Part Two: In the house of dust, roll yourself in ashes
Day 146, Saturday, October 25th
Midnight
Tez's room
[LISTEN]
It doesn't require a sacrifice. That story's already been told, and will be again. This is something new.
And it's something old, too: old, old, ancient. That's why we woke Chalchiuhtotolin , called it up out the dark. No grimoires or blended incenses or planetary hours to this magic, only that part of me that rose in the first days humans understood they could move more than the meat of this world, the first times that someone dared to rise from the campfire where their brothers and sisters huddled and walked out into the ancient night to call up something greater and more fearful under moonlight, starlight, the flat reflective gleam of jaguar eyes. The strange old magic that speaks to the animal hindbrain, driven by will and need. Syl understands it, out of her folk witcheries.
Gut magic, blood magic, bone magic.
I put the ash of my own flesh into it, brief pain and watch myself grow back, sticky fat ash of meat. The cold white ashes from the hearth, a fire burned out years before I came; residue of human lives passed here, layered one on the other, gathered round that ancient hearth. Free-flowing water sealed in a jar, the soil from which her husband was made. All things antithetical to her, wrapped in worn white cloth. And five long thorns, clean and dark.
A breath, feeling myself set within this body, aching muscle and bone and yearning skin. When I let it go, fraying out of flesh, it hurts like dying. Something that wears this flesh, that wears it only as a costume: an echo of his voice and I enter a world where there are no voices, where there is no sound, no sight, no night scent carried on the breeze.
And I am become the sharp black curve of knife, cold and cutting; and I am become the night wind stirring between worlds. I am slicing through being itself, all the threads of me gathered at last in this place that is all places, drawn from the carnival and the fields and the places I have travelled and the people I have loved and my own land long ago into one focused wave of dark|blood|magic|sacrifice. Somewhere far away jungle flowers open, somewhere blight takes the corn. Eyes open in the dark bedrooms of those who can see, shocked awake by a cat's snarl or the throb of wings or the sudden jolting beat of their own heart.
I am more than I have been. The bones of the world, I told Verdi and Syl, and I can feel them, the threads of the web that string everything together. Here I can touch them, and change.
A sharp division, here from there: slice of the knife. My place, and she will not enter. I build in it, saturate it, and the elements I have mixed somewhere far away are here too, prying at those threads. Should she try, then ruin, ruin, ruin.
A thorn for your feet, that they might not run. A thorn for your sex, that it shall bring no pleasure. A thorn for your hands, that they will not do your work. A thorn for your lips, that they will not speak your name. A thorn for your heart, and so you are transfixed.
No sight to your eyes, no scent to your nose, no hearing to your ears, no taste to your tongue, no touch to your skin. You will crawl in darkness, you will shrivel. You to the place of husks and rinds, you to the edges of all things! You to wither and to wail, you to sorrow and lament and none to hear you. A shadow you are, Lilith, Abeko, Izorpo, Partasah, Lamassu. By all the names you bear known and unknown, a shadow you become, a wraith to scrabble at the corners of the world. Be your fire buried, be your fire drowned, be you doused in darkness.
You will not enter.
It is a voiceless shout, a spasm like orgasm or convulsion, everything I am rushing inwards at once and bursting through the threads, reshaping the world under my will. A long time, after, when I know nothing or near to it, drifting and faint. All power poured from me, and I am left like a ringing in my own ears, an absence upon the world.
Flesh finds me again at last, when the dawn light stirs. I am soaked in sweat, parched dry. Dust has settled on my open eyes, or fine white ash. When my eyes have stopped streaming, when I've coughed the last dryness from my burning lungs, I see the thorns have impaled the white-wrapped bundle.
I scrabble at the floorboards by the door, working the loose nails until I can pry one up. My fingernails are split to the quick when I lay the bundle there, hidden at the threshold. Whatever may happen when we face her in the world outside, I have made this space mine, and I know that I spoke true.
