in the gloaming

[goddessnanshe.livejournal.com]

The thin hours before dawn, Tuesday 23 March

Excolo has been still these past weeks. Around the feast of Lupercalia there was a small ripple of unsettled dreams, dreams of desire and frustration and longing, but they passed. Some magic there, of a tainted sort, but a small kind, passing out of mind. But for all the quiet I think that something new has come to be. That Wanda has had her child I now know, infant glimpsed in dreams. The child herself has started dreaming. I have gazed into them, but not crossed the threshold. I do not yet know how much of her mind her father watches. Like most infants, her dreams are all noise and colour, no narrative - but there are things I glimpse in the dreams that no infant should know. Things of shadow and of light.

I create another crossroads, but this one is a room with staircases that will serve as paths. A rug lies in the centre of a tea room, and on the rug stands a table crowned with flowers. There are smaller tables nearby laid with napkins and silver, and I seat myself at one of them, pouring tea into a china cup. It is amber and smells of faraway. Perhaps someone will come and drink with me.

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[westin-sagert.livejournal.com]

A rather subtly charming woman joins me, and I smile politely, although when she reaches for Linnea's jawbone-- Oh, well, really now. That is mine. I am trying to find the words to object politely when she speaks.

"She was beautiful, wasn't she?" the woman says, and I manage a quick humourless smile.

"She was," I say, and it is nothing but truth. The subtle glimmer of bone through the rot of her face was positively enchanting. I find my smile grows a little fonder. I could not properly appreciate her, then, but I did manage to clear away some of the mortified flesh before she died. Rather a decent first effort, for a novice...

I shake my head and look back to the woman, the slump of muscle and bone under flesh like a sun-warmed candle. "You are charming yourself, madam," I add. "I am afraid you have the advantage of me, though. Did you know her?"

[goddessnanshe.livejournal.com]

"You are charming yourself, madam. I am afraid you have the advantage of me, though. Did you know her?"

"Oh, no," I say. I have seen her in his dreams, felt his satisfaction at the press of his scalpel through her flesh. What suffering. "But I can tell from her bones that she must have been special." I turn the jaw in my hand and then cover it with a napkin. "You shouldn't have dead girls at the dinner table," I say mildly. "Didn't your mother ever teach you that?" A waiter approaches with a silver tray. He gives me a cup of tea, and he sets down a glass of water and a pearl-toned pill in front of Westin. "Don't forget your medicine," I say, and sip my tea.

[westin-sagert.livejournal.com]

"But I can tell from her bones that she must have been special," and I am smiling quite contentedly at her.

"I am so glad you understand," I say, but then she covers up the jawbone. The light in the room seems to dim rather more than might be expected from a napkin covering the jawbone's faint glimmer could explain.

"You shouldn't have dead girls at the dinner table. Didn't your mother ever teach you that?" And-- well, that hardly needs saying, but it's not as if it's all of her. I feel-- I thought--

"Don't forget your medicine," she adds, as the help sets down a glass of water and a lozenge.

"Oh, of course not," I say, feeling somewhat chastened, and pick it up. It tastes rather unpleasantly sharp, like the touch of a ground-down whetstone on the tongue, but I swallow it and wash it down with the water. "Thank you," I say politely. "I'm sorry, but I'm afraid I still don't-- I don't have your name." It really is growing rather darker in here, I am sure it is not just me. I look down to the table, and the napkin over Linnea's jawbone is beginning to stain.

[goddessnanshe.livejournal.com]

He takes his medicine and the light in the room dims down. It's his mind that does that, not mine. I watch as a dark stain spreads through the napkin, and I adapt.

"I'm sorry, but I'm afraid I still don't-- I don't have your name."

When Westin looks back up at me, he will see why I have not replied. My jaw has been ripped away, and there is blood down the front of my dress. I peel back the napkin, and the jawbone, stained with blood, speaks.

"Kiss me, Westin, kiss me, only you know how special I am." And the jawbone laughs as I use the napkin that covered it to mop the blood off my dress.

[westin-sagert.livejournal.com]

She says nothing, and for a moment I am quite sure she will be--perhaps not gone, I can feel so many eyes here, but perhaps she will not be there to be seen when I look up. And then I do, and the light in the room blurs and I am standing, I have panicked and I am standing and my chair is on the floor behind me and the blood is the brightest thing in the room.

