The Book of Feasts & Seasons (18 page)

Fox looked nonchalant, but not as nonchalant as Cat, who had more practice. “Not so. It is a legal question, is it not? For what cause were we exiled from Eden with First and Fallen Man? On legal matters, we should defer to the kingliest of beasts, great Lion, who understands these political and juridical questions.”

But Hound answered, “We are the servants and serfs of Man, made for his pleasure, that he might learn the joys and duties of caring for lesser creatures, even as angels care for him. How could we not fall when Man fell? Who would be so disloyal as to remain in paradise when his master was condemned to the mortal world?”

Lion said, “Some of us have not the souls of slaves, cur.”

Hound, although outweighed and overmatched by Lion in every way, stood and snarled, and the ridge of his back stood on end. “Rebels! How can a beast disloyal, treasonous, think to remain in bliss?”

“I will find satisfaction for those words at a time and place more pleasing to me,” said the Lion in a soft and melodious voice. “For now, I am curious. A flaw all cats possess, I trow.” He turned to Cat. “Cousin! You ask why we are here? We are here to acclaim one of us to the kingship over the rest, now that Man is gone.”

“By debate?” asked the Cat perking up her ears. “By discussion, deliberation, the use of reason and ratiocination? Or perhaps by diplomacy, a series of duels and melees and bargains and threats, that all cautious souls must ponder in our brains? Indeed? Indeed? What is wrong with this, friends?”

Cat looked back and forth. Puzzled stares answered him.

“Do none of you see it? Eh, not one?” The Cat turned around and around again, as if preparing to lay herself down for a nap. “Ah, against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain!”

Now even Fox was growing angry. “What riddle is this, Cat?”

Cat waved her tail airily. “Talk it out amongst yourself. Surely it is obvious.”

Fox barked, “Tell us!”

Cat stared at him levelly. “How? With words? Has it occurred to none of this august company gathered here that we have all been speaking words in Adam’s speech? This is not a gift we have ever known before. When did it start? What happened?”

The animals were dumbstruck for a long breath of time, almost as if upon realizing the gift of speech was theirs, they lost it.

Cat stood up on her hind legs, which now seemed to be more and more like feet and less and less like paws. “Have you understood none of my story? Man is gone. There is singing and rejoicing in the realm above the stars, albeit we are deaf to it, and screams and sad excuses rising up from the lake of fire which can be glimpsed between the smokes and smolder where the earth was broken open by nine volcanoes.”

Now Hound, laughing, rose to his hind legs, and found them to be feet, and, hearing his own laughter, put his hands to his mouth in wonder. “I know what is happening,” he said in a voice gone hoarse with joy. “We are becoming like him. We are now the image and likeness of Man!”

Bull, clutching his lower back and groaning, heaved himself to his feet. “Stupid way to travel. Wait–am I naked? When did that happen? Before I was merely without clothing. This is different. This is worse!”

Worm said softly, “If I stand up, will it disconcert you all? It might look odd.”

Fox started to stand, but Lion put a paw on his shoulder and forced him back to all fours. Fox stayed on the ground, but his posture seemed odd and wrong, as if the grace and speed due his race was gone from him.

Lion said, “Shall we become creatures that prey upon each other, that are dazed with dreams and fevers, haunted by guilt of time past and fear of death to come? You who stand, and have the gifts of laughing and crying and the other things men do and beasts do not–you are
naked
! How can you tolerate the shame? Get down on your bellies! Let us live as rightly suits us!”

But Hound said, “Look into my eyes, Lion. Whoever first flinches and looks away will be the slave of the other.”

Lion roared but dropped his eyes, and from that moment onward he was mute, nothing more than a dumb beast again.

Fox stood up, but had to lean on a dry branch picked up from the ground. “To your feet! To your feet, all of you, in haste! Even to hesitate a second will lame you as I am lamed, forever! Unspeakable powers are at play this night, unguessed forces, divine things not to be trifled with!”

Owl said, “It is the first Sunday after the full moon following the equinox of March. Alas! The skies will never be open to me again!” And by the time he had come down from the high branch where he stood, his wings were no more than a cloak of feathers.

