The Mere Tide P62
In her bed in the fastness of the labyrinth the child was given two glasses of water to drink and was laid down beside by her who stroked her weary head. Dachni mute in the arms. The pilot pressed their lips together and frigid talons slid up her belly to her breastbone.
Release thy breath.
The words were in her mouth neither conscience nor nuisance.
She let go her breath.
Anaya inhaled through the vents in her sides and seasoned the air with her lungs and let the breath pass into the child. A combed credo to receive. Cold to sorrow bones. Sorrow in the delicate inflect of the chords small words to seat in her bosom. Their lips parted.
Let it out.
And when she respired Anaya savored the breath in her lungs as a preciousness a long moment ere acquitting it to the world. Rhythmic flow. Blue flow. Life’s relay. Her arms wrapped slowly round the pilot and in all its sorrowing it was not only a kiss. And could another through the undertaking of the labor of her heart suspend this labor for a lullaby.
After a long while she slept. When she woke again the pilot was still passing her breath to her and to know to be so vigiled made her cry.
And you will find the same friend elsewhere though he answer to a different name, dwell in a different country, jest in another tongue, there is the common manner of the face in which all are versant. Of evil men and women vile fear not, even if they hold you, wreathed Caesar once penned who after the bonetaker laid him low and forfeited an empire that all loss is equal should you live a thousand terms or perish in the womb. Fear neither that evil men live beyond you or are triumphant for nothing can be fixed by breaking.
The cold damp contact of a kiss graced the child’s cheek. She looked at Anaya.
Can I hold you?
Dachni was already in her arms but she nodded.
Anaya pulled her to her breast.
A morning showering I espied in the patterns splotching upon the cassiterite. In the light the drops exploding seemed winks of star birth, the lamp limning the rings that in their numbers propagated a thousand ascending surfs of clouds or tides that with vision’s drift subsided towards the drain down which tide cloud eyeblink ring all vanished and yet without exhaustion of form for until the cessation of the water this void was perpetually filling and how like life bursting bright in the great slurring stream is this swirling into the maw of that ultimate sink that nevertheless is powerless against life for it is only an emptiness not the teeming source from which life proceeds.
She traced around the ungerminated hilum of a nipple. And this beautiful ring is you. How inadequate are ourselves in the expression of beauty but what travesty then if I could compass you with a word and yet like each heaving tide of those same aggregated rings this lament is supplanted for also how wonderful it is our recognition of the beautiful things and should we longer remain newer patterns would emerge and even after the conclusion of the shower will for when the water is cut off there will remain puddles sadly slowly evaporating on the canvas of life alone and denied the solace of the participating in the great ruckus of the dying tides. And were I to attach a rider to this tale I would condemn it pride the desire to arrogate all the rampant meaning of the world or to withhold it for everything is as complex as this showerfall and us drainbound souls seems watching aught in our transient awe be content to tender what meaning we can, however trite or profound, and let our fellows prove the rest.
But the stone was lodged.
A blue steel morning rained them. They watched the rain. The water overcame the barricades and spread towards the chancel black in the darkness over the face of Michael. Many days there will be rain. The water lapped at the altar steps. New leafage upturned like delicate cups twirled in the water. Little twig arks for bugs. A loon’s nest. Small piping hatchlings among the remains of their eggs.
Anaya lifted it out of the water. What are you all doing out here? She turned to the child. They must have been blown out of their tree. Its strange too. They dont nest this far south. Do you want to see?
Dachni didnt want to see.
Well we cant leave them adrift.
Dachni turned and plucked a scrawny wetdowned piper out the nest and held its head under the water.
Anaya slapped her hand away and restored the hatchling to its nest. It sputtered and cried weakly. Anaya glared at her. Whats wrong with you? She rose and went away and came back with spiked tea and they blew into their mugs. Later still she set off into the rain on a mission more obscure and when she had gone from sight Dachni got up. She no longer had the cane. She took the stairs up to the ambulatory and shuffled along until she came to the belltower shaft. A staircase rose at right angles. She ascended to the belfry. An enormous bell hung from the yoke. Phosphor bronze. She shoved the muffled clapper against the bell lip in a sad toll of note over the world. She climbed over the short wall onto the roof. The dozens of pinnacles installed along the flank of the basilica towered over her crowned by saints and angels in cloaks of rain. But these were gone ages past and who are the saints in senectitude to be canonized in this age? What angels of terror with what scrolls and trumpet tongues and is it the horsemen deserted or the horsemen past? Faileth even them now. Slate shingles slippery underfoot angled steep and some missing so that the underlayment was visible. A gray sordid rag of country spread before her as though it had sopped up the scoria of true creation and trashed. She could see Matraple beyond the woods. The ever smaller units of its square constituency. She unwrapped her arm of gauze and looked at the triad of synclinal knife tracks meandering down her arm with their hints of vindictiveness and pleasure of self-pity. Three claymores wrist to elbow. Pale in their splitting and slightly translucent at the rims. She moved slowly down the roof to the promenade. As she closed upon it she saw the pilot below who had already seen her.
Dachni!
Anaya was coming back from the carport and she threw the suitcase she was carrying into the muck.
Dachni mounted the balustrade and sat down.
Anaya ran to the wall. Between the buttresses she seemed small and the child was taken aback to see her so dwarfed.
Dachni!
The buttresses divided from their piers and arced over the glass roof of the aisle to the level of her vantage. She peered down the lesene envisioning herself below. Would she be broken? Would she be distraught? Would it hurt. All her life was flowing through her now. Papa said Alessa, she said.
Alessa! shouted the pilot. Alessa what are you doing? Alessa go back inside.
Alessa stepped to the railing looked forlornly down. Her head shaking, cool rain salt by sorrow.
What happened? Tell me what happened.
Alessa shook her head slowly and whispered: No.
Go inside. Ill meet you inside.
No.
The pilot started towards the front of the basilica but before she had taken two steps she came back. Dachni!
For a long while she didnt say anything.
Ill come up. Ok Ill come to you. Just stay where you are.
She looked at the buttress. A terrace of stonework with a mausoleum or shrine to a dead adherent of the faith at each landing. She started up. Dachni stood again and then she knelt teetering on the balustrade. She held out her arms as if to take flight and she felt the cutting tear in her arm and her arm began to bleed and she lost her balance and grabbed the rail. She blinked at the blood. The vertigo had not been there before but now she felt a dizzying weariness. She stood again and sat down. She couldnt see the pilot below. And then she could as she surmounted the gabled roof of a shrine. When she reached that part of the buttress that flew off she walked through a crowd of petrified martyrs and hopped the balustrade.
Ok, she said. Im here.
Youre there, agreed the child.
The pilot took a step towards her. She held out her hand. The child blinked water out of her eyes.
Take my hand.
Dachni raised her hips and slid off the rail. A colder air enveloped her. The falling rain slowed to suspension. The drops in parallel one to another. The same steady velocity. Same slight kilter. Then they rushed past and fell far below. It felt like her scalp was lifting from her skull. She slammed against the wall and cried out in pain and then the pilot was hauling her up and holding her tight enough to pressed the breath from her lungs. The pilot was yammering frantically in aienee. It was: Varshokt hoi mikan fra paetri ikinii sae ko tae’fan li-kiaii. And on and on and in tears.
