13
She awoke alone, and wondered where she was. The light was hushed by foggy hangings- she was still in the Prince’s bed, but he had gone. The unnaturally huge oysters were still under the bed, bloody and smellsome. She wrapped them up and took them to her quarters, doing her best to avoid being seen. The corridors of the palace were almost empty, and she made it safely there with little ado. She opened the last of the steel chests, and the oysters fitted them perfectly. The hook of Gunjna, the thoughtstone of Gobbler and the giblets of Svinvi; all of these things were now hers. The ocean stretched out before her endless now as her life, deep with treasures and beautiful with the light of morning. A smile spread across her face, “Trishan” she said, and the word was a physical sensation, a bubble that rose up through her and burst into giggles, a tickling in her tummy and a wetness in her lips. Does he love me? She wondered. Yes, she told herself. Yes, yes, yes. Yes, she thought, but a no hung in the back of her throat, and that doubt was like a dagger, so sharp it could barely be felt, but there all the same.

She ran out of her room, still dressed in pajamas. “Where is the prince?” She begged of a servant, clutching his arms wide-eyed and panting.

The servant pointed dumbly, and she followed his finger without even knowing where she went. The gardens were filled with people cheering, and she pushed her way between them. Riders on horseback galloped at lunatic speed over a maze whose walls were barely a foot high, and hence only ornamental. They had bows in their arms, and fired as they rode at straw dummies, delighting the onlookers with their uncanny precision. Vrasyati spotted the king, standing among a gaggle of concubines, all considerately shielded by parasols carried by dark-skinned slaves. He was applauding with maniacal vigour, so that his hands were a blur. The vizier spotted the princess and fell on his knees before her, kissing her feet, dusty from her barefoot jog.

She was so confused that when one of the horsemen clattered to a stop before her she had no time to register who it was. He clutched her to him, and in her hair planted a lily, its petals bright yellow dusted with scarlet. He kissed her forehead, smelling in the scent of the flower and her, and when he leaned back she saw it was Trishan. He was grinning, drunk on life and his own youth. The crowd went wild around them, and the other riders had drawn back, leaving the stage to their beloved prince.

They kissed, and kissed again like it was their first embrace. The king cried. The vizier cried. The concubines had never seen anything so beautiful as this perfect couple, divinely proportioned, their eyes onyx and amethyst only for each other. He took her hand and led her into the maze, where no-one could hear their words. He pressed his lips close to her ear, “You are so beautiful.”

“Do you love me?” She said. It almost hurt to say it, so graceless at a moment so sublime.

“I love you,” he said. “I love you. I have never loved before this. I will never love again. I need only you, forever and ever. You are my air, my warmth, my rest and my waking. You have enchanted me. Every time I speak I say your name, ‘Vrasyati’, everywhere your face is before me.”

The stream of his passion tugged at her. She wanted to take it all and let it be, but the knife of doubt still grazed her. “But you don’t know me.”

He shook his head and kissed her again on the shoulder where her pajamas slipped down to reveal bare skin. “I know I love you.”

“You don’t know who I am.”

“Then tell me who you are.”

“But you might love me less. I might disappoint you.”

“Nothing can make me change my love. I love you as the sunflower loves the sun, as the fish loves the salt water. I love you more than life; you are my life. Before you came to me I was dead, and now I have you, the world means nothing.”

Those fatal words thudded in her chest. She pulled him close, and with her head against his breast listened to his pulse. “I love you too,” she said, and although it was not entirely true it felt true at that minute.

“I need to go again, but not for long; a day at most,” she said at last.

“You are always going. It is the most terrible torture for me, when my every moment cries for you; it is like being held underwater.”

“Not for long, love. And then we will not again part, I swear.”

She kissed him and walked away, not looking back, for a backward look might break her resolve. The crowd parted for her, the star in their own collective, private dream, and she looked at her hands. Two rings only remained now, the iron-slave band, with no magic but the power of memory, and the obsidian, which contained a ghul, the last of the djinn at her command. In her quarters she drew the curtains and called it by name.

