The Habitation of the Blessed Read online

  Lamis, Who Would One Day Become a Queen Like Her Mother, Shrouded in Mist: I want to be a child again, and fear nothing.

  Houd, Who Would One Day Die in Jerusalem: There, Butterfly, there. Beginning tomorrow I will love you for all the rest of my life.

  [There is more, so much more, but it all dissolved into nothing, in a slither of green and pale blue fungus that tears the living page from my hand and left me with nothing, nothing, no end and no answers, only that lonely boy and his need, and no bud for me, either, to follow Hiob into stillness and dreams and escape the disappointment, the loss of it. I had been widowed by these books, and abandoned. The soft weight of the spine cracked as I threw it, useless, against the wall. I wanted to know, curse them. I wanted to know everything.]

  ADDENDUM TO THE CONFESSIONS OF HIOB VON LUZERN, 1699

  Brothers, I send this back to you knowing in no fashion what tomorrow might bring. I send back Marcel and Abelard over the mountains to bear back this manuscript. Hiob felt at ease speaking to God, comfortably, two aged grandfathers exchanging tales. I can speak only to the page. I write knowing in no fashion what tomorrow may bring. For my own part, I will stay. Hiob cannot be moved, and I cannot leave him.

  I have asked the woman in yellow to bear me back to the Tree of Books, so that I may attempt this tale again, make it more whole, fill the places the mold took from us. It is my intent to build a small hut there, on that plain, so as to lose no time transporting the manuscripts back here. It is not for love of Prester John I do this, but for love of Hiob, who should wake to illumination.

  Oh, but I lie. I also want to know the rest, I also burn to learn what followed, I also find my heart grown bitter with having those books stolen from me too soon by the mere villainies of air and light. How those volumes corrupt in their turn, so that I feel within me tendrils of green, and red, and gold, swarming over my heart, eating me whole. Take me back, I said to her, take me back, I cannot bear it.

  The woman in yellow, Theotokos, I suppose I must call her, looked intently at me for a long while.

  “I will consider it,” she said finally.

  “Abbas will support me. It is not yours to decide.”

  The woman turned her head to one side, and I believe she almost smiled.

  “It is my tree,” she said softly. “It belongs to no one but me. Not Abbas, and not you. Go to him if you like. He rules at my pleasure.”

  And she made a curious gesture, stroking the skin of her neck, the space just above her collarbone, unselfconscious, bare.

  And so I wait. I wait for her to convey me back to that place. I wait and think of Hagia, and Imtithal, and the strangeness of women. I wait and think of how the world was made. I make sure Marcel and Abelard are well stocked with eggs and meat and oranges, and send them off into the ashy day. I eat Abbas’ chickens, and pray. Oh, how I pray. I pray you will not condemn us, at home, in those familiar halls, with those sweet chestnuts in the garden. Nothing was as we expected. We are but mortal men. We cannot be blamed for the shape and history of the world.

  One further thing I must relate, and then Abelard is eager to depart, for he hates this place, and has the patience of a gadfly. But I have no explanation for what I wish to tell, and no knowledge of its meaning or purpose. I can only say, as John might: It happened, no denying would stop it from having happened.

  Yesterday, as I sat beside Hiob’s slab, dizzy with the scent of the flowery garlands, my master opened his mouth. I started, relief flooding me. He would wake, it would be all right. All would be well and all would be well—but he did not wake. His jaw cracked open, and out of his mouth a small, forked branch emerged, its foliage wet and wrinkled like newborn butterflies, its fruit nearly invisible, finer than dust. It grew out of him, slowly, a delicate stripling, studded with leaves like emeralds, glowing gently against his grey, senseless skin.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  When addressing the delicate issue of a book’s genealogy, one has to begin at the beginning. I owe a great debt of thanks to Deborah Schwartz, my medieval studies professor at Cal Poly, who awakened in this lapsed Classicist a grand love of the medieval world that went far beyond the ersatz RenFaires of my youth and into something altogether stranger and deeper. Though I bear the shame of having failed to complete my graduate program, Dr. Schwartz rekindled my passion for Arthuriana, Chaucer, romances, and through all of that, finally, led me to the Kingdom of Prester John and all the wonders hidden there. Without her I would never have found my way.

  Thank you also to my usual cohort: my husband Dmitri, who not only read every draft and loved them until I loved them too, but checked me into a hotel in the wilds of Maine until I finished this beast. To Elizabeth McClellan, who offered a kind beta read and reassured my frazzled soul, to SJ Tucker, my sister in crimes of art, to Tiffin Staib, Amal El-Mohtar, Deborah Castellano, and Evelyn Kriete, without whom I would be lost. To everyone who has helped me stand up, keep moving, keep smiling, never give up, never fail. You are my tribe; you are my blessed kingdom of monsters and angels.

