Historical Lovecraft: Tales of Horror Through Time (4 page)

IF ONLY TO TASTE HER AGAIN

E. Catherine Tobler 

T
he winds were blowing low and remained warm when our five boats returned across the wine-dark waters of the Red Sea. It was late in the season – the winds should have begun to cool by then, for it was later than any of us planned, but the Queen of Punt had been exceptionally generous in her welcome of us. The days spent in her kingdom seemed longer than an age, the nights filled with wine, figs and the attention of slim, young boys. The Queen spared us no expense, so that we might return to Djeser-Djeseru with riches none expected; so that she might receive the grand favours of Hatshepsut, the King’s Great Wife, the Lady of the Two Lands.

Our boats came into port with great fanfare. Though it was late into the night, Hatshepsut had roused a great portion of her court to bid us welcome home. Torches burned bright like stars to illuminate a path across the water for us and musicians sounded their rattles and bone clappers the nearer we drew. The oarsmen caught the rhythm and drew us closer to our homeland.

As it would slowly become known, these attendants and musicians had lived in the port for some weeks now, rotating their shifts so that some would be prepared when we appeared. From Punt, there had been little reasonable way to send word when our return was delayed. Did Hatshepsut believe the Queen of Punt had eaten us? She was a beautifully round queen, to be certain, but we had not witnessed such behaviours during our stay with her.

These attendants who welcomed us were weary-eyed. My own brother stood among the musicians and tucked his bone clapper away, to slip his hand around my arm and help me from the boat. The land seemed to rock under my feet, even with his support. He was tall, my brother; I would always remember him as such, even when the horror took him.

He made only one comment as to our late return, but there was no reproach in his low voice. Perhaps there was concern, but I said nothing of it, only nodding as the men I had traveled with these long weeks began to unload the cargo from the ships. Five boats, each packed to brimming with boxes of stone and baskets of reed; tall trees of myrrh and frankincense with their roots bound and kept wet during our journey, so that we might plant them for the Lady of the Two Lands. Lapis and silver, panther skins and elephant tusks. Beautiful lengths of cassia were tied in fat bundles; soon, the cassia would perfume the halls of the court, wending its way into my own rooms.

Hatshepsut welcomed us at the palace, when, at last, we had made our long way there. She stood at the end of the long stairs which led to the temple. I could see only pride in her stance, the still-warm wind that carried us home now caressing the Queen’s fine linen gown. Her dark hair was tightly wrapped, gleaming with oils. When she drew me into her arms, to whisper a welcome into my ear, I could smell these oils. Warmed by her body, they smelled of lotus and olive. I pressed my own lips against her cheek, tasting a trace of those oils. They tasted of home.

The world would speak of this journey and triumphant return for lifetimes to come, she told me, as the offerings were carried up the terraced walkways and situated so that Hatshepsut might explore each at her leisure. She stepped from my side to do just that, opening one reed basket to trail her hands through the grain inside. There came then a low whisper – perhaps from the grain as it slipped through her fingers – but later, I would have cause to doubt that. She opened the boxes and baskets at random, the air seeming to warm around us as she did. A shiver still skated over my skin, and I felt strangely sick, as Hatshepsut kneeled before a box wrought from gold and opened its chained lid.

The scent of myrrh lifted into the warm air, the box packed with gleaming globules of incense. It was perhaps the fatigue that gnawed at me; it was the length of the journey and the stresses encountered therein. These things combined to assault me then, to make my vision darken and fade. There was that low whisper, again –
Grain through the Pharaoh’s fingers
, I told myself – but that sound rolled across my shoulders, down my spine, and then reached for Hatshepsut.

Perhaps she felt nothing, for Hatshepsut moved away without comment. It was easy to tell myself then that I was exhausted and fully believe it. Yet, I stayed by my Pharaoh’s side as she moved down the line of baskets, as she reached a hand up to stroke a low-hanging branch of myrrh on one of the many trees. She began calling out then, orders to her men to see the trees planted in straight lines along the colonnades, by the pools of water. It was my brother who came then, drawing his hand around my arm to pull me gently away. He walked us back toward that golden box and, though I tried to pull myself up short, I was too tired.

