Jay Lake - Green

I was quite taken with the contrast between this strange story and the other, which I found a month or so later, the latter a woman’s view of what were obviously the same events. Mistress Danae could not tell me if these were true history or teaching stories, but as she said, did it matter? She also told me that I should have a theology Mistress, but that was never in the Factor’s plans, and so she gave me more books to read that discussed the strengths and failings of the gods.

For my part, I learned something from both these tales.

The Mothers ’ Tale

Once when the world was new, Mother Mooneyes ruled the skies as first among the titanics. Father Sunbones had not yet woken to his place at her right hand as consort, but rather slept endlessly on a bed of burning sand beneath her ivory-walled halls. Mother Mooneyes sometimes went to him when she rested from her labors in the heavens. Even in his sleep, she could draw forth Father Sunbones’ seed to make her children. Mother Mooneyes’ favored daughter was Desire. Desire was possessed of a beauty which challenged even that of her mother. Desire’s hair was the gold of summer wheat and the brown of autumn leaves and the black of winter ice and the palest rose blush of spring all at once. Her skin shone with the luster of starlight and the richness of cream. Her lips were more sweet than honey with the heady fullness of wine. Every portion of Desire mirrored the perfection of the morning of the world. Now it happened that Mother Mooneyes kept a garden in the lands around her ivory halls. This garden held all the promise of the world to come, ripening on vine and root and tree. To the east, cattle lowed and snuffled within their cradles of soil. Other beasts of the field were clustered around them, each with its own stalk and stem. To the north were the cold creatures and those on the wing, which partake of the world without fur or fang or thinking. To the south were the hot animals, those that would hunt and feast on the flesh of others once they stalked beneath the bright regard of Father Sunbones. Mother Mooneyes knew that to harvest the garden, she would have to wake her consort. Like all men, Father Sunbones would take counsel from his loins as much as from his thoughts. She held that dread day in abeyance as long as possible. In the west of the garden was the plot where the souled ones grew. Each lay at sleeping ease upon a bed of soft leaves. Each was watered and cleaned by a sweet spring. These were Mother Mooneyes’ special care, that the world would be populous and happy. There were men there in all their colors and shapes-aelfkin and dwerrowkin; nixie, pixie, and sprite; giant and troll-all the manifold imaginings of Mother Mooneyes’ busy hands in the long shadows of the morning of the world. Just as men had their sibs, so did Mother Mooneyes’ children. Desire sported with Love and Understanding, the twins Truth and Mercy, Justice, Obedience, and all her sisters. Outside their windows along the lawns of the ivory halls, their brothers wrestled and fought and hunted each other with arrows tipped with sky-iron. Watching the boys at their play, Desire had formed a lust for her brother Time. He was a likely lad, robust with all the years of the world on his broad shoulders. One day when Mother Mooneyes was about her travels in the heavens, Desire invited Time into her chambers. “Brother, come, I have a game to show you,” she said as they met upon the western steps. Desire licked her lips so that Time might not mistake her intent. “Is it a manly game?” he asked, for while men are ruled by their loins, those loins have two small brains each no larger than an olive and thus do not think well. Desire touched her breast and smiled. “The manliest of all.” Surely he could not misunderstand. “Then I shall invite my brothers!” Time declared. He turned to spread the word. Desire grasped his arm and pulled him close, as she set her other hand upon his sex. “A private game of man and woman,” she whispered in his ear. At last Time came to understand what she wanted of him. He followed Desire to her chambers, but was so eager in his lust that he pushed aside both her shift and her needs with a sweep of his hand and spent himself in moments of careless thrusting. She cast him from her chamber with hard words, chasing her brother out to the western steps. There he fled laughing. Desire’s breasts were heavy with need, and her loins were hot with the quick touch of her brother Time. She took herself into the west of the garden, where the souled ones were couched in their rest, and there she lay with them one by one, male and female alike, to slake her appetites. Each smiled in their sleep as she quickened their sex. Each murmured their thanks and slipped into the pleasant dreams of lust to which we all are heir. Finally Desire returned to the ivory halls. Though filled with seed and the scent of all the souled ones of the garden, her loins still quivered. She went beneath the earth to her father’s bed of burning sand and there took the guise of her mother. Desire rode him harder than any mortal man could bear, making her use of his godly strength, so that Father Sunbones woke fully in the midst of their coupling. Thinking he saw his wife, Father Sunbones drew Desire closer and made her body his toy in all the ways that a woman can be used. Mother Mooneyes came home to find much moaning in the west end of the garden, and giggling among her sons. She stalked quickly into her house, where Father Sunbones’ radiance already painted the walls with dawn’s orange glow. She found Desire coupled with Father Sunbones and in her wrath banished her daughter to her chambers for a year and day. Then Mother Mooneyes lay with Father Sunbones herself, to see if she could coax him back to sleep. It was too late. Desire had woken the world. Men stirred in their lust, and Father Sunbones rose from his bed aflame with heat and leapt to the skies. Much that is ill in this world comes from those early awakenings, but perhaps the good also. Desire’s daughters were born to her in her chambers, some for each of the races of the souled ones. She taught them all she knew-the lists of who had grown in the garden, the names and powers of her brothers and sisters, the constancy of Mother Mooneyes in her unvarying cycles-and sent them into the world to watch over the women of the souled races, whom she had mistakenly betrayed in the innocence of her lust. Ever after, the goddesses of women made it their business to shelter females from the predations of men and turn male urges to their advantage. The marriage bond, when wrought well, can bind a man to a woman’s bed. A coin spent for an hour’s fancy can at the least sap his anger away. The choice to lie only in the company of other women is another comfort and safety. Always these goddesses watch over their shoulders, for there is ever an angry man or his god at the window. And so the temples of women have thick walls and heavy doors.

Books and cooking carried me through the winter, but the following spring, the Dancing Mistress found a much better way to occupy my time. Our nighttime runs around the courtyard had long since grown sure-footed and stretched sometimes into hours. She also had me climbing the pomegranate tree for time, to see how fast I could go and how much I could better my previous records. We danced along a low wooden bar she had brought into the practice room, along lines of cobbles in the courtyard, up and down the stairs until Mistress Tirelle shouted for us to stop ruining her house.

All of that was great fun, and took energy from me almost as fast as it gave back more. But one night she came with a leather satchel over her shoulder.

“Here,” she said as we stood behind the tree, away from the sight of the Pomegranate Court itself.

I opened the satchel. Inside were several bundles of dark cloth.