Hunger's Brides (70 page)

And at the end of the fifth night of dreaming, she slept.

She dreamed she woke.

She dreamed she woke to the sound of voices.

Some of the people had come to her from the desert, as she knew one day they must, just as there must be two kinds of dreaming. Their faces were troubled. They said:

There is Another in the desert. He has many followers and His words are strange. He has a secret name. At first we could not understand Him, but He learned our tongue, and He said to us:

But we answered:

What of her? She who is great in magic, whose spells have spun the fabric of the world, who gave us form and breath, who gave us song and the dreams from which all words come?

And He said:

And we said:

But is she not like a vulture in effecting Thy protection? And is she not like an uraeus serpent established on Thy brow? Does she not make Thee rise like the sun every morning, as she does us?

But He said:

And we said:

But she breathes life! Her songs are life, and in her mouth are the words to revive even hearts gone still. She has entered into the heart of the great mysteries. She bore the sun!
She is the daughter of her son and the mother of her father
.

Then He said:

He spat upon us, and His laughter was like unto thunder. We
were
afraid and fled him.

Crossing the great river, she found him in the eastern desert. There, she said:

He answered:

At first she could not understand him. She said:

And he said:

To this she said:

But he said

He tried to hide in the strangeness of his tongue, but she had learned its secrets. He said:

He laughed. He spat into the dust at her feet, and walked westward toward the river. Toward the city of the people. Some say she was frightened for her firstborn. Some say she knew her first anger, and said as he walked toward the western horizon,
You are not my son
.

She bent and mixed the spittle of his mouth with the dust at her feet. She added to this the muddy slime from the great lake's deepest crevices. Great of magic, she fashioned from this clay a serpent. Great of magic, she rolled in her hands a magnificent dragon which, coiling and rearing its hooded head, could reach through the clouds to the heavens.

Stooping, she swallowed the serpent whole. She opened a way through her throat and with the life that was in her mouth she vomited the holy serpent onto the grass along the riverbank. Holding the head of the dragon to her lips, she breathed its name.
Apophis
. She released it to slither through tall grass, towards the path where the oarsmen of Ra rowed His Sun Bark westward through the heavens.

When at noon the Sun Bark with Ra standing in the prow passed above the holy serpent, it reared up and bit him at the eye of his phallus. The terrible fangs drove venom coursing through Ra's loins like a spring flood through the great river. Never since the birth of the world had the sky heard such agony.

The oarsmen, chained to their oars, could only call out in panic:

What has happened? What deadly thing has risen against Thee?

But for a time Ra could not answer. The bones of his jaws chattered and the limbs of his body shook like branches in a typhoon. Spittle fell from his drooping lips. Moisture poured from his face. All the fluids of his body began to desert him at once. There arose a great stench all around him. At last he found his tongue and cried out:

Grown old, made feeble, skin slack about his bones, he cried out pain beyond words. For the first time she felt pity, and though her eyes were dry she said to him:

And he said:

But she answered:

Lips quivering, voice unsteady he said:

But she said:

The venom of the holy serpent writhed toward his heart. His agonies grew and sharpened without let. He felt his soul swimming in a fiery lake, he felt his heart shuddering as in a moonless desert, he felt his old body stripped naked to a wintry wind. Hard mountains crumbled at the sound of his wailing. He cried:

He felt the Eye of the Serpent lick at his heart. He felt the cedar between his legs wither like a leaf. He stared into the face of his everlasting death, his immortal corruption, and he pleaded:

And she answered:

And he said:

But she said only:

And at last, as he felt the rotting wings of death beating above his face, he bid her enter his heart and learn the secret name of Ra. And she called out to his followers:

She made a poultice from clay, mixing into it a paste of crushed seeds and leaves. She applied it to his withered member. She sang the song of life into his dying heart. She said:

And opening wide her jaws she drew the Eye of the Serpent from his body. Then, curled up in the warm belly of the sixth night of dreaming, she slept….

                  

 

Natural magic

Plus Ultra!

Allegorical Neptune

Tenth Muse

Sapphic Fragment

The Good Life

Kept from saying farewell

Hypermnestra

Academy

Castalia

Freudians on the Muse

Public Library

To me he seems like a god

Santa Cruz

Silly, you men, so very adept

Cassandra

Helen

Christina

I, like the innocent child

Brink

Carols for Saint Bernard: the House of Bread

Lysistrata

…. Regarding the advice you proffer

Ivory Tower

Paz

An Athenagoric letter, ‘worthy of Athena' [excerpt]

Abyss

Zealot

Advent

Divine Love

Deiphobe

Extract from Sister Philothea of the Cross (I)

Bishops & Queens

Extract from Sister Philothea of the Cross (II)

Dumping Donald

Sappho