Beside that damnable box we stood. Too long, too long, my brother spoke of things that felt inconsequential when compared to the box at our feet. The box seemed to radiate a heat, a presence, a
something
which reached for me again and teased the hair at the nape of my neck. It was unholy and dark, this thing, and could my brother not feel it? He laughed low as he spoke of events that had transpired in my absence. I cared for none of them, wanted only to get away from the box.

When I could break free, it seemed too late. I felt somehow dirty and hopeless, my throat closed tightly. Nausea wrapped itself around my belly, sinking claws into my hips. I fairly ran for my rooms, brushing past concerned friends. Water, I wanted water and cried that everyone stay away, leave me be, give me only silence! Yet, once within my rooms, I found no sanctuary there. The walls seemed largely foreign, the floor uneven, and the fire sparked when I walked too near its warmth. I clawed at the linen which seemed keen on strangling me. Finally, bare of its treachery, I lunged for the pool of water at the room’s far end. It looked nothing like water, then – it looked like liquid galena, black and thick, and I sank into it, onto my knees, wholly under the cool embrace.

There, I somehow slept.

In my slumber, the warm stroke of brush and fingers seemed to weave a complex lattice around my body. Strands of light and vein wrapped me and held me down. Small, strong hands pressed me into the tile at the bottom of the pool, but it didn’t occur to me to struggle against these restraints.
Let me come through you,
a voice seemed to say. This voice sounded like everyone I had ever loved, something dark and terrible, with a weight I could not fathom.

There was a sense of emptiness when I woke at the edge of the pool, hours later. The fire had burned to embers, the sky full-dark beyond the balcony. I rolled onto my back and stared at the ceiling, at its interlocking patterns of lotus and stars, and breathed. The fatigue of the journey seemed to have left me and so, too, the strange sensation I’d had upon seeing that golden box.

The rooms were heavy with the scent of myrrh, which made me vaguely nauseated until, at last, I regained my feet and stood. I found fresh clothing, the cool linen a comfort over my skin, and painted my eyes with the darkest galena before I left my rooms. The halls were quiet yet, but I felt assured in my path. When I thought of the night before, there were strange absences in my memories, but I brushed these aside and focused instead on the tall form of my brother as he lay in his bed, breathing low like the warm wind outside.

Warm wind, warm water and the incessant whisper of grain through fingers. I reached for my brother with arms that seemed no longer like my own. My fingers wriggled and elongated, curled around his arm and his throat until the tapered ends vanished into his ebony hair. He was sweet – I could taste him through my fingers – sweet like roasted figs and dripping mango, and some buried part of me drank its fill, until this sweetness burst apart and the shell of my brother shattered. Terrible fingers pasted him back together, blackened tongue sealing the seams until one could never tell what horror lurked within.

Amber sunlight spilled into the Pharaoh’s rooms and over her shoulders by the time my brother approached her side. He had spent the morning making the brightest music for her, while she sorted through the gems and other stones the Queen of Punt had sent. She found great pleasure in everything that glittered with a hint of blue. She wanted to polish every bit of lapis and cover her body in a coat of it.

How beautiful she would look, my brother told her, which drew her darkening gaze. How dare he? The Pharaoh waved him off – foolish musician – but he came onward, bare feet silent against the floor. That old whisper tickled the back of my neck, ran down my arms and slithered against my belly the closer my brother came, though, when his hand befell the Pharaoh, the whisper fell silent. There seemed some strange fulfillment at only that touch.

The Pharaoh shrieked; my brother had begun to dissolve before her eyes. Those seams came apart and a thing that none of us could imagine broke out of him. A creature that seemed made of wine-dark water clawed its way up and out, discarding my brother as one might a robe of linen. My brother pooled against the floor, blood and water washing over the Pharaoh’s feet, while this monstrosity lunged for our beloved Hatshepsut.

