of sistrums and tambours and stones in a hollow gourd; the sound of the
krotalon,
the ancient Greek rattle from which they took their name. They surrounded Angelica, the stored-up warmth of their bodies making the violet air shimmer, and curled around her legs and ankles like kittens. As though they were kittens she stooped to pick them up, the largest ones as thick around as a man’s arm, and strong enough to capture a young pig.
But to Angelica they did no harm. Instead they writhed and flung their coils about her wrists, their darkly patterned scales nearly lost among her clattering jewelry, and covered her until she seemed to be draped in a shadowy cloak set with winking gems. They gaped to display pale mouths and black tongues and fangs as long and curved as a hawk’s talons. Had they struck her, their venom would have caused the tender flesh of her arms to swell and then decay as necrosis set in, with its subsequent hemorrhage and shock and renal failure.
They did not bite, and Angelica did not recoil at their touch. Thousands and thousands of years before, when the first woman poked at the African savanna in search of grubs and tubers, the snake befriended her, sharing with her its eggs, its young, its own sparse flesh in times of drought. From the snake she learned the patience to hunt, the wisdom of sleeping when one’s belly is full and hiding when the inferno of midday raged. From the snake she learned that we can slough off our lives as easily as a dead skin, and that death need be no more terrifying than that empty sack. It warned her of earthquakes and devoured vermin. She read oracles in its sand tracks, and from its poison derived subtle visions as well as a cure for bites. Like the moon the snake renews itself; with the moon it became the first sacred thing.
And when the first woman’s people migrated north, the snake went with them. In the Libyan desert it was worshiped as an avatar of the goddess. Still later it was the
uraeus,
the gold serpent that conferred power upon the crown of the Egyptian pharaohs, and wrapped its coils around the blessed
caduceus
of Innana and Hippocrates. Tame cobras slept in the palaces of the Indus queens, and nursed the godlings of the Aegean, and in Crete every house had its snake tubes, where the sacred adders and harmless vine snakes slept.
“And now you will serve me,” whispered Angelica. “All of you …”
She lifted her arms. Above the Devil’s Clock a crescent appeared, spare and pale as a crocus shoot.
“Othiym haïyo!”
Angelica cried. A ripple ran through the carpet of small things at her feet. “Oh Great Mother, it is begun.”
Then:
“Go now,” she said, and set the great sidewinders back upon the ground. “As Menat I command you, as Feronia and Pele and all those who rule the stones: wake the earth, free your children imprisoned there! So may we destroy the cities of men and reclaim what is ours.”
And throwing their great coils across the shattered ground, the sidewinders departed, their rattles so loud they sent hollow echoes booming from the mesas.
“You, scorpions,” she said next, “As Innana I command you, and Echidna and Walutahanga and all those who guard wives and concubines. Go now and hide beneath the beds of cruel and unfaithful lovers, and sting them with your tails!”
And the little scorpions raised their pincers and clacked them together like stones, then scattered across the desert in a great army.
“Tortoises now,” she cried, and what had appeared to be a row of boulders lumbered toward her, their heads nodding wisely on withered necks. “In the name of the nymph Chelone I call you! She who was stoned when she refused to lay blossoms at the feet of Zeus. Go now to the lakes and seas and rivers, and wake there your sleeping sisters, the kraken and leviathan and Scylla of the gnashing waves! This I command in the name of Moroch, of all those who lay too long abed from fear.”
On and on she went. Each creature she called to her by name, and in the name of each of their patronesses she commanded them: Melissa of the bees, Arachne’s spiders, the patient ants and scarabs who had been waiting since Nefertari’s death to receive their due. All the beasts she named, all those that crawl upon their bellies and more besides, wolves and shrikes and owls and bats, every creature maligned by men because it had once been sacred to Her. And all of them answered, all of them came; and into the darkness they all raced away, to bring to all the other creatures and places of the earth her bidding.