When there is lightning, for a moment the world becomes light, and it was like this when the ghul manifested, save that there was a moment of darkness, an eclipse where not even candlelight showed. Everyone in the city blinked twice and looked about them as if waking from a dream; in truth they had lost the last two minutes of their lives, one-hundred-and-twenty seconds of memory taken from them. The ghul is a pitiable creature, scavenging on the leftovers of life that none will miss, feeding on decaying corpses because they can no longer stomach the richness of fresh flesh. The subtle fire that made its flesh was dim and pale, without colour, and cool like wet marble. Its eyes were dark and frightened, though one could imagine majesty, that it had been ennobled through suffering. It wore a dark robe, bundled, many-layered and ragged, to protect it from the sun, but in all other respects it was spartan simple, a white,
horned man with ivory hooves and ashen wings.

“I watched you, mistress, while you made use of my brothers and sisters and did great feats. What do you wish now of me?”

“Merely that you transport me, with these four jars, to Rshti the witch, who lives among the stumps of the first garden, and thence return me to this place.”

The djinn nodded, and if he was disappointed he did not show it. He carefully picked up the cases and jars, carrying them with some awkwardness in the crooks of his elbows, and then allowed Ksasnaja to put her arms around her neck. They melted through solid stone as they rose, the way parted by his down-feathered wings, which smelled of old dust. He was eerily quiet in flight, there was no rush of wind, no sense of joy or pride in his own power as there had been with the afreet and shaitan. The land rose and fell, and the ocean came and went, and they landed with barely a bump before the clay hut where Ksasnaja had found her hope. She led the ghul inside.

The room was an insane mess- piles of herbs and bundles had been shunted around and now lay everywhere, between furred rugs, staves and crosiers carved from exotic woods. Rshti showed no surprise when the triumphant soon-to-be-god entered, followed by her macabre demon, but her face opened in a great toothy grin, showing those worn pearls of ivory set into their wet red couch. The witch busied herself with building a fire beneath the cauldron, adding obscure fuels and salts until it blazed with colours which no human tongue could name. This done, she hopped over, and hugged Ksasnaja with spindly arms like the handles of brooms. She noticed that the stench from the hag no longer offended her as it did before; she reeked, true, but it was merely a stronger species of that odour which all mortal animals had, which Ksasnaja herself now had.

“Goddess! I knew you would be here soon, I saw it in my crystal orb!” She pulled back and clapped her hands with excitement. “Tell your djinn to put down those chests and help me with the cauldron.”

She did, and as the great kettle was lowered over the pyre, she began to fill it with a mix of holy waters, oils, spices and musks, which all began to bubble at different times, murmuring away like the song of the swamp, and steaming so that the whole hut filled with a vapour whose flavours caught in the nose and throat. Rich, slightly sour scents laced with a hot sweetness and a heady, forbidden allure. Rshti took up a rod made from red-veined marble, and began to stir it, murmuring formulae under her breath. The ghul asked permission to step outside, sensing the gathering power in the air, which threatened to damage his sensitive soul. Ksasnaja let him go, and found a perch for herself among the blankets, relatively free from clutter and without any sharp protrusions.

“So this mortal,” said Rshti, taking the rod from the mixture and shaking the drops of fluid from it. “Tell me of her. What is her name?”

“His name,” said Ksasnaja, smiling with memories. “Is Trishan. He is the prince of the kingdom of fishers, beautiful as no human should be, thoughtful and loving truth. He is athletic and pure hearted. He is loved by all who know him, though he exasperates them with his single-pointed search for meaning.”

Rshti nodded, but she was once again at work on her potion. She hobbled over to where the jars and cases had been rested and began to open them, checking their contents. “Trishan…” she whispered to herself. From the first case she withdrew the giant hook of Gunjna, and with a sharp, hooked blade began to strip it into fibres which she added to the cauldron. “The hook of Gunjna, Mother of Krakanas,” she announced to the pregnant air. “Which turns like the wheels of the sun’s chariot, which never releases that which it enters. Catch deep into Trishan, bind him close and the spell shall begin.”

Ksasnaja thought she saw the prince, his face look at her from between the thickening fog, but she knew it was just the sorcery taking shape. Next, she fished out the thoughtstone. It was heavy, and still slick with brain-juices. Hugging it close to her bony chest, Rshti staggered to the cauldron and dropped it in, with a mighty splash. The mixture began to fizzle, and the thoughtstone to dissolve. The steam began to crackle with an aurora like the thoughts of the Devourer in the Sky, and Rshti spoke, “The thoughtstone of Gobbler, full of the stolen ideas of a million minds. Swim like bright minnows into Trishan’s brain, creep into his dreams, so that his every thought shall lead him deeper into my spell.”

From the tall canopic jar Rshti fished Svinvi’s giblets. Ksasnaja shifted in her seat as her legs grew dead under her. The smell of blood jostled with the aromas from the witch’s brew, and the crone carefully diced heart and lungs on a heavily scarred chopping board. She scraped them in, and the sweet smell of cooking pork curled into Ksasnaja’s nostrils. Rshti wiped the gore from her hands, although her ragged dress remained stained. “The heart and lungs of Svinvi, king of the speaking beasts, divine porker. With every beat of his fleshy heart, and every breath he draws into his spongy lungs, draw deeper into Trishan the magic of my spell.”
Ksasnaja’s own heart was in her chest now, and the tiny hairs all over her body stood on end. Rshti too was affected, and as she drew from the chest the sagging scrotum of the rakshasa king her spindly frame shook like a hooked fish. Biting her in-turned lips to steady her fingers, she reached into the sack and withdrew the testes one after the other, squeezing them in a tight grip until they burst, and let the whitish, seething mush drip into the brew. The pot began to scream, and steam tumbled freely out like an inverted waterfall, until nothing could be seen. Out of the fog came Rshti’s voice, “The oysters of Garrash, violator of the Goddess. Deep within his loins, the matrix of desire, the source of the seed which blossoms into life, let my spell bind Trishan, as strong as love and as overwhelming as lust. Bound by soul, mind, body and heart, let his soul be parted from his flesh, let my magic give to Ksasnaja the one who loves her.”

“Come outside,” said the crone more quietly.

From the moist obscurance Rshti’s tiny hand grasped Ksasnaja’s, and led her out under the sky. The little thing was exhausted, the once-goddess noted, and her eyes red. She sat cross legged on the ground, and absent mindedly drew sigils in the dirt. “The potion must reduce now, into an ointment which I shall rub into your skin. While we wait for it, it occurs to me you may wish an amulet, to protect you from Trishan’ vengeance. Shall I make one for you?”

“What?” Asked Ksasnaja. “His vengeance?”

“He will not be happy.”

“To be a woman?”

Rshti scowled. “Do they not educate young goddesses these days? Did you think, that in defiance of all the laws of metaphysics, Trishan’s soul and yours would merely exchange bodies?”

Ksasnaja fell to her knees, and crawled close to Ksasnaja. Before she even asked the question, the answer came to her; she could have worked it out from the beginning, but she had barely considered anything but her own deification. “What will happen to him?” She whispered.

“His soul will be cast out; confused and frightened the devils shall catch him in their webs, and draw him into one of the hells, to burn for eternity, or until his soul finds its way to the wheel of life.”

“No!” Ksasnaja’s voice broke. Tears came to her eyes as her soul was caught and squeezed by conflicting desires; mortal fear and immortal love wrestled inside her.

“He is a human, goddess,” said Rshti, cradling her beautiful head and smoothing the glossy black hair. “His destiny is to suffer, and to die. To love you was his choice. Immortality will be his gift to you, and it would be callous to refuse it.”

“I cannot! I love him. I love him!”

Rshti gave her ear a last pat, and stood. The steam had cleared. “I shall go and prepare the ointment.”

The ghul stood, outlined by the reddening horizon. Ksasnaja found her way to her feet and joined him. He looked at her with his black orbs like the depths of the universe.

“Did you hear?” Asked Ksasnaja.

The ghul nodded.

“What shall I do? I cannot condemn to hell
Trishan, who loves me with all his sweet heart. Who I love as I have never loved another save myself. And yet death awaits me, if I choose to honour our love. What should I do?”