She pushed backward from the thing, her chair toppling. The Pharaoh’s guards stepped forward, but they seemed baffled as to where they might attack the creature without harming Hatsheput in the fray. The thing spilled her into the bounty of treasure from Punt, into baskets and boxes, into linens and incense. Crying, she crawled through the fortune and, all the while, the living horror stalked over her, reeking of the deepest Nile, black with fertile revulsion. Purple-black water oozed around them, soaking the Pharaoh’s linen gown until she looked bruised. Many-limbed arms (Oh, they were the arms beneath the water of my pool, pressing with small, warm hands) latched onto her legs and pulled hard, bringing her back from the treasures, the gems and daggers and dishes. But, in her shaking hands, Hatshepsut held a broken ivory dish and she slashed its ragged edge against the grim ovoid head of the thing upon her.

The creature fell apart with a cry that felt to me like that voice, that dark and terrible voice. That scream seemed to reach deep inside of me, to curl around my heart and pull. As the creature flailed, still trying to reach the Pharaoh in its death, I crumpled to the floor. Now the guards rushed forward to Hatshepsut, hacking at each long, watery arm as it whipped free from her body. These arms came apart, splattering everyone within reach with a thick liquid that smelled to me like the stars. Clear, cold, stinging. Vast and empty.

The silence afterward was peculiar. The women in the room had leaped away from Hatshepsut, but now they moved forward; the drenched guards stepped warily back and made to secure the entries to the chamber. But it was too late, I thought, watching from narrowed eyes. Those small, warm hands pressed against my heart and that voice … that fathomless voice … whispered its plea in my ear.
Let me come through you.

My gaze focused on the discarded skin of my brother, on the bloody footprints near the edge of the table. My tall and beautiful brother, with his hands that could make music. That blood called me as much as the voice did; that blood anchored me as much as those small hands. And my Pharaoh … the Lady of the Two Lands … struggling to her feet, unable to rise because her legs shook so terribly ... I ached for her, for the lotus and olive taste of her. It was that ache which became the seam, the seam which broke me apart with a scream that tried to shatter the heavens.
Let me come through you.

I let it come, if only to taste her again.

—
For Joseph

E.
Catherine
Tobler
lives and writes in Colorado – strange how that works out. Among others, her fiction has appeared in
Sci Fiction
,
Fantasy Magazine
,
Realms of Fantasy
,
Talebones
, and
Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet
. She is an active member of SFWA and the fiction editor at
Shimmer Magazine
. For more, visit
www.ecatherine.com
.

The author speaks:
I’ve always had a soft spot for Egypt and I’m not sure why. I wish I could retrace the steps that got my brain to thinking, “Oh, wow” about the place for the first time, but that is, alas, lost. Still, all those ruins that were once not ruins were absolutely fascinating. In doing research for a novel, I came across the Pharaoh Hatshepsut and my interest deepened. A female pharaoh? How could that be? Her image largely destroyed after her reign? Why in the world ...? One intriguing part of Hatshepsut’s reign was the ships she sent to Punt, which returned with Many Fabulous Things. In some accounts, the fish that came back could be identified down to their very species from ancient drawings ... Fish from strange lands?
O, what other marvels might have come back with them?
I wondered and therein found this story.

SHADOWS OF THE DARKEST JADE

Sarah Hans 

W
hen the Guru asked me to explain the horrors Satindra and I had witnessed, I found that I could make no words to explain what had occurred. When he asked me write the words I still could not explain. Only now, as I lie dying at last, am I able to write, but even so, there are parts of the tale that must remain known only to me. There are things that weigh on a man’s soul that simply should not be shared.

