Weaveworld

by Clive Barker

Nothing ever begins. There is no first moment; no single word or place from which this or any other story springs. The threads can always be traced back to some earlier tale, and to the tales that preceded that; though as the narrator’s voice recedes, the connections will seem to grow more tenuous, for each age will want the tale told as if it were of its own making.

He approaches the door of the pigeon loft, opens it, and at that moment — for want of a better — this story takes wing.

Bored with his balanced diet of maize and maple peas, tired of the pecking order of the loft and the predictability of each day — the bird had wanted out; wanted up and away. A day of high life; of food that had to be chased a little, and tasted all the better for that; of the companionship of wild things.

The face was wide, the features upon it almost too expressive, like those of an actor who’d made a career of crowd-pleasers, and grown expert in cheap effects.

Though their fellows were at present too excited by this ritual to take note of the pets in their midst, they would not be so indifferent when the circling spell no longer bound them. They would be cruel and quick. They’d fall on the canaries and the budgerigars and peck out their eyes, killing them for the crime of being tamed.

How fine it would be to walk there, he thought, with so much variety pressed into so little space, not knowing whether turning the next corner would bring ice or fire. Such complexity was beyond the wit of a cartographer.

“Say something …” one of them demanded, “… if it’s only goodbye.”

All, in sum, that he could be certain of was his bruising. That, and the fact that though he was standing no more than two miles from his father’s house, in the city in which he’d spent his entire life, he felt as homesick as a lost child.

Furnaces, after all, grew cold if left unstoked. Even stars went out after a millennium. But the lust of Cuckoos, like so much else about that species, defied all the rules. The less it was fed, the hotter it became.

Part of him badly wanted to talk, to spill everything to somebody (Brendan, even) and see what they made of it. But another part said: be quiet, be careful. Wonderland doesn’t come to those who blab about it, only to those who keep their silence, and wail.

He watched her from the window, counting her steps until she turned the corner. Then, with his lover out of sight, he went in search of his heart’s desire.

Lilia sighed. “Why me?” she said, still shaking. “Why should I have to tell it?” “Because you’re the best liar,” Jerichau replied, with a tight smile. “You can make it true.”

“Believe nothing,” Apolline advised. “This woman wouldn’t know the truth if it fucked her.”

“We had them from the beginning. Thought nothing of it. At least not until we came into the Kingdom. Then we realized that your kind like to make laws. Like to decree what’s what, and whether it’s good or not. And the world, being a loving thing, and not wishing to disappoint you or distress you, indulges you. Behaves as though your doctrines are in some way absolute.”

The world behaves the way the Cuckoos choose to describe it. Out of courtesy.

“Did you ever know the poet?” he asked. “No,” said Cal. “He was dead before I was born.” “Who can call a man dead whose words still hush us and whose sentiments move?” Mr. Lo replied.

Godhood called, and he went, fleet-footed, to worship at his own altar.