amen.
A small creature darts out, startled by my footfall. Anticipating his direction I throw myself bodily forward – and yes, my judgement is true for I feel the small, warm body crushed beneath me.
I sit up carefully and observe that it is a stone rodent, the kind with tall ears and thighs like pistons. Quickly I wring the last of the life out of him, and his head slumps heavily from his broken neck. I cut into the skin with Pearl’s knife and with a strong tug I pull the whole furry sheath back to expose the pink flesh, all shiny, and the striations of white fat; I slit his belly open, pulling out the organs and taking care not to tear the intestines with their burden of filth.
I consider taking the time to build a fire to cook him here and now, but I do not have the patience to endure further rumblings in my gut while I painstakingly coax fire from stone and tinder. Thus, I eat the little heart for the modest measure of valour that is in it, and the liver for its rich blood. I feel immediately stronger, but now, with the taste of iron and salt in my mouth, my thirst is unbearable. But no – not so – for I must bear it. I wrap the remains of the small corpse for later in a strip of fabric torn from my dressless, and continue to walk in the direction I hope will eventually lead me to Hagovel, the destination outlined in the map beneath the Standard of the Fool.
I stop to rest a couple of hours later and cook my small meal. I allow myself time for a brief nap, awaking in the evening with my thirst now a mortal agony. The cruel moon glares down with baleful malice, and I curse her, the sow-faced Lili, monster daughter of Lilith, first (wo)Man and original criminal for whose sinful demonstration of waywardness all girlies must now suffer grief and woe, now and forever, alive-alive-oh amen. Though my feet bleed, I continue on my way in the cool of the night until, towards dawn, with the tired moonlight seeping through the dirty scrambled-egg clouds, my energy begins to wane. My head is light, my feet heavy. I stumble a little over stones and bracken and scrub. A soft, penetrating rain begins to fall, chilling my skin, pasting my hair across my face. I raise my face and open my mouth to the delicious moisture. But once my thirst is quenched, new trials await me.
The landscape has become ill-defined, foully female in its featurelessness, grey rain blurring into grey pre-dawn light, marsh gas stinking all sulfurous and greenish and wavering in the still air and yes, I am fearful of these lights now that I am alone. How will I be able to tell the difference between a marsh-light and a fey-light? How will I know if some stealthy stalker, an emissary of the Hag, is mere inches from me, ready to drain the life from me that she might live on, a warped semblance of (wo)Mankind? Keep your head low, I tell myself. The way leads ever downwards now, and the land is less stony; there are trees now, thin, gaunt, writhy in the unreliable light refracted by rain, rain, rain; they are anchored by twisted roots into black mud, and I am now walking by the banks of a sluggish river pocked with the fat drops of the slow, insistent rain. I recognise this country. It is a dangerous place filled with fey humours, certainly riddled with the spores of Lilith. It is the place we came to before, years back, with MaOblat on that excursion to where the orchids grow, where Pearl reached out her hand to touch … My shoes are waterlogged and my garments stick to my body like a second, ill-fitting skin, freezing me to the marrow of my bones. I stumble on, teeth chattering in my skull, and after a time I feel as if I too am losing definition, becoming blurred and vague in body and in mind both. This is surely the effect of the evil presences as yet invisible, and I pray hard that they will remain so. Indeed, the effort of traversing this place alone, without the support of the sorority, is wearing me down, so that by daybreak I feel as if I might dissolve completely and become another part of this landscape. The ground underfoot is swampy, spongy, and I too am damp and soft. I am the swamp. I’ve got frogs. And crocodiles. The sky reflected in my water is yellow as sulfur.
As I walk, to comfort myself I recite the Fourth Tenet from the Way of (wo)Man: ‘Gonna Take up My Burden, Far From the Riverside’.
though I walk through damp val-leys
oo-zing with lilith spores
ten-thousand filthy whores
who spurn the sacred cause
gonna think on
the Scep-tre
the Rod pro-tect-eth me.
gonna take up the bur-den
far from the riverside
far from the salt-steeped tide
where fey lil’im reside.
gonna cut out my e-go
far from the ri-ver-side
gonna take up the bur-den
far from the riverside
far from unhallow’d sites
all rank and bloody tides.
gonna serve with decor-um
with all so-ro-ri-ty
gonna hold up the Scep-tre
prayerful humility
pious docility
uphold virility
gonna o-pen my bo-dy
to all Frat-ern-ity.
gonna lay down my e-go
beneath the holy Son
draw in his sacred cum
as servant of the Son
gonna hold to
the Scep-tre
in exalt-a-tion.
for I’m but a ves-sel
to hold the holy Seeds
to pleasure all his needs
down on my hands and knees
gonna draw
on that Sceptre
submission doth make free.
At the end of this long day I find myself by a broad and deep and very ancient crater filled with the blackened and rotten remnants from before the Liberation, when the founders of our Perfect State defeated the last of the Agnostics, impenitent transgressors as sinful as those of ancient Sodorra. Stories are still told of the Great Muster, when the artifacts of dissolution were collected from the houses of the butchered enemy and interred in such landfills. All night long our Men had overseen the collection of products of their grandiose technology, their pictures, books and clothing. And now, did I need any evidence of our righteousness and the corruption of those who populate the Lands of Unrule beyond the forest, I have only to gaze into the pit.
It is possible to identify charred remains of compacted pages of their idolatrous texts, twisted metal and melted plastic shells of their vainglorious devices of entertainment and communication and information. Then the blasphemous thought occurs to me that, if indeed a (wo)Man could earn a soul, inshallaweh, that part of me would suffer for the demonstration of crude curiosity I now feel compelled to enact. Crouching at the lip of the pit I peer in to see what I can see and to take what I
