“Never a queen.” Kalik said again. I felt Lutha’s silver bow on its cord. Its shape was like his mouth.
“Tell me.”
“You’ve had enough stories.”
I shook my head. Kalik’s words excited memories – like catching glimpses of a country I once knew. Clouds parting to reveal clouds, dreams of dreams.
I threw dry scrub on the embers. Smoke. Puff! The flame lit up Kalik’s face, and the canoe behind him. The lake black.
“All that talking,” Kalik said, “it’s made me hungry again.”
“I’ll cook more meat if you’ll tell me that story.” I raked coals, grilled steaks. We ate it with our fingers, bloody juice down our chins. Nip watched and chewed on her bone. I groaned, slumped against a log.
Kalik grunted. “I’m too full to talk.”
“You promised.”
Kalik drank water from a gourd. “Far to the west of the Western Mountains,” he said, “there was once a kingdom with soil so fertile it grew a heavy crop of wheat each year. Animals grew fat. Forests covered the hills. The people boasted their rivers flowed with milk and honey. Only one thing was wrong: their beautiful queen, Queen Amtris, feared getting old.
“She poisoned the king, her husband, and took younger and younger lovers. She dressed lavishly, rich gowns, rare jewellery. Her entertainments were costly.
“Queen Amtris taxed the people cruelly. They took so many crops off the land, the soil began to die. They planted more crops. Bred more animals. Felled the forests. The soil decayed further. Still the queen demanded more: she insulted the soil.
“The gods are not mocked. The sun went mad. It dried the rivers, burnt the grass and trees, made a desert of the once-rich soil.
“Beside the last spring, Queen Amtris built pleasure gardens and walled them with an armoured hedge of steel thorns. Through a gap she led her seven sons and seven daughters, her court, lovers, servants, guards. Behind them, the steel thorns clanged shut.
“Inside the pleasure gardens, scarlet flowers tumbled and hid the armoured hedge. All was feasting, music, dancing. Great cages held wild bears, beasts, and birds for their entertainment. Fish leapt in the stream.
“Outside, people died under the malignant sun. The last sound they heard was the queen’s laughter rippling like water.
“The last man left outside flung himself, arms wide-open, upon the steel thorns of the armoured hedge. Red flowers garlanded his head. The guards thrust with their spears too late. His curse rang across the pleasure gardens. ‘Queen Amtris, may you grow old, wither hideous, and die!’
“Queen Amtris looked in her mirrored walls, in her lovers’ eyes for any sign of ageing. She felt her face for lines. She spoke soft and low. She smiled instead of laughing. If she did not open her mouth wide, if she did not screw up her eyes and laugh, no wrinkles would form, she hoped.
“But wrinkles creviced the corners of her eyes, her upper lip. Weeping, Queen Amtris buried her first son alive, hoping the god of the underworld would mistake him for her. So she would live forever.
“At the beginning of each year she buried another of her sons alive.”
“And did she?”
“Did she what?”
“Live for ever?”
Kalik smiled. “The year after she buried her seventh son, she counted her wrinkles and found seven more. She swept through her palace, half-strangled her oldest daughter – in her own long black hair. Skinned her while she was still half-alive. And drew that living skin, its long black hair, over her own head, over her own body. Hoping to live again through the death of youth. But inside her daughter’s skin, Queen Amtris grew still older.”
Something splashed. Too big for a fish. I listened, but there was only Nip cracking a bone beside me, and Kalik telling the story I already knew: Old Hagar’s story of the crone who strangled and skinned her own daughter.
“Disguising herself from Death, each year Queen Amtris killed another daughter until only her youngest remained. The queen counted her wrinkles and found seven more. Screaming, she half-strangled her last daughter. Skinned her alive. Inside that youthful skin, bald head hidden under her youngest daughter’s long black hair, Queen Amtris quickened and gave birth to all the birds and beasts and fishes of the world. The last creatures she bore were the children of our race.
“Then Death came like a lover. In his arms Queen Amtris lay. He held a lamp and watched the youthful skin crease in dusty cracks and folds. The long black hair fell out, left her ancient skull bare. And Death ate Queen Amtris.
“The trees around her pleasure gardens burned. The bears bent apart the iron bars of their cages, tore a gap in the armoured hedge. The other animals and birds followed. They found a river that died on the edge of the desert, followed it into the mountains where it grew bigger towards its source. They climbed and flew through the mountains to the land of the lake. Bear. Deer. Goat. Sheep. Dog. Boar. Donkey. Bull.”
