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The Canyon
There is a village in a place where a river once was. On abundant days, when there is little work to be done, the children dig their claws into the packed-down soil of the streets to hunt for the fossils of long-dead fish. Our homes crawl up the jagged rock walls of the canyon, the muddy hovels measure one deep but many high; the children must learn to climb to their neighbors before they may wander the village, and whey they are older they will carry their elders on their backs as they climb. They must also learn to never venture beyond the rocks.
There are two gates, sunk deep into the loam. They open once a year, and those who pass through them will never return. Some pass through to die, others to be exiled, but most leave with the Fossil in two of their hands.
When I came of age to climb the muddy hovels and carry my elders on my back, I was not given work to heap mud upon the canyon walls, nor to put up the nets that trap the birds, nor to learn wise and healing words. My name was pressed onto a clay coin and placed into a vessel, along with many others, by the four hands of a wise woman. With three hands she carried the vessel to the highest hovel and dropped it into the street. All the coins are shattered but mine and those of four neighbors. The coins are returned to a new vessel and dropped again, and only mine remains whole. That evening I take my place in line before the elders and am allowed first helping of the birds caught in the nets. I permit myself two thrushes, their meat warm and bloody.
That night the chitin that gives me shape is pried apart. The sound is a wet, thunderous snap, as though I was the thrush and the knife was my teeth. Many hands push aside my innards so they may cut something, but I do not understand what. As a child I heard the rattles of pain echo off the many mud hovels on the first night of spring, and now they are my own.
In the morning I understand what they cut: I can see, I can speak, I can hear the birds as they break their wings in the nets, but something else is gone. Five people who say they are my family have come to see me past the gates, but I do not know them, because I cannot smell them.
The wise woman places a fossil in two of my hands, and tells me that with the nerve-that-binds severed, I will speak to the spirits of the dead river. I will pass through the gates, to the place where those who left before me live, and spend my life in devotion to the spirits, so that the water does not return to drown us.
With the fossil to tell me apart from the dying and exiled, I leave and follow the canyon as it curves towards where the sun rises from the earth.
By the moonlight I see the remains of those who came before, the carapaces, deformed by disease or marked as unfit, laying like rocks among grass and flowers. Some I cover with soil to respect them, but others I read the words-of-exile carved into chitin, and I do not touch.
The days of travel reach two more than the number of eyes I have to see; I wish that the legs I have to carry myself number as many as the arms I have to carry others, as the two I have grow weary. The loam has turned wet and the canyon walls green, but I have seen neither shrine nor temple nor hovel as the wise woman has told. I see only the bodies of the deformed and exiled, growing more numerous. In desperation I look closer: they all carry fossils in their hands.
There are two gates, sunk deep into the loam. They open once a year, and those who pass through them will never return. Some pass through to die, others to be exiled, but most leave with the Fossil in two of their hands.
When I came of age to climb the muddy hovels and carry my elders on my back, I was not given work to heap mud upon the canyon walls, nor to put up the nets that trap the birds, nor to learn wise and healing words. My name was pressed onto a clay coin and placed into a vessel, along with many others, by the four hands of a wise woman. With three hands she carried the vessel to the highest hovel and dropped it into the street. All the coins are shattered but mine and those of four neighbors. The coins are returned to a new vessel and dropped again, and only mine remains whole. That evening I take my place in line before the elders and am allowed first helping of the birds caught in the nets. I permit myself two thrushes, their meat warm and bloody.
That night the chitin that gives me shape is pried apart. The sound is a wet, thunderous snap, as though I was the thrush and the knife was my teeth. Many hands push aside my innards so they may cut something, but I do not understand what. As a child I heard the rattles of pain echo off the many mud hovels on the first night of spring, and now they are my own.
In the morning I understand what they cut: I can see, I can speak, I can hear the birds as they break their wings in the nets, but something else is gone. Five people who say they are my family have come to see me past the gates, but I do not know them, because I cannot smell them.
The wise woman places a fossil in two of my hands, and tells me that with the nerve-that-binds severed, I will speak to the spirits of the dead river. I will pass through the gates, to the place where those who left before me live, and spend my life in devotion to the spirits, so that the water does not return to drown us.
With the fossil to tell me apart from the dying and exiled, I leave and follow the canyon as it curves towards where the sun rises from the earth.
By the moonlight I see the remains of those who came before, the carapaces, deformed by disease or marked as unfit, laying like rocks among grass and flowers. Some I cover with soil to respect them, but others I read the words-of-exile carved into chitin, and I do not touch.
The days of travel reach two more than the number of eyes I have to see; I wish that the legs I have to carry myself number as many as the arms I have to carry others, as the two I have grow weary. The loam has turned wet and the canyon walls green, but I have seen neither shrine nor temple nor hovel as the wise woman has told. I see only the bodies of the deformed and exiled, growing more numerous. In desperation I look closer: they all carry fossils in their hands.