Read Online Onion Songs by Steve Rasnic Tem - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Steve Rasnic Tem
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other nipple one by one, feeding them increasingly large doses of the Archetype in her milk. They go to her nipple willingly, even eagerly. I attempt to tell them that this is ill-advised, but my mouth is full. They turn their heads slightly and look at me as they feed, trying to smile at me without letting go of the nipple. Why?
Because I am the Baby. And like the rest of my Family, I am large.
THE HUNTER HOME FROM THE HILL
Joseph did nothing but dream, until the world gave him the gift of eyes.
The eyes had been the easiest to catch: they’d simply rolled out of the darkness into his waiting sockets and they’d been unable to budge after that. Trapped, they’d opened and blinked, and filled his mind with frantic pictures of the world, at least the pictures the world wanted Joseph to see.
At first he hadn ’t realized it had happened. Since dreams were all he’d ever known he’d assumed that the incident of catching the eyes had been a dream as well. Any future encounters with the many beasts of the world, he knew, would not come as easily.
With his new eyes Joseph gave the world back the same gift it had given him: pictures of the world. The eyes turned the abstractions of vibration and motion into one still picture. In his head Joseph could feel the world pausing for relief. Joseph sat—he could do nothing else as he had no legs—and the world sat with him, and together they were in peace.
But gradually new things began to appear on the world ’s horizon, or at least things Joseph had never seen before. And his desire to bring these things closer became so great that eventually Joseph grew arms and legs. He spent his days chasing after the other things of the world, reaching out to them, with a disturbing desire to embrace them and pull them back down inside himself, but he knew that somehow those were the world’s desires and not his own. He was just another thing of this world. At night when he hid from the darkness this perception brought him many troubling dreams. He dreamed of the time before he had arms or legs, or the world’s gift of eyes, the time when he did nothing else but dream the world. In that long ago time he had never anticipated darkness to be a problem.
Chasing the other things of the world created in Joseph an appetite he had never imagined possible. He realized this new hunger was akin to that desire of his—the world’s desire—for embrace and reabsorption. Before, his appetite had been a small thing, a casual taking in of leaves, fluids, and miscellaneous edible debris. But now the world had created such an emptiness within him that the thought of filling it with whole, living things—things which moved and watched and yammered just as he did—was his constant obsession. He began to dream of filling himself with all the things of the world, until he was as large and complete as the world itself.
After years of chasing the other things of the world, Joseph came to know their habits very well. They breathed , much like himself. He had always thought this breathing to be significant, one way, perhaps, in which the world passed around the essence of itself. Further study led him to conclude that this breath was a kind of message, and that all things, himself included, were messengers.
Joseph spent his life hunting down these animal messengers, consuming them, wearing them, using whatever he could of their bodies. And each time he caught or killed one he would meditate, seeking the particular message he knew the animal must be carrying from the world for him. He would think on the message when he skinned or consumed the animal, when he sharpened the animal’s bones, and when he used the tools he made from these bones.
And so it was, as an old man running into the end of his life as if into a fireless cave, that Joseph first encountered the dragon.
The dragon himself lived in a cave at the center of the world. Joseph had never seen this cave; his dreams simply told him
Because I am the Baby. And like the rest of my Family, I am large.
THE HUNTER HOME FROM THE HILL
Joseph did nothing but dream, until the world gave him the gift of eyes.
The eyes had been the easiest to catch: they’d simply rolled out of the darkness into his waiting sockets and they’d been unable to budge after that. Trapped, they’d opened and blinked, and filled his mind with frantic pictures of the world, at least the pictures the world wanted Joseph to see.
At first he hadn ’t realized it had happened. Since dreams were all he’d ever known he’d assumed that the incident of catching the eyes had been a dream as well. Any future encounters with the many beasts of the world, he knew, would not come as easily.
With his new eyes Joseph gave the world back the same gift it had given him: pictures of the world. The eyes turned the abstractions of vibration and motion into one still picture. In his head Joseph could feel the world pausing for relief. Joseph sat—he could do nothing else as he had no legs—and the world sat with him, and together they were in peace.
But gradually new things began to appear on the world ’s horizon, or at least things Joseph had never seen before. And his desire to bring these things closer became so great that eventually Joseph grew arms and legs. He spent his days chasing after the other things of the world, reaching out to them, with a disturbing desire to embrace them and pull them back down inside himself, but he knew that somehow those were the world’s desires and not his own. He was just another thing of this world. At night when he hid from the darkness this perception brought him many troubling dreams. He dreamed of the time before he had arms or legs, or the world’s gift of eyes, the time when he did nothing else but dream the world. In that long ago time he had never anticipated darkness to be a problem.
Chasing the other things of the world created in Joseph an appetite he had never imagined possible. He realized this new hunger was akin to that desire of his—the world’s desire—for embrace and reabsorption. Before, his appetite had been a small thing, a casual taking in of leaves, fluids, and miscellaneous edible debris. But now the world had created such an emptiness within him that the thought of filling it with whole, living things—things which moved and watched and yammered just as he did—was his constant obsession. He began to dream of filling himself with all the things of the world, until he was as large and complete as the world itself.
After years of chasing the other things of the world, Joseph came to know their habits very well. They breathed , much like himself. He had always thought this breathing to be significant, one way, perhaps, in which the world passed around the essence of itself. Further study led him to conclude that this breath was a kind of message, and that all things, himself included, were messengers.
Joseph spent his life hunting down these animal messengers, consuming them, wearing them, using whatever he could of their bodies. And each time he caught or killed one he would meditate, seeking the particular message he knew the animal must be carrying from the world for him. He would think on the message when he skinned or consumed the animal, when he sharpened the animal’s bones, and when he used the tools he made from these bones.
And so it was, as an old man running into the end of his life as if into a fireless cave, that Joseph first encountered the dragon.
The dragon himself lived in a cave at the center of the world. Joseph had never seen this cave; his dreams simply told him
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