“Bull?” I asked.
“Where do you think we got the horns from, for the sentries? Somewhere to the south in the hills.” Kalik nodded and went on.
“Last of all, the children escaped. The desert invaded the pleasure gardens. Trees, flowers, and spring choked in sand.
“Into the mountains the children followed the bears’ tracks, up the river that died. Where snow hid the track, bears waited to show the way. After the last children passed, they froze into pillars of rock and ice.
“The children chose the first King of the Mountain, became the first People of the Lake. They hunted and caught the animals, the fish, and birds. Lutha’s people and mine are descended from those children.”
Kalik looked down the invisible lake to Grave Mountain hidden in darkness.
“What about the king?”
“I told you in the other story: when he knew he was dying, the old king chose a boy to learn his wisdom, showed him the secret way under the mountain. When the boy had learned all there was to know, he came out of the mountain, a young man, and paid for his wisdom. The old king blinded the young man.”
“Yes!”
Kalik smiled. “The young man then killed the old king and ruled until he became old and trained another boy in wisdom. Blind king succeeded blind king.
“Then a goddess came out of the Western Mountains,” said Kalik, “and overthrew the last of the blind kings. When she grew old, she waded into the lake and turned to stone. So she stands on the earth, in the water, and in the air. And ever since that time, women have ruled.”
The fire burned down. The splash again. Somewhere upon the dark shrug of the lake I saw a mound of black water vanish like a half-formed thought. As if some savage spirit had listened to Kalik’s story, and sneered at what it heard.
Kalik drew up his deerskin blanket. “That’s the story my old people tell. But it ends with a prediction. Before the goddess turned to stone, as she stood in the lake, she prophesied that a Stranger would come some day. A Stranger who would overthrow the rule of women, her own worship.”
I drew up my deerkskin. I had told nothing of the Library to Lutha and Kalik. Nothing of the blinding of the Shaman, the getting of wisdom. Nothing of Sodomah and the Garden of Dene. As I thought that, Kalik chuckled again.
“You came over the Western Mountains, Ish. You saw the frozen bears in the pass. You came to the lake and disappeared under the mountain. You brought back Lutha’s father. And he was called the Shaman, our word for a wise man.
“You returned with the blind king. You were there when the Salt Men shot him and he died. But you have both your eyes. Did the blind king fail to blind you before he died himself?” Kalik laughed. The air was suddenly cold.
“What was the Goddess’s name?” I asked even though I knew what it must be.
Kalik laughed again. “The daughter of the Goddess of Fire,” he said. “Goddess of the Moon, and Childbirth. Goddess of the Hunt. The Virgin Goddess. She has many names. One of them is Hekkat.
“Perhaps the gods have sent you to end her rule, Ish. Like quenching a bit of burning tote. Have you thought you could be King of Grave Mountain?”
I listened to his chuckle, knowing that all I ever wanted was a family. And a place of my own.
A little wave ran a hollow splash from end to end of the beach. A reek of something dead dragged across the air.
“It’s a good story, but I’m not the Stranger! I don’t want to be king.” I turned on my side, pretended to sleep. Kalik, I knew, was watching me through the dark. I could feel his mind trying to work its way inside my head.
I woke during the night. Had I been asleep, or had I lain awake listening to Kalik telling another story? Uncertain, I rolled over. He was sitting by the dead fire.
“I thought you were asleep.”
“I thought I was. But I woke and thought you were telling another story. Did you tell another story, Kalik? While I was asleep.”
“You woke me. Talking in your sleep. Calling out somebody’s name. Who’s the Showman, Ish?”
“The Showman? I don’t know any Showman.”
“Maybe you said the Shaman. Maybe that’s who you meant.”
“It must be all that meat we ate. I don’t remember any dream.”
Kalik lay himself down. “Did I say anything else?” I asked.
“Something about a donkey and a carnival or something. That’s what it sounded like.” Kalik’s voice was drowsy.
“It’s funny what you dream.”
“I suppose so.” His voice slipped away.
“Do you ever talk in your sleep?” I asked, but there was no reply. What else had I said in my sleep? What had I dreamt about? Kalik mentioned the Showman, the donkey, the Carny. Had he questioned me as I slept? Had I answered him? And what had I said?