“Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die.”
― G.K. Chesterton
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The light music grew heavier. The viking thought he could smell bread baking, or maybe it was lamb meat roasting. Then he realized it was neither. The music had grown so real that he could smell it too. It smelled like a childhood memory. It smelled like home. If home was more of a home than home had been. Like the happiness of a deeply rooted family during a winter solstice festival, it smelled good. The viking plunged his hands through the water’s surface and pulled his body underneath.
The glowworms moved in a cloud of current like floating lanterns under the water. Every light was unique and beautiful, a note in the Universal Sound. Their silk trailed behind them -echoing reverberations in the flow.
Akedah floundered and gasped, but then found it easy to breathe in the water. It was as if he was not breathing on his own, but was a part of a breathing organism.
“She is here at the womb of stars. She is the ancient red dragon poised to consume the child of the laboring woman clothed in the sun.”
“Stars are songs, and lies are discordant interruptions in song reverberations.”
“The princess is here. She has brought her heart with her.”
“She has already swept a third of the stars from the sky.”
Akedah could hear the soundless voices of the shining viscid children around him like thoughts bubbling up in his own mind. “Who is she? Who is the red dragon.” Akedah wondered to himself. In unison, the voices, rolled into his head, like rushing water.
“The void.”
“The nothing.”
“The always winter and never Christmas.”
“The waterless places.”
“The outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
The viking heard all this and comprehended in a moment’s breath.
“She is the fire that is never satisfied with wood.”
“The ground that is never satisfied with water.”
“The eye that is never satisfied with seeing.”
“The spirit who is never satisfied with being.”
“The consumer.”
“What does she consume?”
“Love.”
“Joy.”
“Peace.”
“Patience.”
“Kindness.”
The viking felt a tremor of horror in his spine despite his lack of understanding of the implications of this idea.
The current was winding through an open kelp forest. Great green stipes rose to the surface like giant beanstalks, anchored and buoyant, while the sandy white bottom rolled ever on like a submerged desert. The children and the viking swirled round and round. Up and over the kelp passing seals, rockfish, and even a grey whale hiding from killer whales until they stopped by a round wooden door lying exposed in the drifting sand. Akedah grasped it by it’s heavy metal handle and hoisted it open. Akedah could see a stone stairway. It was lit with torches and spiraled steeply down into the earth. Akedah had to pull himself through the water’s surface tension into the tunnel with the same force that he used to enter the water. It was not difficult, just surprising. A cold thermocline blasted Akedah in the chest. Akedah was not at the top of a stairway. He was at the bottom of a stairway sitting on top of the water: the base of a deep well.
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Moiety was lying without defense at the threshold of the enemy, and the enemy had exposed her. The Chameleon was crouched in detached cold blood at her feet, her belly dragged the ground. Her eyes moved. They darted and bounced in the dim like red dice on a green casino table. Her sides heaved, and like blacksmith bellows they blew heated air into the acrid night. “si-moom si-moom si-moom,” her dry inhalations and exhalations chanted, and with this sound a fecund hoard of biologically mechanized bloodless birds and lizards swarmed into the Chameleons clearing. They rattled and rasped advancing in rank. A life that is half a life is ever so... Support this podcast
