Sati
There is a woman, in a house, at the end of the world.
The house sits perched atop a cliff, in the utter north. Beyond its northern brink is a seething chaos of iridescence and star-shadows, the elemental furnace from which the aurorae flow upon wintry nights. On the other side of the cliff, the southward side, is a thick forest of pines and spruces. The house sits between them, on a thrust of land. The northern side of the house is constantly battered by ecstatic wind, while the southern side by icy gusts and fierce summer storms. The house does not shake, nor is it pierced by chill drafts. It is of a simple design: built of white stone, with a steep red stone roof, and four towers, one to each corner.
The house was never built, and it shall never crumble away. It has been forgotten and rediscovered innumerable times, down into unfathomable ages.
At times, the house has lain silent and dark for eons, buried under glaciers. At other times, it has been full of light and life, its halls brimming with inhabitants. Today, one clear autumn morning, there is but one inhabitant, and she is just now rising from sleep in the corner of a grand bedroom, upon a cloth mat. Waking gradually comes upon her while donning her three earth-coloured robes and pulling on thick woollen socks. She begins to make her way to the kitchen. Her breath rattles with age and her steps are tottering and slow, but her eyes are calmly downcast, and there is neither desperate urgency nor arthritic pain in her movement.
In the quiet halls of the kitchen, there are old cutting-boards, stone sink-basins, and several stained platters lying about. A fireplace sits in the middle of the eastern wall, full of old, silent ashes. An assembly of crowned angels sits patiently, awaiting the woman's arrival. Her footsteps growing ever-louder, the woman makes her way into the kitchen. Along the way, she has picked up an old clay bowl, so broad and deep that she must carry it with both her age-withered arms. The angels brighten at her approach, several of them now smiling broadly. The woman slides the woven lid of off her bowl, and walks before the angels, who place nectar and ambrosia within it.
When she ritually recites her gratitude in a rolling chant, some among the angels shed tears of joy, and their tears glow as does sunlight.
Some minutes later, the woman sits upon her favoured perch, an old stone, likely carried off from some distant riverbank, that is smooth and cool. Though her food would tantalize the tongues of kings, she eats it patiently and methodically, and her drink she takes in slow, careful sips. Most of the angels have happily departed, their task done with the gift of food. A few, more modestly dressed, remain, eating their own nectar and ambrosia alongside the woman.
After the meal, the woman washes her bowl out and sets it to dry in the weakening autumnal sunlight. Her hand is steady and her gaze unbroken. She works neither quickly nor slowly, but instead with patient meticulousness, like a musician tuning his sitar. After the cleaning is finished, the woman sits by a sink-basin, where a goddess with glowing eyes carefully shaves away the woman's white scalp-stubble with a razor of gold-gleaming metal, keener than any steel.
Her old scalp now clean and smooth, she departs the kitchen, with her hands gently clasped at her front. The angels proceed silently behind her, but their gaze is not quite so focused, and their step less steady. It is a long walk to the western tower, for the house is massive. Ascending the stairs to the tower is something of a struggle for the woman, and she sucks breath in as she pulls her old legs ever higher. Youth is as remote from her as from a towering oak, and certainly the skin of her hands is nearly as rough as bark.
At the top of the tower's stairs, she pauses to recover her breath, sitting herself upon a step while the angels respectfully stream beside her. When she is fully recuperated, she proceeds into the chamber.
Within the tower chamber, the angels have placed glass vases of lilies, filling the room with their douce perfume. There are no stone walls surrounding the chamber, but only great windows facing out in every direction. The southern side of the chamber is illuminated with sunlight; the northern side with the seething rainbow glow of the shapeless realm. There are about two dozen cotton-stuffed cushions set out along the floor in a semicircle, and apart from them sits a rather gaudier cushion, made of embroidered silk and stuffed with the dreams of summer clouds.
The woman eyes this new cushion with amused scepticism. "Where on earth is my old seat?" she asks in an age-cracked voice.
"This new cushion is our gift, reverend lady," says the goddess with the glowing eyes in fluting tones. "My brother made it to express his gratitude for your teachings, and his regret that he could not attend this day."
The woman smiles ironically. "I trust the seam won't break under my backside."
The angels and the woman take their seats. The woman instructs them to first settle their awareness upon the breath, noticing its subtle qualities of energy flow within the body, and the raw sensations of the body responding to the breathing process. The bodily sensations become subtle: some feel it as a numbing of the hands and feet, others of an emptying of the physical body and a lightness of substance. Their minds become clarified and quiet. When their minds are sufficiently grounded within the breath, she then advises them to take up a new theme: compassion. "The active desire to lessen the sufferings of others," she says, her voice soft yet ringing throughout the room. "Not a lament at such suffering, but the aspiration to go forth tirelessly and teach others how to end their pain."