  To my agent, Howard Morhaim, I am forever grateful—he is the Dumbledore to all my bedraggled children, finding them magical homes when I despair. To my team of editors and copyeditors, Jeremy Lassen, Juliet Ulman, and Marty Halpern, all of whom taught me a great deal in the course of processing this book into the form you hold in your hands.

  Finally, thank you to the anonymous student who once turned in a very bad poem about the priest-king in the East, and caused me to say to an empty office: Prester John deserves better.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Catherynne M. Valente is the author of over a dozen books of fiction and poetry, including Palimpsest, the Orphan’s Tales series, and The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Own Making. She is the winner of the Tiptree Award, the Andre Norton Award, the Lambda Award, the Mythopoeic Award, the Rhysling Award, and the Million Writers Award. She was a finalist for the World Fantasy Award in 2007 and 2009, and the Locus and Hugo awards in 2010. She lives on an island off the coast of Maine with her partner, two dogs, an enormous cat, and an accordion.

  Table of Contents

  THE CONFESSIONS OF HIOB VON LUZERN, 1699

  THE WORD IN THE QUINCE

  THE CONFESSIONS OF HIOB VON LUZERN, 1699

  THE BOOK OF THE FOUNTAIN

  THE CONFESSIONS OF HIOB VON LUZERN, 1699

  THE SCARLET NURSERY

  THE CONFESSIONS OF HIOB VON LUZERN, 1699

  THE WORD IN THE QUINCE

  THE BOOK OF THE FOUNTAIN

  THE SCARLET NURSERY

  THE WORD IN THE QUINCE

  THE BOOK OF THE FOUNTAIN

  THE SCARLET NURSERY

  THE HABITATION OF THE BLESSED

  THE CONFESSIONS OF HIOB VON LUZERN, 1699

  THE WORD IN THE QUINCE

  THE BOOK OF THE FOUNTAIN

  THE SCARLET NURSERY

  THE WORD IN THE QUINCE

  THE CONFESSIONS OF HIOB VON LUZERN, 1699

  THE BOOK OF THE FOUNTAIN

  THE SCARLET NURSERY

  THE WORD IN THE QUINCE

  THE CONFESSIONS OF HIOB VON LUZERN, 1699

  THE BOOK OF THE FOUNTAIN

  THE SCARLET NURSERY

  THE WORD IN THE QUINCE

  THE BOOK OF THE FOUNTAIN

  THE CONFESSIONS OF HIOB VON LUZERN, 1699

  THE SCARLET NURSERY

  THE WORD IN THE QUINCE

  THE CONFESSIONS OF HIOB VON LUZERN, 1699

  THE CRYSTALLINE HEAVEN

  THE BOOK OF THE FOUNTAIN

  THE SCARLET NURSERY

  THE BOOK OF THE FOUNTAIN

  THE SCARLET NURSERY

  ADDENDUM TO THE CONFESSIONS OF HIOB VON LUZERN, 1699

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Table of Contents

  THE CONFESSIONS OF HIOB VON LUZERN, 1699

  THE WORD IN THE QUINCE

  THE CONFESSIONS OF HIOB VON LUZERN, 1699

  THE BOOK OF THE FOUNTAIN


  THE CONFESSIONS OF HIOB VON LUZERN, 1699

  THE SCARLET NURSERY

  THE CONFESSIONS OF HIOB VON LUZERN, 1699

  THE WORD IN THE QUINCE

  THE BOOK OF THE FOUNTAIN

  THE SCARLET NURSERY

  THE WORD IN THE QUINCE

  THE BOOK OF THE FOUNTAIN

  THE SCARLET NURSERY

  THE HABITATION OF THE BLESSED

  THE CONFESSIONS OF HIOB VON LUZERN, 1699

  THE WORD IN THE QUINCE

  THE BOOK OF THE FOUNTAIN

  THE SCARLET NURSERY

  THE WORD IN THE QUINCE

  THE CONFESSIONS OF HIOB VON LUZERN, 1699

  THE BOOK OF THE FOUNTAIN

  THE SCARLET NURSERY

  THE WORD IN THE QUINCE

  THE CONFESSIONS OF HIOB VON LUZERN, 1699

  THE BOOK OF THE FOUNTAIN

  THE SCARLET NURSERY

  THE WORD IN THE QUINCE

  THE BOOK OF THE FOUNTAIN

  THE CONFESSIONS OF HIOB VON LUZERN, 1699

  THE SCARLET NURSERY

  THE WORD IN THE QUINCE

  THE CONFESSIONS OF HIOB VON LUZERN, 1699

  THE CRYSTALLINE HEAVEN

  THE BOOK OF THE FOUNTAIN

  THE SCARLET NURSERY

  THE BOOK OF THE FOUNTAIN

  THE SCARLET NURSERY

  ADDENDUM TO THE CONFESSIONS OF HIOB VON LUZERN, 1699

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR