AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The sweat on my neck has dried. I eat mustard greens and the beans which by now are thick and lantern-green.
There is a kind of contentment to be found in the dream-hermitage—it comes only when the solitude-temple is built and the hermit is interred there, but it does come.
It is in the earthy tang of harvested vegetables.
It is in the smell of the mildewed pagoda-floors.
It is in the little bells of River singing by, and the heft of silence under Mountain, who carves his shape out of the void-that-is-sky.
It is the ants milling redly home with prizes of berry and sap.
It is pale petals stuck to the bottom of my left sandal, dew-damp and wrinkled.
It is Moon touching River tenderly, her hand heavy with the memory of their lovemaking.
It is the dark, earthy taste of persimmons and the fire-orange of their skin.
It is the sound of herons washing downstream, the sound of their blue feathers rubbing together like cricket’s legs.
It is the song of the plovers in the scented trees.
It is the shade of the pagoda at noon, the shapes that its shape casts on the earth.
It is the thick-dropped rain playing in the mud.
It is in bare feet that tunnel in loose soil, and the hum of cicadas which is like monks repeating their syllable endlessly into the hot nights.
But it is easily disturbed.
White Dew Descends
I dream that this time it is a girl. She comes to trade her water-jars in the great market, and indeed, they are skillfully shaped, with elegant spouts and handles that curve backwards like the necks of water-birds.
It is all the same to me whether her hair is the color of a burned oak or of the fire that burned it. But like all my postulants, she is beautiful. She smells of alfalfa and licorice. I feel a question-bead slide down the strand, and its passing sounds a baritone note, deep and wide as a bell.
“Monster,” she speaks first, which is unheard of, not done—“may I ask you a question first?”
I dream that I consider it. Of course, it merely prolongs the ritual. But she is lovely, and it will not save her, so there is no harm. I nod my golden head, and the sand-choked curls of my mane tumble forward.
“What walks on four legs in the morning, six in the afternoon, and none in the evening?”
My dream-laughter fills the desert and I am sorry for a moment that I will have to devour her. I want to caress her cheek instead, and feed her from my own mouth, as if she were my cub.
“Why, I do, child. For in infancy I walk on my four paws, in maturity I add my two wings to this, and in old age I creep on my belly and use none of these. That was a good riddle, girl. I shall remember it.”
Disappointment rakes it fingers across her face. I can see that this was her plan, to win her entrance by becoming herself the monster, and reversing the natural order. But such plans are not to be. The face of the coin cannot be its reverse. I am to far beneath the earth to be troubled by such small movements.
“And now for mine,” I intone, in my richest voice. The girl squares her feet as though she is to recite a verse, and shakes her hair like a broom tangled in cobwebs. “If n is a whole number greater than 2, prove for me that there are no whole numbers a, b, c such that an + bn = cn ?”
I dream that my smile is fat and sated, knowing she cannot answer and that the sweet smell of her skin will soon be inside me.
The girl’s eyes fill with prismatic tears. She understands. Any answer she might make would be a fantasy of foolishness. And instead of stuttering a guess, she simply walks to me, puts her tiny hand on my flank, moving her fingers in the thick fur with a thoughtful grace.
The dream-girl lies down beneath me, willingly, and exposes her white throat to my mouth. Her tears slide off of her cheeks and onto the dry sand, onto the strands of her hair.
I dream that I weep as I swallow her.
The Evening Cricket Chirps
