Elizabeth Hand - Waking the Moon

“Fire—”

I covered my head, my palms scorched and the reek of singed hair filling my nostrils.

“Sweeney! Are you okay?” Annie shook me. “Sweeney!”

I bit my lip and nodded. “Can you still run, Annie?”

A grin broke through her ash-streaked face. “Hell,” she shouted, “if I can’t run now —” She raised her arms protectively as another shadow raced across us.

We ran, zigzagging among the trees, pursued by that yelping horde. Angels or demons, furies or divine escort, I never knew. Whether they were sent by the Benandanti to protect us, or by Angelica to hunt us, they followed Annie and me to the very foot of the Shrine. Only then did their whooping cries diminish. In twos and threes they flew to the uppermost rim of the Shrine and landed, wings spread, until the dome was ringed with them.

Beneath that watchful army Annie and I hesitated. Overhead storm clouds boiled. The sickle moon was a hooded eye within the tumult. Before us the great steps led up to the Shrine, the rosy sandstone given a lurid sheen by the storm. Dust eddied like smoke where the wind garnered it. I glanced to make sure Annie was beside me, and began to climb.

Nothing stopped our ascent; nothing was there to bar our way inside. The wind’s roar seemed muted there, though its power was evident: a fallen column, a large concrete urn toppled and crushed like an acorn. Bitter smoke hung everywhere, and there was the funereal musk of another odor, myrrh and sandalwood incense.

“Look,” whispered Annie.

Where the statues of the three archangels had once stood, there was now a single huge marble image, filigreed with smoke and flame. A young woman with huge staring eyes, her torso draped in heavy robes that parted to expose her chest. Only where her breasts should have been, there were mounded rows upon rows of teats, dozens of breasts like a dog’s or sow’s, like rows of monstrous eyes staring down upon us.

I tried to summon some thin veil of hope to cloak me when I walked through those doors. Nothing came. Only the thought of Dylan bore me on—but it was a distant and curiously detached thought, like the remnant of a dream quickly fading. My scalp ached dully, my mouth felt dry and chalky.

“Let’s go.” I pushed against the door, and we entered the Shrine.

The wind died. The ornate windows admitted no light from outside, and a pervasive grey haze clouded the air. Marble vessels that had once held holy water were now filled with glowing chunks of charcoal, from which rose thin columns of scented smoke. Blossoms carpeted the marble floor: crushed narcissus and purple hyacinth, tiny white rosebuds, anemones and cyclamen, wilted poppies and jonquils. There were figs, too, their black hearts bursting with pink juice; and small hard apples, and pomegranates big as gourds, their rinds cut away to reveal the moist seeds within like so many wine-stained teeth. And ears of corn no bigger than my hand, and barley sheaves and maize; clusters of grapes that oozed red and black where we trod upon them, and the swollen knobs of opium poppies whose blooms were spent. Everywhere we looked there were flowers and fruit wreathed in that dreamy haze.

I turned and saw Annie staring transfixed at a pile of grain.

“Look,” she breathed. She reached to touch a single white kernel like a glistening pearl. “It’s so—so perfect.”

The mounded grain shimmered like fairy fruit. With an effort I turned away.

“Come on, Annie. We can’t stay here.”

I pulled her after me. She came reluctantly, glancing back as we walked from the bay into the nave of the Shrine.

“Oh,” I gasped, and stopped.

All around us there were stones. Megaliths, I thought at first, or boulders; but then I saw that they were not stones at all. They were immense carven idols—the most ancient and holy of icons made huge and manifest, in anticipation of the epiphany that was to come. A bulbous-shaped woman who might have been molded of honey, so bedewed with moisture was she—eyeless, mouthless, her hands placed protectively over a swollen belly that flowed into huge jutting buttocks and plinthlike thighs. Behind her stretched rows of tall white figures like alabaster blades, their breasts mere jots upon their torsos, a knife-slit of vulva between their marble legs. There were simple basalt columns and stalactites, pregnant women carved of green serpentine and shining onyx; ivory figures twenty thousand years old, their smooth faces scrolled with indentations and meanders, their hair etched into elaborate braids and knots. Women with the curved beaks of ibises and women with the heads of bees; snake-women, bear-women, women bearing tusks and tails. Their necks were hung with ropes of blossoms, their mouths smeared with honey and wine. Bees crawled across their cheeks and nested in their parted thighs. On the floor the matted petals shivered as serpents made their way through the blossoms. The air steamed, as though the vegetation was already decaying. Sweat streamed down my body and soaked my shirt and bare legs. Mingled with the heady incense of sandalwood and myrrh was another smell, pungent and sweet and malty. Beer, and the unmistakable odor of crushed coriander seed, the fragrance of sandalwood and oranges.

As we approached the altar the stone figures gave way to forms of gold and silver and bronze. Queens in chariots borne by griffins, tiny girls cast in gold, with eyes of lapis lazuli and feathered crowns; a statuette of a monarch with her head thrown back, flanked by crouching lions. A goddess upon a mountaintop looking out to sea. Drowsy mothers nursing their young. A marble madonna holding the broken body of her son; the painted plaster image of a woman crowned with the moon and seven stars, a serpent coiled protectively about her ankle. Faint music sounded from the transepts. Flutes and tabors, a jangling sistrum.

And suddenly I was in that hot classroom again—the smells of chalk and wood polish, a faunlike man dancing across the floor with sistrum raised as a boy recited—

An Egyptian instrument used in the worship of Isis. Fourth Dynasty, I believe…

I started to fall, but Annie caught me.

“I’m okay,” I said hoarsely. “Just dizzy…”

Chanting voices joined with the sound of bones and flutes. Women’s voices—

And now with them chimed the sweet piercing tones of boys or castrati —

High overhead the vaulted dome arched, like a hand cupped above us. I knew its mosaic of semiprecious stones as well as I knew the lines of my palm: the sad somber face of Christ, haloed with chips of gold and jade, hands raised to display the stigmata.

That image was gone. Instead there was the sleeping visage of Othiym—her heavy-lidded eyes, her upturned mouth like the moon’s spar. Within the streaming radiance of her hair a silver crescent was netted. The smell of sandalwood grew overpowering, the sweet odor of oranges so strong my mouth watered.

But I could not tear my eyes from the dreaming goddess. As I stared I realized this was no mosaic, no archaic fresco painted upon a crumbling facade. This was Othiym, and that was the Moon she held. Behind her I could glimpse the smoking towers and edifices of the city, the long shimmering stretch of turbid water that was the Potomac. As I stared the moon began to grow, swelling like a milky bubble that would burst and shower us all with bitter rain.