FIC: Golem (R)
Title: Golem
Type: Fic
Age-Range Category: Five
Characters: Severus Snape, Minerva McGonagall
Author: eldritcher
Rating: R
Click to View [Warning(s)]Creator Chooses Not to Warn.
Summary: He becomes her.
Twelve-thousand years ago, surged magma into fissured earth calving this black waste.
The men came later. The boldest of them remain immured in the moor. She draws into her hungry womb the brave and the foolish that dare stray. Only the meek may inherit her earth.
There sits perched upon moor's waste a chalky tor of slabs. In stone's shadow is a shepherd's hut camouflaged by the work of hand and wand.
~
Lingers he upon the peat, as one more meek man with moorings none.
He picks his way through the waste, foraging snail and leaf and toadstool. The paths are marked grim by the dull gleam of bone's white where men and oxen had fallen foul of chance.
Nature deems that a man on his own shall acquire an eccentricity or two in the course of seasons; man must conjure meaning to his existence, in all places, in all times.
The man on the moor begins to collect bones.
What makes man? The question flints in him brittle curiosity. He applies himself to anthropometry.
In a shepherd's hut, on a forgotten waste, knits he skeletons with bull's head and man's torso and limbs. Once rose a civilisation by a mighty river, under the aegis of gods embodied as half-beast and half-man.
From the bones pieces he the bodies of gods.
They lie inert.
No flesh he has at hand to clad them in.
No holy breath is his to wake them to will.
~
He knits skeletons during the day. At night, he strips off his skin and wears another's.
He becomes her in potion's sip.
Anthropometry is the study of body's measure. He has no inclination to study his own. He keens to study hers.
Her skin clads his wrists in unmarked softness. He presses kisses from ulnar to carpus to phalange. Want creeps into his blood. He knows it is the act stirring him. He pretends it would stir her too, if she knew his mouth's trace upon her.
~
The bones of the young sink deeper in the mire. The young have heavier bones. It is the calcium, he knows. Age lightens the skeleton.
He knits the bones of the old with the bones of the young, and the bones of beasts with the bones of man.
He does not knit the bones of a woman with the bones of a man.
(There was once a girl who gave birth and defied great evil and died. They buried with her her wedded in plain soil that was no peat. Stripped of flesh and organ, her bones must have collapsed into his hollows, in last troth.)
He does not knit the bones of a woman with the bones of a man.
Nature deems that a man on his own shall further his eccentricity in the course of seasons; he must conjure meaning to his existence, in all places, in all times, and man's search for meaning dislikes equilibrium.
Loam is the flesh the last man on the moor pours into the woven chains of bones.
No holy breath is his to wake them to will.
~
Day leaves, and he wears her once more.
With her hands he learns the lines that sew her ankles to calves and the firm of muscles made so by ceaseless perambulation up stair and hill. Sweet sings her skin in goosebump warbles. Want leaves him warm and trembling.
The absurd and unbound want of him wants her to want him as he wants.
Concocts his servant mind for his wanting heart febrile fantasia.
~
Bones of creatures that are no beasts surface in the mire. The House Elves have bird-bones. It is the calcium, he knows. Malnutrition lightens the skeleton.
He knits the bones of the masters with the bones of their creatures, and the bones of the old with the bones of the young, and the bones of beasts with the bones of man.
Autumn ices the moor. The peat turns murderous. Sepulchral gleam the bones in the light of the moon. As ghosts return the brave and the foolish men that died, and in silence they greet the mire that was their ending's womb.
The last man on the moor stands before his hut, holding his lantern aloft, and watches the ghosts he will meet in communion after it ends. He finds himself known and met and seen by these silent spectres than he had been by the castled ghosts that spoke his name. The moor is deceitful, but he sees the truth of her, and it is his truth too now.
(There was once a boy who loved his creature. His end was no grave that a mother could weep beside. The dead boy's creature was a foul and foolish thing. Love took the toll only love could, killing brother in brother's name.)
The man keeps watch on the moor, as the boy's star gleams bright above, as the ghosts of men and their creatures march by.
The moor has a susurration all her own on this night of ghosts, and he breathes with her as her creatures must.
The moonlight touches his hair's slick, and rubs the soft creases of his face and the ghastly scars on his neck, and plays coy with the black of his cloak and boots, and dances giddy between his fingers' crooks.
~
The ghosts fade, and he wears her once more.
Another moon's turn is all that remains to him in potion's theriac.
He speaks words of magic to turn the perverse into the profane, and half of him becomes her in measured sip.
From neck to navel, her skin cloaks him.
Strewn about him lie creatures of clay he has not the breath to bring to life.
He touches her belly and her throat with his hands. He anoints her skin with moor's mud and man's tears. He pleads silent pleas to the wind and the mire. No deliverance embraces him.
He claws her skin and eats of pain. He kisses her skin and his want for her thrums through blood's mire as sacred wine.
Man's rib became woman, and woman became man as the wind becomes the moors.
