Twilight of the Wolves (13 page)

This is the last night in my body but I’m afraid. I’m afraid to see you and have you take me in your arms. You’re a man, I know. You’re all men. I don’t understand that. I don’t understand the west’s fascination with female power but it’s everywhere in Vulpe, even in your religions.

This is the last night in my body and I’m talking theology with my shadow. You’re mine, are you not? I believe that every person has one of you, a Deathwalker specifically for her. You were born and died and born again—did I get that right?—so you could be here with me tonight when I blow out of existence. You were made for me and I was made for this moment. We live and we die and we ruin ourselves in between.

Won’t you appear? I know you’re here. This is the last night in my body and I want to spend it with you. Won’t you come to me?

It’s you, really and truly. I see you but barely. You’re smaller than I expected. Darker and paler all at once. You’re everything but more severe. Will you smile at me? Only once, please? I wonder if you can smile. Within you somewhere beats the heart of a man and so I know you can if you remember. I’m glad you’re here. I feel as if you knew me before I even existed and now you will be the only one to know me afterwards. Only you, my shadow. Will you say nothing?

You’re weightless and cold and I wonder if you even exist at all. Do you know that I’m dying? I poisoned myself. I have been for weeks and it’s why I can’t see you so well. You’re a dark splotch on a greying world. It was my way to call the end. I didn’t know that I wanted to die for certain until I felt you today. I took the poison, all of it, at least another week’s worth all at once. You didn’t know! You couldn’t know, even though you have the look of someone who cannot be lied to. You see me. You see me as I really am, sweaty and alone and ugly and alone and dying. I am dying to meet you. Only you.

This is the last night in my body and soon I will be no more.

But what is that music? Is it you? I can’t see anymore. Even the greyness is falling away and leaving all the world black. But it feels like drowning.

I’m drowning but speaking.

I want to live and die again but this time with you.

Who are you? Won’t you speak?

Your hands are so soft, so cold.

I love you, goodnight.

This is the last night in my body and I see her! She’s real, it’s all real! The Ocean and the shore and the eternal child goddess and she sings. She’s singing for me. Do you hear her? Her hands are so soft and so warm and the waves are cool. Her eyes are made of twilight and her hair of spacetime. This is the last night.

The pull is constant here but the Death more timid. Less dead and
less blood but more children. The children seem to always be dying of hunger and disease. So much hunger. There is no consoler of the dying, only Your daughter, oh Mother, our Mother. Our only gift is the end and Your perfection, Your presence, Your eternal touch. For months the children have shown their short memories and they are within with all the dead boys sputtering their last handful of blood through wounds in their chests and neck and face. Through the second spring and summer and on into the new winter and soon it will be the Twilight Days again and the wolves will howl but not here where no trees grow but the new humanmade breeds. There is no wolfwood in the land some humans call paradise but do they know the word? Do they understand what it means?

There are old stories of the paradise. The Lunar Forest when all the world was a forest. The remnants of true paradise is burnt away by the war and the pull is still within but the dying here hold the sickness at bay as the ushering of new dead never ends, whether from war or famine or disease. All must die but first they’ll live. The lives held within swell and the memories get exchanged and shift with the beating heart and the gasping lungs but the Grey orders all and the threads in the hands make sense and all lives connect within the quilt woven to form a narrative of this generation. The youth of the world are dying while the elderly hold on far away from Death. They cling to Life so violently that it shifts the balance radically and then there is war and then there is mass Death and then the children die starving and wet and mutilated in the streets.

Mother, oh Mother, Your daughter sees the balance but it wobbles dangerously and one must only look yet never touch. These hands long to touch and bring these children Life. But all there is to give is Your Light.

Your Light or their Life but there must be another way. They deserve more, do they not, Mother, dear Mother?

Your daughter is lost without.

Mother, oh Mother, this one needs You now more than ever.