Raven said, “I curse the gift of speech, which is used for lying and worthless bearing of tales! Let me croak, and by that ungainly noise you shall hereafter know that I am prophesying your death. ‘Tis the one prophecy that always comes true, soon or late. What need have I for words? Give me the skies, I say, give me the wide freedom of the skies, and your sweet corpse meat on which to feast, and I am content!”

Owl said, “Beware! On this night if you turn away from the image and likeness of Man, the gift will be shattered like glass, and cut you with a thousand cuts!”

But Raven only croaked in reply, and the light of wisdom was gone from his dark eye.

The blood red moon walked out from behind a cloud, and there was among them then two figures like the Sons of Adam, dressed in robes of a color that has no name, but is purer than the hue of a white lighting flash. And no one saw how they had come to be among them.

At this, the gathered beasts panicked. As if running from a forest fire, predator and prey ran cheek by jowl away from the two men, scattering each direction, and the birds, fleeing, formed a cloud that grew wider and grew more rare.

Wolf hesitated, and howled, “Hate and war I vow against Man and against those tame beasts who seek to become his image! The beasts who walk on hind legs shall beware of me hereafter! I will drink the blood of your children and your children's children!” And then he turned and loped away.

Soon, only a few were left standing: Hound and Horse were there, and Ass and Bull and Cat, but there was also Goat and Sheep, humble Worm with his silks, and the industrious Bee with his honey. But also present was Fox with his sly smile and twisted foot, leaning heavily on his staff.

And Fox was the first to bow to the newcomers, “Sires, I am tired of being undomesticated. I am told that the meals are regular and bountiful among the slaves of the Sons of Man.”

The first messenger said, “Out of pity for your nakedness, we have brought garments woven on the looms of heaven. All the secrets of the stars are in the weave, even if you shall never know them. The wedding feast of the bridegroom is prepared, and you are summoned.”

The second messenger said, “We are come to tell you to enter the city and take possession of it. Cut down the groves and high places where men sacrificed their children to our cousins, and pull down the false images they worshiped. Dominion over the beasts who fled is given to you. Prosper and multiply; take possession of the Earth.”

But as the garments were passed out, suddenly they seemed to lose their luster, and were stained with atrocious stains. Each place their fingers touched, or skin, grew dark and unseemly to the eye.

“How shall these be made clean again?” asked the Hound in grief and surprise.

“Only in the blood of Man,” said the first Messenger. “The first prayer of Saint Roch upon entry into the celestial court was to have his dog with him, and Saint Eligius asked after his horse.”

The second messenger said, “Surely you did not think divine love would leave the brute beasts to dissolve into the elements, unsaved and unredeemed? If your loyalty to Man drew you downward into his fall, your love will draw you upward into his joy.”

Fox said, “We must wait for Man to redeem us? Why does the Omnipotent not act directly? Why does He wait for Man to volunteer to aid Him, He who needs no aid?”

The first messenger said, “Why did He wait for archangels to make the stars, and angels the planets and comets, wandering stars and bearded stars? Why were the Watchers instructed to instruct me, when the Almighty might have performed their acts of love, and ours, and yours as well?”

The second messenger said, “To ask why you must wait for Man is to ask why Man had to wait upon his anointed prince to die and to be raised again from death. It is to ask why love loves.”

“Wait,” said Cat. “No way is prepared for the created creatures to save ourselves? We are not the heroes of our own story? You tell a worse tale than I do! For you have left the ending unspoken!”

But the messengers were gone, as quickly and silently as they had come, and they did not answer.

Hound said, “Come, brothers. The city is waiting. Man was saved by the sacrifice of a higher being who became one with him, and I think the tale will be told again in the same way for us.”

Owl said, “Look, the Worm is Worm no more, for he has regained his feet and his stature, and his garments are less stained than any of ours. Let us make him our king, for in times past he was the least of us.”

Worm said, “I an unfit to rule, being blind and lacking tooth and claw alike!”

Cat said, “Open your eyes and look at yourself. We are changed, friend Worm. You are changed. You are a worm no longer, you are a dragon again, but the red stains of war and greed are gone, and so I say the old, old curse is broken. There is no more Woman to step upon your head, for Woman and her Daughters have gone to a newer and better world.”