The concoction is no balm of Gilead. He does not know if he keens to become her as the rib became woman, or if he keens to become her as the first woman became her man. The potion offers him neither. He wears her skin without wearing her heart, and he loves her flesh without her love.
The craven and feverous being of him wants to become her, and wants to become her.
~
Bones of the deformed dead rise as winter wakes. They are cracked and brittle, as rodent bones. He does not permit himself to wonder what manner of womb's ravaging twisted grotesque these infant skeletons.
(There was once a man who birthed himself without womb's cocoon. He chased what he could not name, he chased himself from name to name, and his hamartia's hollow he did not know in name. At the end, at the end's end, he tore out with snake's tooth his undoing's throat.)
The man on the moor is silent; he bears no voice anymore. The man on the moor is silent; no words carry his heart anymore. The man on the moor is silent; to none can he offer vassal's vow in speech anymore.
~
The moon is half to wane's black.
He wears her in panacea's swallow. With words of magic, he becomes her from groin to toe.
He has two rations left.
Bold is his hand's leap to cunt's open; he warms in her skin to this dearest traverse.
His silent creations of mud and bone witness sacrilege.
He touches deftly and gently, and touches until he learns all once more. He does not weep. He cannot permit himself that, not when he has profaned this too.
~
Calcine are the bones he finds in moor's belly as hoar frosts the last perch of autumn. He does not permit himself to wonder what rites of war or death inverted bone to ceramic.
(There was once a man who calcined himself to holy purpose after sealing his heart's grief in a tomb of stone. He fled what he feared to name, he fled himself from tower to tower, and his lonely fear he named with names of guilt's resolute. At the end, at the end's end, he tore out with vow's fangs his undoing's breath.)
The man on the moor is inverted; his life is no vow's purpose anymore. The man on the moor is impotent; no guilt's shame froths him anymore. The man on the moor is inert; to none can he offer sin's servile vigour anymore.
~
The moon is quarter to wane's bleak.
He wears her in panacea's swallow. With words of magic, he becomes her from hand to hand. With her wrists, he forces his legs open. With her hands, he claws want's writ on him. With her fingers, he loves himself.
His unwaking golems of mud and bone witness sacrilege once more.
He touches deftly and gently, and touches until he learns all once more. He does not weep. He cannot permit himself that, not when he has profaned this too.
~
The moon vanishes in wane's void.
The bones of the women glint coy under the brittle winter-sun. Men have heavier bones. It is the calcium, he knows.
His cloak is tattered and his boots are mended to mending's limit. He kneels by the bones and sees his face scowling back at him pale in the marsh-mirror.
Knits he the bones of a woman with the bones of a man, and pours he moor's loam into the hollows to shape flesh on skeleton. He could not breath life into this golem. He is no maker to craft man from loam and woman from rib.
The last of his fool's nostrum he sips, and then with his heterodox creation he lies as the first man lay with his rib.
His limbs turn portcullis as he rears fierce to cage his hand's work, and breathes he his life's breath with mouth's kisses upon clay. He wears her skin as he weeps and loves and moves, unmade by what he has made.
~
When he wakes, he is held down prone and bare upon the black of his cloak. The potion is fading; her skin leaves his in retreating splotches as the magic recedes.
The scent of thistle bruises his weary heart.
What covers him is her.
He curls beneath her as the hut curls beneath the tor. Her nails claw his collar in possession, her breasts are warm upon his bowed back, her toes dig easy into his calves.
(There was once a mongrel boy who came to a woman with thistle's thorn-gartered flowers in bloodied hands. He had not been named for his father. He had not been named for a star. Men had sought mastery over him, to hew of him sword and shield for cause and anti-cause, but to her he had turned with his sour-sweet all. She set aside the thistle and took him as hers.)
Hers is the implacability that pens him and hems him. He weeps and thrashes for her, as she seizes his hair and clasps him to her with a bold arm about his neck. Into his fissures surges her will. Twelve-thousand years ago, this black mire was calved of cracked earth bowing to magma. Calved now is he on the leonine tide of she who reigns over him.
The winds fall silent as the moor carries fierce in reverb the coronach of the ruin of man.
~
She unbraids her hair and offers him the white-streaked black.
Anodyne are her hands offering him potion's key.
He shakes his head in surrender and awaits her verdict. Her hair's white harries her from vessel to fallow, but he sees only the stark lovely of bones gleaming white on the black moor.
Anodyne is the wet gleam of her gaze as she stands tall amidst his ossuaries of clay.
Crinkles and creases and frown's furrows mark her. He is glad for it. The marks on the moor craft him safe-passage through deceitful smooth.
Anodyne is her kiss. Her golem becomes he.
In kiss and caress and limb's glide upon limb, she teaches him again and again that he becomes her as the moon becomes the moor.
Anodyne is the brisk of her embrace and the bright of her laughter.
The clay of him warms and wakes and gladly breathes as her creature. He becomes her, as she of man's rib became him.
He dares kiss her.
Anodyne is her heart's true as she meets him in equal's meet and chants his name in holy claim.
"Severus."
The word becomes man.