At last she seemed to be alone in the darkness. Above her the moon had risen into the soft summer sky, its crescent smiling down upon her and the lunula upon her breast smiling back. The air was strong with the acrid odor of ants and scorpions and the venom of rattlers, but there was another scent there too, something sweeter and yet more noisome to the woman. A faint noise sounded in the sharp spears of the ocotillo, and the dry leaves of the huisache rustled softly.
“Who is there?” Angelica called. She turned with fiery eyes to stare into the grove of trees. “Who has not answered me?”
There came no reply. But it seemed that a wind was stirring the huisache, though it was a wind Angelica did not feel; and then it seemed that upon the dry branches blossoms opened, blossoms pale and fragrant in the moonlight. Angelica drew her breath in sharply: the blossoms lifted from the trees, fluttered and circled the broken patio until they surrounded her, a silent rain of butterflies.
“No!” she cried, and stamped her bare foot upon the earth, so hard that the lunula shuddered upon her breast. “I did not call you, it is not time yet—”
“Oh, but it is,” someone said in a low voice behind her.
Angelica whirled.
“No,”
she hissed.
In the shadows stood another figure—a tall woman with dark hair and deep-set eyes. Butterflies formed a halo above her, and momentarily lit upon her shoulders before wafting off once more. She was cloaked in purple and her face, though reserved, even sorrowing, was beautiful, as beautiful as Angelica’s own.
“Well-met, Angelica,” the woman said. She waved her hand, so lazily that a butterfly did not move from where it rested upon one finger like a topaz ring. “It’s been too long.” And though she did not smile, there seemed to be faint mockery, even laughter, in her voice.
“We have not met,” said Angelica. But the wind that had not chilled her before, did so now.
“Oh no?”
The figure remained unmoving as Angelica took a step backward, her fingers covering the lunula. “Where have you come from?” she demanded.
The woman laughed softly, then recited,
“For years I roamed, far from the birch groves of Ida
Until I lost myself among drifts of ice and the frozen steppes
There I lamented in caves where ravaging beasts make their home.
”
Angelica’s fingers tightened upon the lunula. “You’re lying,” she said in a shaking voice. “I do not know you.”
“No?” the woman replied.
“‘But what shape is there I have not had’—”
“
No!
’“ shrieked Angelica. “Why are you
here,
you
can’t
be here—”
“The boy,” the woman said simply. She slid her hands into the folds of her robe. “You’re not to harm him.”
“The boy is mine!”
The woman shook her head, just once. Her eyes glinted. “And mine.”
“No,” said Angelica. “Not yours. Never, never yours.”
“A warning, Angelica,” the dark-haired woman said in a low voice. “Don’t hurt him.”
Angelica laughed harshly. “You have no power here, sister,” she said. She lifted her hands to the sky and glared. “Go, before my Mistress loses patience with you!”
“You should be more careful whom you bed, Angelica.” The woman’s voice was low and threatening. “Not everyone wants to embrace an asp—”
“Go!”
screamed Angelica. Rage made a sibylline mask of her face, and her hair fell about her cheeks in tangled coils. “You—”
But the dark-haired woman was already gone. Only, on the ground where her bare feet had stood, a sheaf of flowers trembled, and stained the desert air with the scent of hyacinths.
H
ANDSOME BROWN LET US
off in front of Dr. Dvorkin’s house, solemnly accepting the wad of bills Dylan pressed into his hand. “It’s good to see you, my man,” he said in his
basso
voice, and toasted us with a pint of Hennessy. “Take good care of the lady.
Always
take good care of the lady.” Cab Number 393 lumbered off into the darkness, trailing the strains of Idris Mohammed.