Worm, who was now Dragon, looked down at himself, and saw himself splendidly garbed in scales of red and gold. He took up a bundle of reeds in a powerful claw and breathed on it, and it lit afire. “We are men!” he declared in a voice full of awe. “The gift of fire is ours!”

And because it was a gift, none of them were afraid of it any longer.

Fox said, “I hate to admit it, but I do not understand what all these things mean.”

Owl said, “It is the first Sabbath after the Paschal moon following the Equinox of Spring! Not only Man, but all nature is redeemed! Rejoice!”

Fox said, “And what of our fellow beasts who ran and refused to be men? Will all these things happen again, to save them? What happened to men who refused to become sons of God? How can they be exiled from the seat of the Omnipresent?

“Will one of us be called upon to sacrifice himself, and become a lower beast again, and perish to save those lower creatures who are now our pets and servants and playfellows and predators?

“Why are we given a walled city filled with the memories of evil, idol and slave pits and instruments of war, to unmake and remake? What shall we do if the beasts retain some part of the power of speech and come against us? Must the war between celestial and infernal powers continue until the end of the world, until death itself is dead?”

But the others were already walking down the sundered mountain toward the great city, walking as men walk, and there was none to answer him.

Halloween

Naturally, I selected Halloween as the time for an experiment of such daring. Legend said that the boundaries between this world and other worlds beyond achieved their finest frailty on such a day, and it was my thought that separating the barriers between cosmos and consciousness, and flaying away the neurological matrix that hinders perception, required exactly such a season.

The place in which I found myself, my grandfather’s long-deserted mansion, baroque and Victorian with its folly tower and rose window and ornamental eaves, on the bald hill overlooking the town, certainly was as atmospheric as the stage setting for some haunted house story, but in this case my motives were more pragmatic: I wanted a location far from the noise and traffic of the town. The old growth forest besieging the town covered many a hill too steep for logging, but not one tree was to be found on the barren hill here, bald as a witch without her wig. This I preferred, for the rustling of the leaves would be too severe should my experiment prove successful. There had never been modern plumbing nor electrical wires run to grandfather’s mansion, so even minor interference from electrical motions or traces of odor would be below the detectable threshold.

I sent Froward downstairs, to man the door in case any children would brave the lone and lonely trail that winds up the hill to the house. I gave him instructions to be as silent as possible, and to drive away anyone who insisted on seeing me.

The huge, round window, inscribed at the edges with peculiar theosophic symbols, which loomed like the eye of a Cyclops in the folly tower, opened into a bare white upper room where Froward, my manservant, had placed a single couch. The rest of the house was boarded up, unswept, unfilled. The walls were as blank as the inner lid of a sensory deprivation chamber. Here in the circle of moonlight cast by the rose window was a small table holding my drugs and potions and phylacteries and neuroelectrical equipment, resonator and recording cylinders, and the amplifiers. I did not need to light the lamp when mixing the first dose–I am sure I made no mistake.

The moon shone bright and clear, and the stars were like eyes of diamond.

I took the first injection, and followed this with a drink of the forbidden mixture. The injection would suppress the inhibition centers in the medulla oblongata, allowing a full potential of neuroelectric current to flow freely in my system. The draft was meant to hinder the jerking or random motion of the limbs the investigator Annesley reports in his findings, caused by the abnormal sensitivity.

The theory, first explicated by a Boston savant named Tillinghast, but having roots in the teachings of Tibetan loremasters and Egyptian mystagogues, is that our perceptions have far more range and fineness than we consciously can know. In the same way that it is said that subconsciously we never forget the slightest detail of any perception, even prenatal influences, the theory held that we are presently aware of far more than reaches our awareness.

A region in the thalamus and hypothalamus screens out ninety percent of the signals reaching us from the outer cosmos, allowing our cortex only to see and hear those perceptions useful, as blind evolution measures use, to the survival of the species. Darwinism cares nothing for truth value, only for use value. I often wonder why our eyes allow us to see the stars, since I can imagine no chain of circumstances where seeing these tiny lights would mark the difference between life and death.