I have another weirdness to post. This one's a short story. I wrote it maybe six months ago, entirely spontaneously and unedited except for spelling & grammar. I think this is the strangest thing I've ever written. It begins with a spontaneous bit of verse that Pete loves and has taken lines from (with my permission) in some of his other work.
...what I would like to see is some poetic prose. If that makes sense. Kind of like an abstract story with poetic metaphor. I'd just like to see what you can do with it.
Actually, this one rather qualifies, I think.
Swan
The summer rains have passed the forests by.
Ice blankets clover
and tender grass.
This is the bardo of dying,
where leaves speak fire against frost.
No wind now.
A crippled sun drags overhead.The fog of his breath glowed. His feet were drums against the frozen soil. The spear was a burden, but his grip gave his knuckles a deathly pallor. The birds were no longer singing in the branches, though a wolf was singing in the trees. Every gasping gush of air through his mouth seared. Dancing cascades of ecstasy spilled down his spine and shivered through his limbs, and all the colors of the forest sank into each other.
They had painted him, given him sigils to bind and marks to wake. His drink had been bitter and honeyed, a gift of the pines. Kayu had woven the braid from his right temple while he drank, each sip washing away his fear. They had lashed him across the arms, and he had held himself firmly upright, not speaking. They had said, “We take your name. We take your guardian.” The stone wolf had rested against his chest since he had emerged from his mother’s dying womb, and he heard it howl as it was taken.
The air was full of gods, and he was a nameless ghost. At times he was transfixed with waking nightmares, watching as swarms of fiery bees descended and roared about his head; at times he dashed along the ground on his hands and feet, sniffing at the reek of bear urine. Lucidity was but an occasional blessing, as he lay among the dead moss and considered the nude branches overhead. It was then he knew that he could not yet return. He did not have a name. In these clear times, he would kiss the bark of an elm and ask it for its name, or attempt to solve the riddle of a dead crow’s bones. But then a new figment would catch his attention: light, gleaming on a puddle like on obsidian, or a faintest puff of wind against his ears. Then, the clarity would collapse, and ragged laughter would tumble forth.
He had heard that on one occasion, Jhaf the Frog had been crouching under a frozen lake, sleeping for the winter. A lone man, Arnewet, had come to that lake with an axe of stone and cracked firm against the ice, intending to draw water to be heated by the hearth. When the ice had split and broken, Jhaf had stirred from his muddy slumber and been filled with rage at this disturbance. Leaping up through the ice, Jhaf had landed on the snow-strewn banks and turned wrathfully at Arnewet. Arnewet had said, “I see you, lord, and bid you greetings.” Jhaf had spitefully declared, “And who are you, O man, to address a god? You will bow, instead.” Arnewet had been standing right before the hole in the ice, and did not question the Frog. He sank to his knees and pressed his face, in reverence, below the waters. He waited, and waited, until he could no longer bear the separation from air, and then he lifted his face. Jhaf screamed at him, “I gave you no permission, man, to raise your face!” So Arnewet lowered his face once more below the waters, and this time he waited. Only when the hunger for air blazed in his heart did Jhaf say, “Raise your face, man.” And Arnewet had raised his face, burnt with the cold. He was dying, his skin turning blue-in-white. Jhaf had smiled, and said, “Great among men are you.” Jhaf spoke fire, and Arnewet was restored, but his skin had remained blue-in-white. Jhaf had blessed him, and Arnewet had gone forth and gained a great band, learning the names of the rain and the herds. Many challenged him, and Arnewet always offered the same challenge to those who contested his name: if they could bear to kiss winter water and survive, they would take all that was his. None survived the ordeal. He had not died, they said, but had, as his brown hair gave way to white, kissed the water once again, and gave his name to it. Great among men was Arnewet.
He carried, besides the spear, a small knife and a bag of medicine. He was unsure as to when he slept and when he woke, for day and night came but in fragments. Were the dreams waking, or sleeping? Sometimes he was multiform, climbing a tree while also picking berries to sate his hunger; sometimes he was nowhere at all, but vanished in the midst of a glade. Past, present and future collapsed into one another, so that what was but a remembered image seemed filled with omens.
And always music, faint and garbled. Once, he had been lying out in a meadow, sleeping under his deerskin, and had been shaken awake by what he could only attest to be Kayu’s voice, coming from the other side of a lone oak tree. There had been nothing there. He had climbed the tree, stared about, and heard the same music, no longer a voice but a flute, this time emerging from the west. A wave of loneliness had struck him then, and he climbed down, returning to his blanket while he sobbed.
He did not know where to go. He could tell the gods were there, waiting on the other side of the sky and under the hills, but he did not know how he might reach them. The visions were not abating, and during his lucid moments he attempted desperately to turn his mind towards contemplation, where he might unstop his ears and hear the purity of their voices. He shut the eyes and observed the suffusion of the breath through his body. The hands went faint and vanished, the feet and legs heavy and still. His heartbeat first pounded, then fell away, and the roiling of his thoughts turned into a flat summer lake. But when he reached one-pointed concentration, the visions suddenly roared forth anew, and so memory instead devoured him.