Ninth Street was deserted, the streetlights casting their glow over the crepe myrtles and magnolias, the heaps of fallen petals that had drifted up against the curbstones. We stepped from the street and opened the wrought-iron gate that led into Dr. Dvorkin’s front yard, the little lawn overgrown with myrtle and ivy and a single huge magnolia. The air was so warm and sweet it was like drowning to stand there and breathe it; but I could hardly breathe at all, my heart was pounding so fast, my mouth seemed filled with something thick and sweet and strong, honey wine or Handsome Brown’s cognac. From the hidden garden echoed the burbling song of a mockingbird, so achingly beautiful it brought tears to my eyes.
“Sweeney.” Dylan drew me to him, his long hair warm against my cheek. “What is it, Sweeney? You’re crying—”
He held me gently against his chest, the two of us leaning against the magnolia. For all that his words were soft I could feel his heart pounding like my own. “Nothing,” I whispered. I laughed, wiping my eyes. “It’s just—god, I must be drunk or something, it’s just all so beautiful, and—”
My voice caught. A warm breeze stirred the leaves of the magnolia. From its waxy blossoms scent poured like rain. “I’m—I’m just so happy,” I said, and began to sob.
“Happy?” Dylan’s voice was perplexed, and when I looked up his eyes were burning, flecked with gold from the streetlamps. Panic lanced through me: what was I
saying?
I tried to move away, but Dylan’s arms tightened around my waist. “Happy?
I’ll
show you happy—”
He kissed me again, pushing me against the tree, his hands stroking my face as I grabbed him and pulled him tight against me. I didn’t care where we were, I didn’t care who might see or hear. I couldn’t hear anything, except for his heart and breath and the mockingbird singing blissfully somewhere in the green darkness. I thought I would faint: my head was roaring but all I could feel was Dylan’s mouth and the taste of him, and everything about us hot and sweet and liquid.
“Sweeney,” he whispered. “Oh, Sweeney …”
We made love there, the tree wound about with ivy that tangled with Dylan’s hair and fingers, my skirt torn and scattered with bark as Dylan moved against me until he cried out and the two of us slid down, gasping, into the carpet of myrtle that blanketed the earth.
Nothing had changed. The night was soft and darkly golden as before. In its secret haven the mockingbird still sang. Overhead the sky was starless, but I could hear the first far-off stirrings of morning, subway cars moving into Union Station, the rush of distant wheels.
“We should go in,” I said at last. I smoothed my ruined skirt, tried to stand, and slid down again helplessly, my legs were so weak. “Jesus! Where’d you learn to
do
that?”
Dylan pulled me up, grinning. “You liked it?”
I laughed and plucked a bit of vine from his hair. “It was okay,” I said, and taking his hand started back toward the carriage house.
“Just okay?” His voice was plaintive. “Then maybe we should practice some more …”
And we did.
That was how Dylan missed his dinner with Dr. Dvorkin, as well as breakfast and any invitations for lunch that might have come to him. The next morning I called in sick, for the first time in almost two years. When Dylan wondered, somewhat nervously, if he should call in as well, I just laughed.
“Who do you think you’d call?
I’m
your boss, and
I
think you need to spend the day in bed …”
We made love until I ached all over, until I couldn’t tell where my body ended and the damp warmth of the sheets and air and Dylan’s skin began. He was so beautiful, I really did weep, watching him as he slept late that morning, his snores vying with the soft roar of a neighbor’s lawn mower. I lay beside him and still couldn’t keep my hands from him: his skin so warm and smooth it was like marble fitting into the curve of my palm, the swell of his narrow hips where I pressed my mouth so that I could feel the bone jutting beneath my tongue. I wanted to devour him, feel his soft skin break under my teeth like a pear’s and my mouth fill with juice, sweet and hot. When I took him in my mouth again he groaned, his fingers pulled at my hair and once more we tangled together as he came, warmth spurting onto my breasts as he clutched me and cried my name aloud.
“I guess it’s true,” I said when we finally had both slept, and awakened to find ourselves bruised and soaked with sweat and wrapped in each other’s arms. A fan moved lazily back and forth in front of a window, sending a faint coolness through the room.