You will not enter here.
Closed
Midnight
Tez's room
[LISTEN]
It doesn't require a sacrifice. That story's already been told, and will be again. This is something new.
And it's something old, too: old, old, ancient. That's why we woke Chalchiuhtotolin , called it up out the dark. No grimoires or blended incenses or planetary hours to this magic, only that part of me that rose in the first days humans understood they could move more than the meat of this world, the first times that someone dared to rise from the campfire where their brothers and sisters huddled and walked out into the ancient night to call up something greater and more fearful under moonlight, starlight, the flat reflective gleam of jaguar eyes. The strange old magic that speaks to the animal hindbrain, driven by will and need. Syl understands it, out of her folk witcheries.
Gut magic, blood magic, bone magic.
I put the ash of my own flesh into it, brief pain and watch myself grow back, sticky fat ash of meat. The cold white ashes from the hearth, a fire burned out years before I came; residue of human lives passed here, layered one on the other, gathered round that ancient hearth. Free-flowing water sealed in a jar, the soil from which her husband was made. All things antithetical to her, wrapped in worn white cloth. And five long thorns, clean and dark.
A breath, feeling myself set within this body, aching muscle and bone and yearning skin. When I let it go, fraying out of flesh, it hurts like dying. Something that wears this flesh, that wears it only as a costume: an echo of his voice and I enter a world where there are no voices, where there is no sound, no sight, no night scent carried on the breeze.
And I am become the sharp black curve of knife, cold and cutting; and I am become the night wind stirring between worlds. I am slicing through being itself, all the threads of me gathered at last in this place that is all places, drawn from the carnival and the fields and the places I have travelled and the people I have loved and my own land long ago into one focused wave of dark|blood|magic|sacrifice. Somewhere far away jungle flowers open, somewhere blight takes the corn. Eyes open in the dark bedrooms of those who can see, shocked awake by a cat's snarl or the throb of wings or the sudden jolting beat of their own heart.
I am more than I have been. The bones of the world, I told Verdi and Syl, and I can feel them, the threads of the web that string everything together. Here I can touch them, and change.
A sharp division, here from there: slice of the knife. My place, and she will not enter. I build in it, saturate it, and the elements I have mixed somewhere far away are here too, prying at those threads. Should she try, then ruin, ruin, ruin.
A thorn for your feet, that they might not run. A thorn for your sex, that it shall bring no pleasure. A thorn for your hands, that they will not do your work. A thorn for your lips, that they will not speak your name. A thorn for your heart, and so you are transfixed.
No sight to your eyes, no scent to your nose, no hearing to your ears, no taste to your tongue, no touch to your skin. You will crawl in darkness, you will shrivel. You to the place of husks and rinds, you to the edges of all things! You to wither and to wail, you to sorrow and lament and none to hear you. A shadow you are, Lilith, Abeko, Izorpo, Partasah, Lamassu. By all the names you bear known and unknown, a shadow you become, a wraith to scrabble at the corners of the world. Be your fire buried, be your fire drowned, be you doused in darkness.
You will not enter.
It is a voiceless shout, a spasm like orgasm or convulsion, everything I am rushing inwards at once and bursting through the threads, reshaping the world under my will. A long time, after, when I know nothing or near to it, drifting and faint. All power poured from me, and I am left like a ringing in my own ears, an absence upon the world.
Flesh finds me again at last, when the dawn light stirs. I am soaked in sweat, parched dry. Dust has settled on my open eyes, or fine white ash. When my eyes have stopped streaming, when I've coughed the last dryness from my burning lungs, I see the thorns have impaled the white-wrapped bundle.
I scrabble at the floorboards by the door, working the loose nails until I can pry one up. My fingernails are split to the quick when I lay the bundle there, hidden at the threshold. Whatever may happen when we face her in the world outside, I have made this space mine, and I know that I spoke true.
You will not enter here.
Closed