We followed the Silk Road out of Gandhara and down into the plains of the Empire of Han, surrounded by merchants and travelers. The people we met along the Indus River, even many miles beyond prosperous Gandhara, recognized our saffron robes and gave generously to our alms bowls. We sat at their fires night after night, welcomed guests. In exchange for food and a warm place to sleep, Satindra told them of the
dharma
, mediated their disputes, and blessed them with his quiet strength. I knew, as I sat listening to him retell the tales I had heard a hundred times, that the Guru had chosen wisely when he sent Satindra among the Han, for he had the calm charisma and sagely demeanor that befit a true disciple of Amitabha Buddha.

As we journeyed, the number of other travelers on the road began to dwindle. Eventually, we left the great Silk Road and walked into unknown territory. The road narrowed and wound its way through expanses of rice paddies, where stoop-shouldered peasants laboured in the hot sun.

Unfortunately, the people of the Han Empire had rarely seen monks and, even more rarely, begging monks, and did not know what to make of us, especially as one of us was a foreigner and the other was barely a man, then unable to grow a beard. When we brought out our alms bowls, they scoffed, made offensive remarks about beggars, and some even spat on the ground at our feet. We ran out of our carefully preserved rice ration within a few days of leaving the Silk Road, and were so hungry our steps began to falter.

“Brother Satindra,” I said reluctantly, as we trudged through another hot, dusty day, “we must find food.” I meant to imply that we should steal what we could not beg, though I could not bring myself to suggest it outright.

Satindra nodded. “Amitabha will provide,” he said, with perfect faith, never indicating whether he understood my hidden meaning. “The Guru sent us here to bring the
dharma
; Amitabha will provide.”

I am ashamed to say that I lost faith, but Satindra never stopped believing. Even as we staggered up to a small, bamboo-and-mud hut, so exhausted we could barely stand, he drew his alms bowl from his robes and said the traditional words of blessing in a voice weak with hunger. The smell of the evening meal drifted out to us, a scent so tantalizing that I moaned aloud.

The girl who came to the door of the hut could have been my sister. She was small and golden-skinned, her jet-black hair tied modestly at the nape of her neck. She wore the simple, cotton garments of all the Han peasants. Her narrow eyes – so like mine! – grew wide, and she turned and ran back into the house, calling to her elders in the local dialect.

I groaned again, this time sure of defeat, certain that we would be turned away and meet our deaths on the dusty road. Satindra turned and looked at me, a small smile curving his chapped lips, and said “Have faith, Little Brother.”

The girl returned with a hugely pregnant woman in tow and behind her followed a little elderly woman with a round, plump face. Both women immediately ushered us into the hut, without any questions or explanations, and just like that, we were saved and Satindra’s faith was proven.

The girl’s name was Jun.The pregnant woman was her mother Bao-Yu and the elderly woman was Jun’s grandmother, Grandmother Mei. The men of the household were off drinking rice wine and gambling, Grandmother Mei explained, so the women could do what they liked, including feeding wandering monks. She explained all this while we eagerly devoured rice and what I can honestly say was the most delicious hot soup I have ever eaten. Grandmother Mei chattered throughout the meal, gesturing with her small, shriveled hands, squinting at us with her beady, black eyes and smiling a toothless grin. Unfamiliar with the local dialect, I only understood about half of what she said and poor Satindra, who spoke only the scholarly language of the Han and none of the rough dialects of the peasants, understood nothing, but we nodded enthusiastically and tried to be a good audience.

Finally, when our appetites were sated, Grandmother Mei asked us to tell our story.

“You will have to excuse Brother Satindra,” I said. “He only speaks the scholar’s tongue.”

“Your accent is strange,” Grandmother Mei said, squinting at me over her plum-like cheeks.

“I was raised in a village near here,” I said, “but I have been away for many years. I remember very little.”

She nodded, sitting back on her pillow, and repeated her request for our story.

I obliged as best I could, using words from the scholar’s tongue and the dialect of my village interchangeably. This seemed surprisingly effective.

