Myths of Origin Read online

  What sort of golem will rise up out of this collected flesh with emet tattooed on its palm? Will I have to whisper in his wizened ear, wet and wrinkled as a newborn, some arcanity to bring it surging together? Will it love me still?

  I dream it will not.

  I dream I will not see the golem-husband whole.

  All my eye can see is my own shape hunched over the river, emptying my own body of itself.

  The Wild Geese Come

  Feet crunched on the pebble-path to my pagoda. The heart within the Ayako-body leapt up like a fish flashing in the sun. The dream of the village-boy has come!

  And he did come, walking up the Mountain path in a simple shift with a polished walking-stick, carrying a leather pack on his shoulders. He was not the same boy—I did not expect it—but he was handsome and strong and I was eager to speak to him.

  The boy caught sight of me and a look of horror stole into his black eyes. For a moment I saw myself as I must have appeared to him: an old witch-ghost in tattered rags with horse-like hair that stuck out in black and gray bolts, filled with twigs and leaves and river-reeds. My bones were visible beneath skin that was too pale, and the hands which reached out to welcome him must have seemed like death-claws.

  I do not know where she comes from, the crone that sneaks into the house and steals girlhood away.

  Hurriedly, the boy lays out his gifts on the damp grass: a sack of new rice, tea leaves folded into a blue cloth, a pouch containing dried lentils and a chunk of pork fat. It was a treasure—each year the gifts were better, and within my Ayako-heart I was happy, for I knew this meant my old home prospered.

  I called after the boy as he turned his feet to run—but not too fast, lest the ghost be angered—back to the village.

  “Wait, Boy,” I rasped. This time, I was sure, I knew the way to trap the dream of the clean-finger nailed child and make him stay. He would help me take down the timbers of my solitude. “Let me tell you a lesson about the Mountain.”

  He paused. The young can rarely resist a lesson. They pretend to loathe them, but in their secret hearts a good lesson is sweeter to them than winter cakes. He looked back to me and whispered, his voice full of terror, “All . . . all right.”

  I crept up to him, the first human I had spoken to since the men with the iron clothes burned the village. “What you see is not Mountain. It is the dream that Mountain dreams.”

  The boy squinted skeptically in the late afternoon sun, which rumbled a pleasant orange-gold.

  “Are you the Old Woman on the Mountain or the dream that she dreams?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine, young one. I am old, and I live on the Mountain, so it is possible that I am she. I possess three floors of a pagoda and a bean patch. What do you possess?”

  “A colt, which will one day be a horse,” the boy replied, “and a black rooster with yellow eyes. The rest belongs to my father and will be mine when I am grown. But why do you possess only three floors?”

  “I am too weak to reach the top,” I admitted, ashamed again for the bulging veins and jaundiced fingernails I also possessed.

  “Then why not just try for the fourth? Four is more than three. Perhaps then your guess will be better. My father teaches that the more a man possesses, the wiser he is.”

  I laughed quietly, and the chuckle was a hoarse and empty one. “Then your father must be very wise.”

  The boy looked strangely at me and I saw his heart decide to speak no more. He bowed and retreated down the Mountain, with the sun on his back. I did not have the heart to try to stop him again.

  Swallows Return

  Into the belly of the sun, my eyes burn to white oil and threads of flame spin down to the earth. I dream that my hunger gnashes its own heart, searching for a city as beautiful as a tinderbox, a city to lie over and sigh into its towers.

  I dream that the autumn has passed while I danced in the laps of a dozen mountains, throwing my hands through their rooftops. In the fire-dream, all things burn under me, and the scorching of all things smells sweet.

  On the horizon, I can see a great wall. It is a hundred shades of gold and its gate is strong. A wide plain stretches before it that might have once been green, but pitched battles have stained it red and black. It is a city by the sea, dark as wine, and sleek black ships line its harbor like suitors. Warriors are pressing against the wall, a bronze wave breaking on stone. Its towers are coquettish and tall, slim as girls, beckoning.