The ghul was silent for a moment, then turned his horned head away, and with his eyes staring into the deeps of the sun said, “Lady, I do not know. It was not for exemplary conduct and good morals that I was imprisoned in that ring you wear. I too feared death, for though it comes slow to us djinni it comes nonetheless. I sacrificed many things for my fear; love, beauty, comradeship. Everything that was dear to me, honour, the joy of power, I threw away, hoarding my life-forces and skulking in shadows. My own kin despised me, and hunted me like a rabid beast. Far beyond my allotted death have I lived, if you can call this life, eating only putrid flesh, burning in the light, unfeeling and forsaken. And yet I am still alive, and I find this is all that matters, for I still fear the grave more than I despise myself. While there is life there is hope, no matter how pathetic.

“This was my choice. You must make your own.”

Ksasnaja shuddered at the djinn’s tale; how it darkly mirrored her own. Shutting each eye one at a time she saw two visions; in one she rose, shedding light like a fire-flower, returned to her mountain and ruled for ten million years, surrounded by endless followers who sung her praises down all time, who worshipped her new form but could not see the moral bankruptcy at the core of her, the maggots that writhed under her male skin; the memory of her hapless shadow, Trishan, who burned eternally, tormented by dark things who hated him merely for his existence.
In the other eye she saw herself grow old in the prince’s arms. She saw two sons and a daughter, and she saw gentle love and simple pleasures. She saw herself and Trishan on the throne, ruling with justice and compassion over a kingdom bounteous with the blessings of fate. She saw the years stretch out like a long road, filled with adventures and trials, lessons to be learned and suffering to be overcome. A road to be walked together with her prince. And yet, beyond what her eyes could see, there waited a lonely death. And that was all.

“Why is life so hard?” She asked.

The ghul shook his head, and Rshti called from the hut. Ksasnaja went to her. “I can’t do it to him,” she said to the witch.

“Hush, girl,” said Rshti. She knelt the ex-goddess before her, and stripped her of her clothes. “I won’t,” she continued to say, her eyes squeezed shut, as the ancient woman rubbed the ointment into her skin. It smelled wonderful, like an exotic fruit, and set her skin alight like a lover’s wet tongue. “Hold him close,” Rshti was saying. “Hold him and speak these words into his breath:” and she said the words, which cannot be written, but which Ksasnaja could not forget. The words were a hunger that knew no law, and a fear without limits, and a promise which could not be broken. “When you are a god, do not forget my price,” said Rshti, helping Ksasnaja to her feet and dressing her. “We shall dance together on the sacred mountain.”

“I am sorry, Rshti,” said the girl. “I am sorry to betray you. I will not be a god, and I cannot make you one.”

The crone kissed her hand and hobbled into her hut.

“Take me to him,” she said to the air, and the ghul carried her to Trishan. He was swimming in the ocean, on a beach where fishwives were gutting their husbands’ catches. They did not see the princess and her demon land among the palm trees. “You are free now,” said Vrasyati to the ghul. He bowed to her, and though it seemed briefly that he might say something to her, he was gone with only the troubling of the air to suggest he ever existed. She was alone, before the sea, all her magics gone; all except one.
She stepped over the wet sands, the ripples of her steps radiating from her feet. Her heart thudded in its rib-cage, and she fixed her eyes on the prince’s body, bobbing among the waves like a fleck of surf, and tried to breathe properly. All the gods seemed to stare down transfixed as she approached him, all the universe to fall silent. All time was in that moment, from the end to the beginning, back and forth, all resting on this single point, as the blood rushed in her head like the sea in a seashell, and Trishan pulled her close and kissed her. Light and dark, death and life, she closed both eyes and held him, wishing that there was nothing in all creation but the two of them, their souls and bodies bound like two plaited cords.

Love sang to her, weaving its glittering verses into a net to catch her up, make her forget all else, make every breath sweet and every touch a kiss. But the net could not hold her, and in the end she knew she would plummet into the silent dark, and she knew not what waited therein. She squeezed tears from her eyes, and spoke the words into Trishan’s open mouth.