Far overhead it flies but it is not a Raven for the aura surrounding and emanating is different. Comforting and not caustic but it soars the same with great open wings but it is white. A great white dot on a dark wintry sky but there is no snow and there is always Death. But it flies and it washes through the shell like new rain against the skin buzzing alive with the flutter of a thousand feathers caressing the skin.

An Angel, Mother, sweet Mother. Angels are here. The Angels are here and this one will stay forever to bask in this sensation enveloping thicker and stronger and more luminous than the Grey.

The sickness crawls and the shell grows and solidifies when the skin crawls and all that is within comes out through the mouth. The balance is lost and the ground slips away as the sky crashes in music incomprehensible and the boys are dying and the children are crying and they need Life but daughters have only Death to give but the Death is the Light and the water is cold but getting warmer and the head is on fire steaming away the ablution and new birth after every new Death. With every day we are born again not as men or women but as the guardians of existence, as daughters to the Mother. Mother, our Mother, watch over this one from sun to sun through moon and moons but the children are dying and the boys are all bleeding without feet and without hands and without legs and without eyes and without tongues and without without without all that makes a human human and without dignity and respect and without food or a mouth to feed and their blood boils away from fever. The water is cold and the skin is hot and it crawls and no matter the water and the soap the thoughts will not straighten or clear. With every day we are born again not as men or women but as the guardians of existence, as daughters to the Mother. Mother, our Mother,
watch over this one from sun to sun through moon and moons. Make this one whole and last forever between ever and never. This one is Yours. To live is to die but first we must die. This is the last night in their body. They die every day and leave their body. To have a body and be a body and know a body. With every day we are born again not as men or women but as the guardians but they are born only once as boys and girls but only ever children and they die before they know what it is to be a man or a woman or even to know what Life is and so they live in the darkness with Death’s shadow forever over all that they do and think but they cannot think because of the hunger and the disease but the water is cold and start again for if one is to be born one must die and one must die by letting go and accepting that Life does not fade but only drifts away. One does not lose Life but parts with it to become one with the Light and the Dream that is all of existence. With every day we are born again not as men or women but as the guardians of existence, as daughters to the Mother. Mother, our Mother, watch over this one from sun to sun through moon and moons. Make this one whole and last forever between ever and never. This one is Yours. To live is to die but first we must die. We give everything to You, Mother, for we are Your daughters, and we will die forever.

A different pull not from Death but from You, Mother! Not a pull but an elation yet the dread fills along with the hope and anticipation and the new year almost here! To feel the touch of Your hand again and the reverberation of Your voice!

Who are you? Her voice like warm water from a strong current working as a torrent within, washing through and soothing, regenerating, birthing again and again.

This one is no one.

She frowns, Are you?

The blood stops and the shell cracks spilling the memories
before Her. Cast in Her bright Light all looks bare and stark and inadequate and the knees hit the marble and the forehead crashes down with a thud over and over, the base of the spine stabbed by a thousand knives that roam over the body below the surface of the skin and there are no shadows to hide in, no darkness to console.

Rise, no one.

Not to look at Her, to hide but there is only Light blinding the eyes and the tears and blood vaporise on the skin.

What have you done this year in the world?

The throat closes and locks and breath does not enter and the body convulses and the stomach empties but there is nothing and nowhere and the Grey is nowhere but the Ravens’ soft hands take firm hold and Her brilliance scorches away all without and the throat clicks and shallow words expel from a ragged and rotting voice, This one was afraid!

And the storm ends and the Light softens but one cannot look and cowers from Her touch. The knees strike the floor with a bony crash and the forehead hits the marble over and over.

This one has failed You, Mother, sweet Mother, eternal child. This one has failed The One Who Lives.

Her hand and the skin sloughs away and the shell is lost but She consoles and the tears burn away from the skin bursting with Her Light, Dear no one, Her voice swirls and rearranges all within and the Light creates something deep within, Do not fear Me.

The blood rolls down the nose from the forehead and the blood from the nose rolls over the lips without taste.