  I can smell incense burning desperately in temples, I can smell terror-sweat in seven hundred bedrooms. I can hear the dull thud of marching men, and the squall of the dying. I can hear women weeping, and the rustle of their dresses on marble floors. The great wall whispers that it would welcome me, that it would show me new pleasures of which I had not yet had the courage to dream.

  I feel my mouth water, and drops of oily flame begin to fall from my body.

  Soon.

  Flocks of Birds Gather Grain

  This time I spent an hour stuck between the third and fourth levels, limbs splayed like some distended, helpless spider. There were no more footholds at that height and the distance between floors had seemed only to grow. Excruciatingly I inched sideways, my hips aching, to a thick vine that hung against the wall.

  Touching it, I breathed deeply and trusted my weight to its length. Instead of a spider I then hung in the cavernous tower like the rope to a grotesque bell. And slowly, hand over hand, I raised myself up along the green stalk until the fourth level passed beneath me and I could see the tracks of ancient footprints in the dust. I let go shakily and stood in the center of a room which was almost intact. I had come through a large hole in the floor but other than that chasm, the wood was smooth and deeply oiled.

  And in the center of the grained wood lay a book.

  It was strangely bound, not in a scroll as I knew books to be, but clasped in a leather casing which was not black, but dark from the sweat-thick attentions of many hands. It had no design or picture, it had only the clutch of cream-yellow paper within its jaws.

  It bulged slightly, a fat heart on the upbeat.

  On the cover it read in yellowing ink:

  This is the Book of Dreams.

  Thunder Suppresses His Voice

  What is a Riddle? It is not merely a word game, or a puzzle, or a even, truly, a question. It is a series of locks which open only onto each other, in a great circle that leads back to a Truth—and this is the secret I tell you now on the great wall of Thebes: the Truth is always in the Question, never in the answer. All conceivable truths are in a single question. If I ask a boy-child to tell me my name, I have already told him the ancient truth that a name holds power. I have told him that I am more than a monster, for I possess a name. I have told him that in names lies the path to freedom, not only of the body, but of the ineffable Self. All this I have told him, before I ever demanded such a simple repayment as an answer, if only he could listen. There is not nearly so much gold in the answer, which is nothing more than a word.

  What is a Riddle?

  It is a box full of satisfactions. It never fails the questioner or the respondent. When it is opened, there is a soft intake of breath, when it remains closed, breath itself is stopped.

  And on this box is written:

  This is the Book of Dreams.

  Burrowing Beetles Wall Up Their Doors With Earth

  I am afraid to open it. A closed book is beautiful, because anything can be written in it, and so everything is. All the stories that ever were—love, honor, death, lust, wisdom—every word written is contained inside it as long as the I-that-is-Ayako does not reach forward to open the cover and reveal what is actually written there. It can only be disappointing. Perhaps that is why it bulges, so full of what it could be. The curve of potential, like a pregnant woman’s belly.

  An open book is ugly, it is splayed open like a whore. It can only be what it is.

  I am afraid of it, I do not want to touch it. It does not fill me with light lik
e the Stone or the goat’s milk. What do I need with a book of dreams when dreams people my body as though I were a capital-city?

  Waters Dry Up

  River is worried. He sees that my dream-tears continue, falling with more speed, pooling around my shoulders in a salty ring. River is usually the first to understand. He will not tell Mountain until he is sure he cannot punish me alone. He set the sun on me to dry them, but the tears are alive now, they run their course like the mewling children of River do, heedless and wild. They come and come and come.

  Within myself, I am smiling.

  He himself tries to wash them away, frothing under their weight, blue on blue. But they sink within him and he cannot move to stop up my eyes like wine bottles. I am heavier, heavier by far. My salts scald and bruise him—I am warmed by his screams.

  He sets the wind to dry them, but they can only soak up the thick waters, and send them earthward again as rain. The dams begin to swell up with my sorrows, the sea is black and deep. Great storms erupt on the hipbones of Mountain, drenching his gray skin with borrowed tears.