"I didn't do it," I say. This is not-- the bloody wrench of her face, the graceful and strange arch of her face ripped back to gristle. I didn't do this, never so crude, I--

And Linnea is speaking as she has not for years, as she could not at the end, as she never did. Words I wished for but she is laughing, and I can feel all the eyes upon me. My hands are full of blood, and I pour it onto her jawbone. The voice, the light, all the same chattering now-garish chaos, and all the blood cannot drown it out. "Please," drawn and harried and looking up to the woman, the half-faceless woman, even as I am begging Linnea, "we're talking!"

The blood. The strange light, all gone to shadows and pewter. The noise.

[goddessnanshe.livejournal.com]

"Please, we're talking!"

The room is silver-grey, chaotic tumbling noise behind us. I dip my finger carefully in the blood from my face and write on the table in a neat hand:

Shall these bones live?

The jawbone sings out:

"Because of the goodness of this Lady
And because of her loveliness, and because
She honours the Virgin in meditation,
We shine with brightness. And I who am here dissembled
Proffer my deeds to oblivion, and my love
To the posterity of the desert and the fruit of the gourd."

All the light goes out of the room, except for the gleam of the jawbone, which I lift and place in my own face.

"Come to the desert, Westin. What is your posterity?"

Over the chatter of the room, there is the sound of a door opening, and we pass through the heaving pitch-black crowds, my jaw a candle.

[westin-sagert.livejournal.com]

Shall these bones live? Oh no no no, if I could have done it she would have but the rest of her was nothing to speak of, she screamed and drooled and died and I kept the best of her, but she did not live. And the shine of her is horrible, pulsing and crying out, and the crowds are choking and the sky is black and there are no stars.

I know this place. I have been here, but there was life then, albeit thin squabbling life and poor shacks barely hinting at the rooms and tunnels underground. There is nothing but the low sound of wind, now, and the air does not move. The books in halls beneath our feet are crumbling, the flaking tatters of them and the blackened pages still and blind.

It is Bethlehem. Where the words were buried and their bodies dug up in pieces. Where the dead men lose their bones--no--

But she is not in my hands anymore, she pours out words from another woman's face. I think it is another woman's face; surely it could not be Linnea again? She is older, after all, but there has been so much time between then and now...

"I have built my posterity," I say. "I have made--beautiful things," and I draw that knowledge to myself. It is not warm, exactly, it is too pure for that, but there is a strength to it. "Things have opened their eyes and breathed in this world that never would have been without me, and I have suffered to make it so." And for all of that I cannot reach the words beneath the ground. They are crumbling away.

[goddessnanshe.livejournal.com]

There is a slow drip of blood still from my jaw, despite the glimmering bone.

"I have made--beautiful things," he says, and the jaw flares bright in the dark city.

"Things have opened their eyes and breathed in this world that never would have been without me, and I have suffered to make it so."

"Tell me about your suffering, Westin," says the jaw. My own tongue lies still. "Tell me how it compares to mine." And the jaw laughs, a high sharp sound that sends things that are not quite birds fluttering from the crumbling arches and eaves.

[westin-sagert.livejournal.com]

The wrods are not the worst, the noise--it is a squealing laugh, and I am reminded of slaughtered pigs, of the teachers that had students learn on such animals before approaching cadavers. There are sounds as of pages falling to earth, and I step closer to her, further from whatever they may be.

"You to help me learn," I say, and I am swaying a little on my feet. "I to be able to do it again. Doesn't it--don't you see how it compares, then? I chose it, yes, but I couldn't expect you to. You didn't understand." Young and stupid and blind, but still she awoke such understanding within me, so I cannot fault her too badly for it all.

I rather wish I had kept something of my most recent work behind, to set beside her jawbone. It is a foolishly sentimental thought, and yet... I fins I am reaching out to touch her jaw again, fingers painted in its glow.

[goddessnanshe.livejournal.com]

He touches the jaw, which warms under his fingers, warms and then glows red-hot.

"You have no genius that lasts," says the jaw. I can smell skin burning, and the jaw becomes dislodged and falls to the floor, where it shatters into pieces.

The light from the bone goes out, and we are left in the dark.

[westin-sagert.livejournal.com]

The pain is a searing orange, in my hand and up my arm, and I remember the tower, Morningstar, the pain then and not again not again! I am recoiling, and I fall to the ground as the jaw does, shattering like coal, the unearthly light of its fragments going out. There is a glimmer in my hand as one might see when blowing on a fire, banked ember under a coat of ash, and my hand is crumbling...

I am screaming, this time. I cannot stop.

[goddessnanshe.livejournal.com]

I watch him coldly as his hands turn to fire and ash, and then I turn on my heel and leave. He can leave the dream himself, if he can find his way out to the waking world.

Nightmares are no real justice, but it is all I have to give.