You were not ready and there is no shame there. You have died a thousand thousand times for Me this long year away, all alone. It is a trying time with the humans killing themselves endlessly. We need all of you to do the best you can and I see the year now and know your doubts and your fears and your desires. But no one must have no desires and so you will stay here for a
year. You will wash and you will read and copy. But you will learn to leave the body behind. Ever since you were born here, you’ve held on to the past and the living. The past is the body and the living. Who are you?

This one is no one.

And what have you done?

This one died to live and die forever.

You are Our daughter and you will die forever.

This one is Your daughter and will die forever.

What was it like?

It was frightening and terrible. This one could not control or bear to see it anymore. The boys are all dying and their limbs fall off or are blown away or burnt away. The world is on fire and drenched in the blood of children. Why do only the children suffer?

It is always those without choices who suffer most from those who do.

Mother, oh Mother, the pain within and without and all around was unbearable and unfathomable. At first there was only the forest and the world was a forest. This one felt the vast expanse of history stretching all back to the wolves. It was all visible and within but seen from without. Comprehensible and personal, every detail as if it always existed within.

All the world exists within us. All memories of the past and the future exist, even from past and future worlds. Every echo is the sound of the past and every dream is the mark of the future. You who do not dream do not know but the future is written in the surreal skies of the Dreamers who are the only creatures touched by the Mother.

The Dreamers, Mother, dear Mother?

Not now, no one. Some day you will know but it will not be today. Go rest and hear and wash, you have journeyed long but now you’re home. Tomorrow you will be born again.

He carried her and she cried. She cried and did not stop. Watching him with the child, the wolves lay huddled together. The female rolled over and offered her teats with a moan. Large golden eyes on him, he looked at the child and back to the wolf. Sitting beside her and stroking her fur, he said in his own tongue, Afraid.

The village was small and he approached as they ate the first meal of the day, the suns hovering in sync at the horizon. Soft feet and they did not hear him until the child cried causing them all to stop eating and turn to the stranger with long black hair and pale skin approaching.

The child needs a wetnurse, he said in Limpa then Garasun and his own tongue.

They watched him, chewing, turned to one another and, to a signal Sao did not see, a handful—three women and a man—rose to meet him.

Holding the crying child, brown and screeching with limbs wriggling and tears absent, he studied their hard round faces.

In a dialect of Limpa the woman said, Where did you take her from? Her tone accusing, her face scrunched in consternation.

Look at him, the man said, He stole her! We can’t let him keep her.

What’s that on his cheeks, uh? Not normal, some kind, uh?

Think he’s a prisoner?

Maybe worse, the first woman said and took the child from Sao. Turning, they left him at the edge of the clearing.

She comes from Luca—they did not stop—I went there to save them—they did stop but did not turn—the soldiers came and burnt it down. Luca is no more and she is all that has escaped. If you would rear the child, that would be best, Sao turned and began to walk away.

Stranger, the woman bouncing the child in her arms spoke, Is it true what you say?

Ng, he nodded.

Why, the man said, would soldiers destroy Luca?

Which soldiers?

Does it matter?

Uh, it does to me! The Crown’s not the Federation and if Drache then the war’s not going well.

Vulpe burnt her to the ground and slaughtered all who tried to run.

More of the village gathered round and listened, nodding grimly. Stranger, she said, come and eat with us. Tell us your tale.

I have wandered for over six years through the forest and the Federated States and finally made my way to Luca when I saw the soldiers. I ran ahead unseen and warned them but no one would listen. The soldiers were dressed for war with their swords and their rifles and fire. The fire did come and it burned long after I left. It may still be burning. It will burn through all history. Mighty Luca reduced to ash. Within, a woman stopped me. Her skin was melting and her body was broken. She smelt of Death so strongly I was shocked she could see, but she held the child to me and begged me please. And so I took the child but the child needs milk and I have none. So I am here to beg you to care for the child.