  He set the glaciers on me to freeze them, but they are hot and thick, rolling over my body in a great gray slough, over my dark-treed belly, the skin of boughs that covers my secret womb, and on this skin is written in the sap and tears:

  This is the Book of Dreams.

  Wild Geese Come as Guests

  I dream I have found the last of him. In the deep river currents where no reeds grow it floated like an abandoned cradle. I am ready now, to take the river into me. I do not want to, but now there can be no more delays, and I can see the colors of the water changing. I am draped in his body—intestines, blood, leg, clavicle, cheek, eyes, jaw, scalp, hands, skin, spleen, heart, skull. I am dressed for the ball, for a second wedding, for the insensate ritual of taking my dream-husband’s corpse into myself.

  I know what is coming, what the river will leave in me like sandy deposits in the delta. I am resigned, I want it done. I want to leave it on the banks and never think on it again. The hawk-headed child looms large in my vision. I can feel its feathers already prickling the walls of my womb.

  I stifle revulsion as I clean the last of the dream-husband’s organs in the cool river, which has inundated the valley and given life to the amaranth crops. I am the body of the sky, and I will give birth to light from light. I cannot tell if it is still a dream. If the child I will take from his mute body will be a dream-son or if he will be real. I am the amaranth, and I am the river.

  I hold the last of him in my hands, mottled gray and shot with hardened blood. And on its length is written:

  This is the Book of Dreams.

  Sparrows Dive Into the Water Becoming Clams

  Metamorphosis. It is a long line of bellies, chained together flesh-wise, circling each other in a blood-black smear. A book is a belly, too. It is full of dark, nameless things decaying into each other, dissolving in acid, jostling for position. Kingfishers dive into the water and become women; women dive into the earth and become books.

  What woman was this book before it grew its leather wings? I do not want to disturb her, to open her and pry out her secrets with a knife.

  I was breathing heavily, trying to escape the book without moving. Perhaps peace lay in it, perhaps not. I did not want to know. I wanted my bean patch and my first floor. I wanted River and Mountain sleeping beside me in the dark.

  I knew then I would not open it. I knew my story, I did not need the book. I would not harm it, its capacity for infinite wisdom, by reading what was truly there. I was not sure, I reasoned, that I could read any longer.

  But I could not stop looking at it, the vulgarity of its bulging cover. I wanted it, like a barren woman wants a child. I would leave it, let it remain quiet and alone, as I have been for so long. Let the scholars in Kyoto pour over pages until their eyes dribble onto their cheeks. I took my lessons from Gate and Moth, Goat and River, and Mountain, above all my patron Mountain, who held me in his arms and whispered lullabies.

  I stood before the book. I was the anatomy of a no. All of me cried out in rejection of the black heart of the dream-pagoda.

  I had to escape it. Up. Up onto the fifth floor, where there would be no terrible book to make my sinews tear themselves like so much paper.

  Chrysanthemums Are Tinged Yellow

  I dream that I begin to seduce the city. I touch its walls lightly, with a fingertip. I brush my lips over the ramparts. I am better now, I know how to make the fire last. I know how to take my pleasure from a city.

  Before the Gate a dream-battle is raging. Armor has fallen in the dirt made mud by the glut of black blood, bodies are piled up to be burned. Two men are slashing at each other, their faces turned into masks of beasts, theatre-clay with fleshy ribbons. The rest of the army looks on, waiting on the outcome. The only sounds are the cheap, hollow ring of swords, the dull thud of blows landing on leather-wrapped shields, and the hush of my body moving over the bricks of the city.

  My nipples dip into the fountains and they are dried, my hair falls over a siege tower and it crashes to the frothing earth. I laugh and laugh. What they battle over is already mine. I have claimed it.

  And on the great carved gate is written:

  This is the Book of Dreams.