“We are monks from a monastery in the nation of Gandhara,” I told her. “Satindra is gifted with languages and I was born in Han, so our Guru thought it would be wise to send us to spread the word of the
dharma
here. We have walked a long time, seeking the village where I was born. I do not remember the way, because I was very young when I left home.”

Grandmother Mei snorted. “Why did your parents send you away? A healthy, strapping young boy?”

I shrugged. “I was told later, when I was older, that I was sent away because my family was so large my parents were unable to feed all of us.”

The old woman nodded sagely, her head bobbing on her neck. “A few years ago, there was drought. I remember well, there were many families whose children starved.” She clucked her tongue at the misfortune of it all. “Your parents were farmers, then?”

“Yes. My father and mother both worked in the rice fields. I remember four brothers and one sister, but there may be others, who were sent away like me, or who were born since I left,” I said.

“You should be grateful that your mother sent you to live with the monks,” Grandmother Mei chided me, perhaps hearing some sorrow in my voice when I spoke of my family. “She saved you from a life of backbreaking work, toil and sorrow. Instead, you have learned to read and write, haven’t you? And now you travel the world!” She snorted. “It is a lucky thing for you. I only wish that little Jun were a boy so we could send her with you, away from this life.”

I looked at Jun, who blushed and looked away. “Some say that the Amitabha Buddha’s most dedicated disciples were his wife and consorts,” Satindra volunteered, speaking slowly in the scholarly language of the Han nobles.

Grandmother Mei guffawed her skepticism. “The day women are allowed to become monks will be the day we learn to piss standing up,” she declared and then laughed wildly, slapping her small hand against her thigh. Bao-Yun and Jun looked uncomfortable, but smiled obediently at the old woman’s coarse joke. Wheezing with laughter, Grandmother Mei requested tea and little Jun hopped up and began preparing tea for all of us.

“Tell me more about your Amitabha,” Grandmother Mei demanded and, while Jun ground tea leaves and boiled water, Satindra and I – Satindra speaking in the scholar’s tongue and I translating some of the unfamiliar concepts into a more familiar dialect – did our best to explain the
dharma
.

While we talked, Jun placed an earthenware bowl of tea in her grandmother’s little hands, and the old woman sipped and made appreciative sounds. “It’s too bad neither of you needs a wife; little Jun is an expert tea-maker, already, and she is barely ten years old! Think what a woman she will be in just a few years!”

Satindra and I blushed and looked at the floor. Some orders of Ambitabha’s followers took consorts, but ours did not; we were humble monks dedicated to poverty and chastity. Grandmother Mei chuckled at our modest reaction to her words and said, “Did your mother make tea like this, Little Brother?”

“You should call me ‘Wen’, Grandmother Mei,” I replied. “And yes, she did. I remember the scent of it.” And it was true: the scent of the mint leaves crushed with the tea leaves brought back memories of my childhood and the bamboo house where I had slept chest-to-back with my brothers.

“Then the village of your birth is near here, Brother Wen. You will always know what part of the Han Empire you are in by the taste of the tea, because the leaves taste differently and are prepared differently wherever you go.” She took another sip and sighed contentedly.

My memories stirred as Jun placed a bowl of tea in my own hands. The minty scent and warmth of the pottery clasped in my hands brought me back to that dark, warm bamboo hut with my family. “I don’t remember much about the village, not even the name,” I said softly. “But I do remember a festival, where we burned offerings of tea leaves like this ... the festival of the Jade Crane.”

Grandmother Mei threw up her hands so quickly her tea bowl dropped to the floor, spilling hot liquid across the dirt floor. She shrieked something unintelligible and the eyes that she turned to me were no longer sparkling with kindness and amusement, but rather were full of fear and loathing. Her toothless mouth opened, a black maw, and she made a loud keening sound that raised the hairs on my arms. The change was so abrupt that I had no time to react; no one did. We all just stared at Grandmother Mei for a moment, baffled.

Then the little girl and her mother took action. Bao-Yun put her arms around her mother and began speaking calmly to her, so that gradually, the keening subsided to a low moan. It was still a terrible sound, like the squalling of an infant. Jun, meanwhile, collected the tea bowls from me and Satindra, and began hustling us out of the house.