He had been told that he would follow his brother Chapad to observe the killing of a bull elk, but he had left the trail with Kayu, hiding by a spring pool. He had lain across Kayu, their breaths mingling and swirling into each other, neither daring to move nor speak. He’d a name then, a child’s name, but he could not remember it now. They did not even enmesh their fingers, but merely watched the other. The sun had lifted up, higher and higher, while they lay there together, until, in a moment, it fell behind a cloud. They had lost their names together. He became Kayu, Kayu him. Their breath was one inhalation, one exhalation. Then Chapad had jumped into the clearing and laughingly picked him up and slung him over one shoulder, calling him, “Swanheart,” for the bird that never abandons its lover. Chapad had smelled of the elk’s blood, a rude contrast from Kayu’s lavender. When he next saw Kayu, he had carved him a swan from ash-wood.
He was lying by the roots of a birch, resting for a time. He had found a rich cache of winter berries not far away, and popped them in one at a time, the sour crimson staining his teeth and fingers. It was a fairly clear moment, though he did note that the sunlight seemed to oscillate from dim to painfully bright quickly. He stared at nothing in particular as he ate, though he could feel a prickling on his neck that always preceded a waking dream. His breaths began to grow shallower, and his stomach felt weightless. He crossed his legs comfortably, took out his deerskin blanket, and sat up with his back resting against the birch’s trunk, waiting for the vision to appear. At first, it was a blue line forming across the center of his vision, perfectly bisecting the world horizontally. He waited, and observed the rise and fall of the breath in his abdomen. Tingling began in his fingertips, and he felt an urge to smile. The line began to blossom upwards and downwards, taking the shape of a pond-blossom with a spark of brilliant white at its heart. He waited, and observed. Blood was pounding in his legs and arms, the breaths shuddering in his chest. The blossom opened wider, the light at its heart waxing in brilliance. He waited, and observed. His hands trembled in his lap, and his eyes darted back and forth. The blossom’s petals separated, turning into multicolored spheres that glowed and swerved across the field of his vision. He waited, and observed. Rapture crashed across his skin like an undammed mountain stream. The spheres smashed together and blinded him for a time.
He blinked. Kayu was standing before him, in the nude despite the chill air. The sun shone faintly on brown skin, and gleamed in the black hair. Kayu said, “Have you found a name yet?”
He replied, “No, a name has eluded me.”
Kayu cocked his head. “Why?”
He considered that for a moment, then replied, “The gods have my name, but I cannot hear them. I do not have the eyes to see, or ears to listen…” He trailed off with those words, staring at Kayu. “You are very beautiful.”
Kayu knelt down to look his swan in the eyes. “And you are a nameless ghost.” His eyes seemed to shift in color, though this was unnatural: Kayu’s eyes were always green like new leaves. Dread began to tighten in his muscles, just loosened from the ecstasy he had stirred from. A contradictory leaden ardor dulled his senses, gave the noise of his pulse a new rhythm.
“You are not Kayu, not truly,” he said, licking his lips, “even if you smell like him.” He stared at the Kayu-dream. “But I cannot know if you are a god, or a dream, or a dream of a god.”
The Kayu-dream chuckled, and yet more dread muttered in his thoughts even while he shivered with delight at the deep, mellow laughter. The Kayu-dream leaned forward, pressing their foreheads together. “What if I were a god of a dream?” the Kayu-dream murmured, breath mingling.
He narrowed his eyes. “Gods are not in dreams or illusion. A god is truth. If we did not have the gods, the world would be nothing but many different dreams, blending into each other. Gods are the fire on the other side of the sky that burns through the sun, the stars, and the moon. This side is sleep, that side eternal waking. That’s just the way it is.”
The Kayu-dream smirked. “You cling desperately to your views, like a drowning man to a piece of wood. You do not understand the purpose of the drink they gave you.” The dream leaned forward, pressing one pair of lips against the other, and then pulled back swiftly. He smiled wider, showing his bare teeth, and mad glee filled the dream’s eyes. “Why should there not be truth in dreams?” he roared, leaping into the air. As he leapt, antlers erupted from his forehead. His fingers and toes fused into hooves, his skin bristling with fur. The stag landed softly, snorted at him, and let out a guttural bellow before turning and dashing away into the brush.
He sat in silence for a time.
He had been taught that a child-name was but a dreaming-name, and that an adult-name was a god-name, filled with truth. He had hoped that he would return strong and bright as the morning sun. Now, however, he was without certainty, or conviction. No visions came to him, so he silently considered the ground before him. His eyes slowly closed. His attention came to the breath, observing its rising and falling, its permeation through the body. He watched as the body relaxed and loosened, as the breath became subtler and farther-ranging. The hands and feet faded. But for the silent breath, he could have been a corpse. The skin faded and grew silent, and he heard little about himself. The roar of thoughts and memory was rendered dumb. Rapture began to emerge, running through his mind. It waxed and waxed as the body fell away, until his mind was filled with bliss. One-pointed awareness arose now, as the rapture began to fade, piercing deeper into the mind as though into the heart of a flower. Unshakeable evenness and calm arose now. For a time it was, until even it fell away. Form was now entirely absent. All of space had dissolved into pure light.
“What is my name?”
An answer, bolting up through the ten-thousandfold cosmos and down into the rivers of the dead.