  The Wolf Sacrifices the Beasts

  The fifth floor was perfect. I simply climbed up a ladder which had not a single rung broken, and stood in the center of a room with no cracks in the floor, no pockmarks on the walls—even the paintings were untouched. They showed strange and terrible things—a beast sitting atop a low wall, half lion and half eagle, with the face of a woman. A woman tied to the earth with a green-walled palace built in her mouth. A woman standing in a river much vaster than my little creek, with the severed organs of some nameless man draped over her body. A woman whose skin flamed red, sighing onto a city which caught flame from her breath.

  And in the corner stood a small Fox, beautifully auburn and cream-furred, with pert ears and a gentle snout, sitting on her haunches with an expression on her face which in the world of foxes must have passed for a smile.

  “Why did you not open the book?” she asked softly, in a cultured, harmonious voice which rustled through the room like a veil blown from the shoulders of some pretty child.

  “I did not want to disturb it,” I gulped, suddenly ashamed at my cowardice.

  “If I brought it here now, would you change your mind?”

  I considered it, thought back on the dark oils of its cover. “No. I would rather you tell me lessons. I would rather Gate spoke to me under the stars.”

  “But there are no lessons in it. Only a story.”

  “My story?” I whispered.

  “In a way. It is the story of your dream-women. In it are written their names.”

  The Fox scratched at her cupped red ear. “They have no names. Only the hermit-Ayako has a name,” I protested.

  “It is only that you do not know their names. But if you do not open the book, you will not finish the dreams, you will not reach the sea. Do you not recall what the Sphinx said? All women are one woman. If you do not seek out the shells they leave behind, you will not shed your own.” The Fox trotted over and stood before me.

  “Who are you? Why are you here at the top of my tower?” I rasped, my voice dry as rice in the sun.

  “I have many names, as you do. This is my pagoda, I have always been here. I am the Stone, too. Once it bore my face. I am Mercy, I am Compassion. I am the flowing water that carries you. You cannot step into me twice, and yet, each of your footsteps drags four behind them. I am nothing more than a door through which you will pass. I am here to show you the End.”

  Foliage Turns Yellow And Falls

  Outside the dream-pagoda, leaves drifted down with thoughtless grace, green, gold, brown. The air had sharpened, swallows sang down the sun.

  “Is this the dream of the Fox? Or the dream of the Fifth Floor?” I asked.

  “In all probability. I have no rev
elations for you, only the peace that comes with understanding. You did not strive to reach the top of the pagoda—you fled to the pinnacle without thought of ascension. Because you did not seek it, it is yours. You dive into the water and become a clam, a pheasant, a book. This is about metamorphosis—this is about solitude. Look how you have built your temple! Look how high and bright the spires!” The Fox laughed, a deep sound in her throat like skin being stretched over a drum. “You must listen to the dream of the Sphinx. She tells the truth—she cannot do otherwise. Her body carries the physiognomy of true things—only a true answer will ease her hunger. Thus, she is emptiness. Not the expanse of pure emptiness in which wisdom grows, but the gnawing absence of knowledge, that which burns.”

  “But are all these women me?” I begged, confused.

  “All women are one woman. You are the I-that-is. They are the I-that-is-possible. Open the book, and follow the voice-threads where they lead. Out of the black silk harvest they came, and they are yours. You have a responsibility to them. The multiplied “I” can not be reduced back into itself until all its light-paths have been followed. The Sphinx would say this has already happened. If it has, it should not be difficult for you.”

  And the book lay between us, bulging and dark, promising. The Fox retained her beatific face; I opened the cover with a careful hand and read these things:

  Insects Tuck Themselves Away

  If all women are one woman who has already lived out each of her infinite possible lives, if all their stories are already told, if, in fact, all possible events have already occurred, the one infinitely copied photon has completed all conceivable pathways, then we approach not only the unfortunate conclusion that all Riddles have already been asked and answered, but must accept that we reside in the Wasteland of Quantum Exhaustion.