We Sleep Within the Vast Sadness of the Mountain
One
Our traditions have been criminalised, we sang in our hut, the railway line is being devoured by the sea. You don’t have to live in that world, Dr Fischer said, when he discovered us washing in the river. When the star-faced man plays the knotted flute, you’ll transform and forget. Pearl fire hummed in Dr Fischer’s hearth. I don’t want to forget. I want to know what it means when we blurt, Sell us the rope, after the fall, five hundred ghost flights a month.
*
I never lie to the girls. They brave the passage to choose a new form and I let them play with Hyena, Mouse and Porcupine, my latest metamorph. I tell them they’ll be safe forever. As my star-man trilled his flute, the girl’s hooded cloak faded to hematite and her fingernails grew into claws. Hand eight billion to projects linked to labour abuse, the animals yodelled, safe in their ignorance. But the new girl had lied, believing I’d tricked her friend into becoming Porcupine. Drenched with the river, she’d swum to behead me.
*
My constellations shifted. New girl read the sign and flung her cloak onto the pearl fire. She grew a tail anyway. Two people shot dead in a restaurant, she called, the threat to free thought from big tech. In response, the turned-girls shrieked: Advisors afraid to tell him the truth! Missile test should worry the West! Dr Fischer chased them around the electrified celadon room. I should have turned the new girl too. But if the world doesn’t flow through children, where will it go? I unknotted my flute and strung Dr Fischer. The sea coughed up the railway line.
Two
Two of you sap my colour, our mother said, so she took us to the daughter of the minotaur. Columns held up the stone chamber open to the featureless night. The stars were inside, hiding behind umber clouds. Asterion’s daughter wore saffron robes. She had kind eyes of indigo with black pupils. We, in our obsidian cloaks, were to speak only when spoken to. Her horns, hair and tail were lead white, like the petals of the fortune teller’s face. We weren’t supposed to stare, so we watched the telling fingers roll glass balls to make them sing our fortunes. The tablecloth was dusky gold. We didn’t know why this was important. Our mother worked in colour, she’d told us to pay attention to everything or our fortunes wouldn’t appear.
The singing globes rumpled the plush cloth into sun rays or puckered mouths. My brother Gabriel whispered, Nine. I counted more, in case my fortune was one of those spilled on the floor. Then a girl danced down from a misty alcove, growing as she made letters with her arms and legs. She wouldn’t meet our eyes. We paid attention anyway – it was all we had to give. Her diaphanous dress resembled our dark cloaks, if heavy cloth could age into transparency and still remain intact. In the space she left, the image of a girl in a silver cape shimmered.
Gabriel asked, Shall we pick one of the globes? No, said the minotaur’s daughter. Have you paid with your whole attention? Have you had any secret thoughts? The glassy chorus is telling me you’re not entirely here. One of you has gone to your mother. One of you will have to stay. It wasn’t me! Gabriel cried. In those days I didn’t speak out loud, but Asterion’s daughter had already seen my thoughts. Are you really too beautiful to kill? she said, as her whipping tail smashed the fortunes. The stars on the ceiling collided, rebounding into new constellations, and my silvering cape flew me up to the alcove. The minotaur’s daughter said, Now you can watch what you’ve done to your mother.
Three
I’m in the deepest part now, where the grenadine triad lets the cloaked figure pass. With all feeling gone, only my descriptive powers remain and I don’t know how to choose my final form. As I descend, mandarin stars pendulate on spider chains. Deer-headed snails turn away. Sent to guard this Down Below, they’ve had their fill of the beryl swerve.
Up Top, the ram-headed man conjures black and isabelline garlic bulbs from the table where Gabriel still waits for Paloma. Asparagus figures play catch with their own heads. A gowned knee emerges from the split doorway and conch-people descend the slope. I hope I won’t be greatly troubled in the deepest deeps. I swam in the world too long. I thought that with half the burden I wouldn’t drown, but Gabriel resurrected Paloma every day with his pungent words. Yet if I feel relief, there might be other colours on their way…about turning into a conch agitated by the relentless tide and the moon that used to stir me awake in his fullness. Made me fear porcupine sleep.
The moon is here too, patrolled by the five wolves who walk his perimeter, turning him to wake the rest of us and make our skulls press through poppy skin. I don’t want the head of a conch, to listen all night to the sea, knowing I must feel again, too much.
Conch and moon do their clandestine work while warbling to the raccoon. Ill-cut, I can only rest if I become a total creature who can flow around, swallow, accommodate all incursions into my territory and absorb every colour without changing my nature. But if I admit the need for feeling now, I’m no better than the ones who grew themselves from the bulbs of the unrequired and I’ll have sacrificed Paloma for nothing. If I’d been left as garlic, I would have caramelised. The cloaked figure is clawing open a hatch, there’s much more Down Below.
Shortlisted for Fractured Lit’s Ghost, Fable and Fractured Fairytale Prize 2022