14
And the world tore itself apart; black from white, up from down. Ksasnaja might have screamed, but she found she had nothing to scream with, and as she tumbled through a mass of confused flesh bundled like a butcher’s cuts she lost all sense of everything, even fear. A rush of emotion swept by and was gone, like a ghost stepping through her. And then all of a sudden she had fingers, she had toes. She opened her eyes and light scalded them, brilliant blue, she fell backwards and did not land.

A thousand thousand sensations swooped upon Ksasnaja, tastes and feelings, lights and smells, thoughts and sounds, things which no word can describe. At first it seemed they would be overpowering but Ksasnaja found that they fitted together, and he bound them beneath him, sampling them like sweetmeats and drawing from them brilliant meanings and insights too profound for the mortal mind. In the water at his feet Vrasyati’s body lay dead; she had been beautiful, but now he was reborn, a god, and Trishan was gone. On the shore, the fisherwomen screamed and prostrated themselves, blinded by his radiance. He dulled it, remembering he was now a god once more. The air welcomed him, and as in a single step he was among the clouds. “Dress me,” he commanded, and a myriad of deities tripped over each other to obey, bringing woven silks, wools, cottons, beaten copper and moulded silver. He selected a deep-green kilt, and wore about his neck a white scarf embroidered with golden thread.

He was at the palace now; he addressed his soldiers, those created by the afreet. They recognized their master, though he now wore male form, for his eyes were still brilliant purple. “You have served me well,” he said, and though his voice was barely raised each heard it with crystal clarity, and it soothed their minds. “And so I shall give to you each a choice; you may go, free, either as you are, or else made into a true mortal, who can love and live. Or you may accompany me to my mountain, and there taste the fruits of paradise.” And some chose the first choice, going out into the world to seek their own fortunes and write their own stories upon the pages of history. Some lived for centuries as homunculi made from living steel, more and less than human; others chose to become true men, and some of these prospered, some died young, but all died, and on their death-beds some regretted their choice, though others did not. And a portion remained behind, desiring to serve Ksasnaja.

These he translated into minor divinities, imbuing their souls with forms and powers suited to their characters; they flocked about him as the bees their hive, and he flew into the dreams of the king and queen, and though they forgot his words they remembered that they had seen their son, and that he had told them not to mourn him.

He rode the winds to the mountain, and in his passing flowers bloomed and crops grew ripe; widows laughed and the sick were healed. Warriors lost their heart for slaughter and bards found their tongues and fingers quicken with sublime poetry. Madmen saw reason and the elderly cartwheeled down streets. With barely a thought he plucked Rshti from her hut, and tossed her through the air; she shrieked in fear but was caught by the handsome laughing god, and within her he stoked a light until it blazed, burning away her mortal self until she flew beside him, a demi-god joyous as he.

The earth rumbled as he set his holy feet upon the mountain, like a purring cat. The stars wheeled about like giddy children, and the hosts of imps and yakshas who had attended him as a goddess flocked back to worship him. “Begone,” he said. “Where were you when I was tricked, where were you when I was mortal and alone?” And they wept and tore at their hair, but were driven from the mountain by his new followers.

The stream that flowed from the melting snows gushed to see him, and he slid down it to the temple, where devotees by the thousand chanted his name with all their lungs. With his heart he listened to them all, and gave some what they asked for, others what they needed. In the sanctum his statue stood, and as he danced before it it changed to a new form, a beautiful young man, wise through suffering yet triumphant over death. He called out to the earth-dwelling spirits, and in a thrice they came, trailing liquid gold which they cast into the likeness of Rshti, and set before the pedestal of Ksasnaja’s idol. He visited the dreams of the priests to explain what had happened, knowing that they would find it all somewhat confusing.

When that night at last came the mountain shook to the feet of gods; from the freezing poles and the wet jungles, the red deserts and deep waters, from the earth’s red centre and the far cold stars, they came, and they gave their love and their blessings to a the ones who dwelt there, wise Rshti, and the one whose name is Ksasnaja.

15
And that is all the tale I have to tell. Trishan, you ask me, what happened to him? And the monkey, was he punished, or rewarded? Could the god truly be happy, knowing the source of his glory?

These questions I do not presume to answer, nor can I offer any lessons or morals, but you may take freely those you find.
There is another story to tell; one day you may hear it.