There is quiet reflection in the minds of the meditators. They think lofty, sublime thoughts of curing all the ailments of the world, of blossoming lotus flowers, and of radiant light filling the cosmos.
Then a thunderous crash emanates from far below. The angels' eyes snap open, and they look downward in concern. The woman murmurs to herself, "Ah, yes, I knew this would happen soon enough."
After some brisk walking, the woman and her divine visitors find themselves in the entrance hall, where a demon, covered in boiling blood, is presently gnawing upon a bench, flecks of foam flying from his lips and burning what they touch. Its fingers ended in bony talons, where the meat had been ripped away. Snarling with fury, the demon smashes apart the bench, and turns to gaze at the woman. There are no eyes in its face, but only two blazing flames, around which drip melting grease and pus. The demon throws its head back and bays, a grating, meaty sound, bubbling painfully from its lungs. Then it crouches to the ground, staring with absolute loathing at the woman.
"I have - seen-" it chokes with fury, trembling and drooling, "the very
eyes of - panic and terror. I have feasted! upon! countless! corpses!", punctuating each word with a fist slammed into the floor. "And YOU have thought that you could AID me?!" The demon howls and lashes towards the woman. But she is never close enough. Even as the demon lunges forward, she is never within its reach to harm.
The demon halts its attacks, and with a blank face begins to slash at its own skin, grinding its teeth and breaking them apart with its fury. "I SHALL BE DESTROYED!" it bellows, blood pouring out of its mouth. The angels nearby became dim and dark, retreating in horror. The demon begins to wheeze with alien laughter at their fear. "You cannot bear to see me, can you?" it spits. "You that live within a world of transient delights cannot comprehend the
lie that you tell
yourselves every moment!"
The woman is unimpressed. "What was the trigger this time?" she asks calmly.
"I shall tell you," the demon hisses. It begins to speak in its native tongue: the cracking of ice in the winter, the screech of infernal gears, the gasp of choking victims. As it rants, its eyes burn brighter and brighter, until they seem to be broiling the demon's skull from the inside out. For several moments the demon speaks, the air about it smoking. When it finishes, it collapses to the ground, twitching and snarling.
"And this is the only response you can imagine?" the woman asks.
"What else is there to respond with?" the demon groans as it chews upon the stone floor. "Hatred is my body and distrust is my blood, you glib bitch."
Some among the angels gasp with shock at this last word, but the woman chuckles throatily. "Do you enjoy hatred?"
"It's all I have left to sustain me," the demon whispers, ramming its head into the ground. "I have nothing but this. There is nowhere for me to go. Nobody for me to trust. I must stand alone in this furnace."
"Then why do you come here?" the woman inquires.
"To show you your
failure. To show you that your words have done nothing to end this. You merely cooled the embers, leaving them to gain their heat anew."
"Must hatred last eternal?"
"No, but where the distrust and the hatred ends, I am but a bloody corpse to be feasted upon by the rest of my company." The demon leaps to its feet and stares at the angels. Its face has been smashed to ruins by the stone floor. "You cannot even remember, can you?" it growls. "The thunder in your blood. You just sit here and think about idyllic twaddle while my kind tear one another limb from limb every waking moment. You will never understand."
The woman meets the demon's gaze without blinking. "You forge your own damnation with every breath," she says flatly. "Yet you know it to be damnation." (The demon spits in assent.) "You know that you destroy yourself with this."
The demon raises a claw to begin flaying itself yet again, and the woman barks out, "Do be more of an adult, if you don't mind."
The demon blinks at this, and then howls at her, "How
dare you?"
"Because I wish to see you awaken from this fitful sleep," she responds.
"I fucking bet," the demon growls. "What would you possibly have to gain from that?"
"Sympathetic joy," she replies, effortlessly.
"A lie."
"Then we can never feel empathy for another being? If that were the case, you'd not need to distrust other beings, for they would never be able to harm your emotions, and you would have no trust for them to betray."
The demon pauses. Its stare continues to unflinchingly hold to the woman, but its hatred seems to lessen, if only slightly.
"What do you propose?" it asks, more quietly.
"To take from you your heart of fire and give you a heart of flesh," she replies. "Shall you follow me?"
Without waiting for an answer, she begins to walk down the hallway. The angels remain cringing. The hallway is unshaken by their exchange. Behind the demon's labored breath, the fearful rustling of the angels' garments, and the footsteps of the woman, there is ringing silence, endlessly proclaiming the truth.
