It is March 18, 1995. The light from the sun does not reach us.
In the dark there is a titan and it does not know its name.
The monster drags Micah down to the basements of Central. He binds him there with leather and metal shackles, under the glare of red and burning eyes. Then he leaves.
The titan moves in the darkness.
It is very weak. It is dying. That is the message Micah intuits from its vibrations in the floor.
“I will tell you of Lia,” says Micah. He is opening a conversation with the darkness.
“I will tell you not of her beginnings,” Micah continues, “but of how Lia was at the end. For while she was strong and wise in life, as she came near to dying, she became weak and confused — as you are now. She knew only that she was tired, frightened, and ashamed, and that she was loved by Amiel. For her children were gone from her, left for distant lands, and her grandchildren too, but her sister had never abandoned her, had never left her side.
“It had been different in their youth, I think. Then Amiel had been the weak one. She had the power to speak truth but not the power to speak lies — I think. And so every word she said tore and wriggled in her throat, scraped it raw and made her bleed from it. She was all but mute and she was eternally beautiful. So in their childhood I think it was Lia who was strong.
“But Lia was mortal, and mortal things grow old, and finally she couldn’t even remember her own name. She had to make Amiel tell her. She had to waste her sister’s power, just to find out little things like ‘you are Lia’ or ‘I am Amiel.’ ‘I love you.’ Or ‘You are my treasure. You are my precious jewel. Your children have gone away to distant lands, but I will protect them, I will guard them, I will guard your line and our families be entwined forever.’
“These things she said to reassure her sister, and the cost of them was blood.”
Micah does not have anything to drink. He does not have anything to eat. He cannot move freely and he is terribly afraid.
The first day passes, and the first night. He can feel the titan’s agony through the floor.
“I’m sure,” Micah says, “that the child who made you loved you. I’m sure she — he? — I’m sure that they won’t blame you for the way the monster is so strong.”
He’d like to think that he is being kind from a native kindness, but he knows better in his heart.
He is afraid that the titan can reach him. He is afraid that it will grow some sort of feeding-maw on a tentacle, or stretch its body like a string, and suck the marrow from his bones to keep from dying. He is afraid that it is free as he is not and that it will somehow hate him, perhaps because it is dying and he, at the moment, is not.
He is crying for the creature, but that does not mean that he is speaking out of kindness. Terror supersedes his sadness every time he thinks that it might not understand his words.
The second day passes, and the second night.
“The promise was twisted,” Micah says, on the third day. He is having trouble speaking. He has a terrible headache and his body feels like it’s being torn apart by knives. He beats his head against the floor to make his headache go away, but except in the moment of each contact, it doesn’t seem to work. “It was twisted, and the monsters came of the twisting of that oath. But Amiel never betrayed it. She loved Lia all her life.”
The third day passes, and the third night; and he can hear the titan, somewhere beneath Central, shudder out its life and die.
Maybe it wasn’t a titan, he supposes. It could have been a different god, or a broken child.
“When the monsters slip and become her children,” he says, “they are as loyal as ever she.”
The sands dripped through the hourglass
And the hour of the wolf closed in at last
And life is sweet and the sun is high
But the flesh and the fire are born to die
On the fourth day the monster visits. Micah doesn’t bother looking up.
“You’re troubling me, Micah,” the monster says.
Micah frowns at this. He mumbles, “Nunh-uh.” It’s not really much of a denial. He can’t seem to find his defiance in the swimming of his head.
It is nevertheless very clear to him that if someone is troubling anyone, it is not Micah who is to blame.
“Liril hasn’t given me a single god since the day that you were born,” the monster says. “It’s like you burnt her out. Like you broke her, simply by existing. That’s why I say you’re a trouble to me. But I’m afraid that if you die here, she’ll be useless to me forever instead of simply hurt.”
Micah considers this. His world wobbles. Finally he grins.
“That won’t happen,” he says. “She’ll be fine.”
His utter powerlessness is freeing. He doesn’t have to cooperate. He doesn’t have to pretend that the monster has found a point of common interest, or deny it for that matter. He doesn’t have to bother lying to the monster, or telling the truth to the monster, or, really, saying anything in particular at all. The monster wins. The monster always wins. In the face of that victory, until the monster explains what it entails, Micah can do anything he wants.
“Micah,” the monster chides.
“Do you want me to say that I don’t want her to die?” Micah says. “I’ll say that. I’ll say that I don’t want her to die. Do you want me to beg? I’ll beg.”
He giggles. He swallows. He chokes. He gags.
For some inexplicable reason, he discovers, he’d had seawater in his mouth.
He vomits, or tries to vomit, on the monster’s floor, but all he can do is spit out a bit of rotten fish.
The monster rises to his feet.
“That’s awful,” he says. “That’s the worst magic power ever.”
It’s not true. It’s not not true. Micah can’t tell what the heck is in the monster’s voice.
Micah hiccups sadly in the dark.
[The Frog and the Thorn – CHAPTER ONE]
March 23, 1995
This is not survivable, Micah thinks. There is no way that it is survivable. He is going to die of thirst and possibly starvation. He is going to die of muscle cramps and of exposure. The malice and suffering in Central above him condenses and drifts downwards like the snow. It forms in the darkness into terrible and awful things.
It fills him with fear. It twists his hallucinations into evil and sadistic forms. It makes every sound a shock.
He dwells amidst the poisoned runoff of Central’s theological and emotional waste.
Something snuffles towards him in the darkness. Possibly it is his imagination. Possibly it is the titan come back to life, or risen most unholy. Possibly it is a herd, gaggle, or flotilla of half-starved rats. Micah thinks that it will eat him, whatever it is. He thinks that it will rip the flesh from his bones, and then the bones from one another, unless the monster wishes that it should not.
Oh that the monster should allow it.
He cannot see any longer. His eyes are crusted . . . shut. He thinks that they are shut. He can barely hear.
There.
Something is very definitely near him. It is not his imagination. It is a cold and bulky presence in the dark. It is tactile to him. Then it is against his mouth. It is pouring liquid into him. It is . . .
It is feeding him.
His body cannot resist it. He is gulping it down. He is swallowing. He is crying, he thinks, because it is good, because his body has wanted so much to drink.
It is thick and cold and almost tasteless. Inasmuch as it has a taste that taste is lime.
When he starts to choke it leaves him. When he can breathe again it comes back.
He thinks of how Kuras — his favorite of the Kings of the Ancient World — was exposed on a hilltop and suckled by a sheepdog, or perhaps a shepherdess. That happened a lot back then. Should this be a sheepdog he would be embarrassed, but he thinks that he could forgive such a small blow to his pride.
It is probably not a sheepdog. That is his conclusion. He tries to open his eyes. He tries to make sense of it. It will not be a sheepdog, but rather some sort of hallucination, or a broken sewer pipe, or even a freakish shepherdess of the deeps.
It is none of these things.
It is if anything a nameless horror. He cannot put words to it. It is round where it is straight and it is changing where it is still and where his eyes fall upon it they make blisters rise from its flesh that surge up, whiten, and pop. It has the front part of a lion and the rear portion of a gazelle, and a ring of questing tendrils about its face; and from the calf of its front leg it is bleeding, and it is the blood of it that he drinks.
He cannot read its emotions.
Perhaps it is profaning him. Perhaps it is violating him. Perhaps it is committing a generosity immeasurable by reason. He cannot tell, any more than he can tell what it is, or why. It is simply there.
He drinks until he can bear no more with drinking.
When he opens his eyes again the thing is gone.
short post on Friday, then Chibi-Ex on Monday, then part II on Wednesday.