“What did you say?” Satindra asked, as Jun pushed us from the hut.

“I only said that there was a festival in my village,” I replied. “The festival of the Jade –”

I could not finish this thought, because Grandmother Mei began to shriek again, and little Jun pressed one small hand against my mouth. She shook her head fervently, her narrow eyes so wide that I could see the whites all around her black irises. She pushed us both out of the hut and down the road a little ways, and then ran back into the house.

Satindra and I stood in the dark road for a few minutes, listening to Grandmother Mei’s terrified wailing. It had all happened so quickly that I did not know what to make of it. We stared at each other numbly, then placed our alms bowls back into our robes and began to move down the road, away from the house.

Eventually, the wailing stopped and we heard the sound of footsteps. We turned to see Jun running toward us, a small bag of uncooked rice in her arms. Wordlessly, she pressed the bag into my hands. Her eyes were full of fear, but also compassion, and I thanked her for the generous donation. Then I said, “What did your grandmother say when I mentioned ... the bird?” I asked, careful to avoid using the phrase that had so upset Grandmother Mei.

Jun frowned, licked her lips, and glanced back at the hut, where the firelight spilled out of the open doorway and onto the road. “‘Cursed’,” she said, in a whisper, and the wind seemed to steal the word from her mouth, so that it did not linger, but was whisked away into the night, so that it almost seemed unreal. I wanted her to repeat it, so that I could be sure of what she had said, but instead, she turned and ran back to the house.

“‘Cursed’?” Satindra repeated in the Han dialect. “Does that mean what I think it means?”

“Yes,” I replied.

To my surprise, Satindra laughed, drawing one arm around my shoulders and patting my back. “Don’t let a superstitious old woman frighten you, Little Brother. Cursed. Ha! If anything, we are blessed. Let’s find a field where we can spend the night.”

We slept under the stars that night and, though I glowered, Satindra remained in high spirits. He detailed the reasons we were lucky: before her fit, Grandmother Mei had blessed us with a generous meal and a chance to share the
dharma
; the evening was a pleasant temperature, and no storm clouds threatened to interrupt our sleep with rain; we had not been robbed or set upon by criminals; and we knew that soon, we would arrive in the village of my birth, and perhaps even find my family. Two wandering monks could hardly want for more, he said, as we bedded down in a cow field.

The following day, I was melancholic, having slept fitfully. Our morning meditation, where we chanted a mantra as we walked, brought me no comfort. During the hottest part of the day, we rested. Satindra cooked a little of the rice Jun had given us and we ate it slowly, savouring every grain. It tasted of mint and the flavor brought me a confusing jumble of memories.

As we had walked on the Silk Road, we had passed many shrines to local gods. Some of the richest had been statues carved of jade or ivory, housed in pagodas and tended by priests. Travelers had laid offerings of milk, honey, rice, and even meat at these shrines. As we had left the main road, the size of the altars had become less impressive. Every day or so, we passed one of these little shrines, with a tiny, crude stone likeness of some god or another, or simply a collection of pebbles meant to be a marker. There were usually the remains of meager offerings at these smaller shrines, or no offerings at all, because so few travelers passed them.

Now, as we walked farther from the Silk Road and Grandmother Mei’s house, the character of these shrines changed. Though we had ignored the altars previously, I now felt compelled to look at the small statues. The other shrines along this country road had been simple cairns or had little hand-carved animals made of a common stone or wood, something that would have no value to thieves. But the afternoon after our encounter with Grandmother Mei, we passed a shrine with a statuette, carved with great detail, out of what appeared to be some kind of jade.

I crouched in front of the shrine, staring at the dark statuette it housed in what might have been half of a huge, stone bowl, turned on its side. The little statue was black, and mostly in shadow, but when the sunlight hit it just right, it looked green, like the darkest jade. The details of the statue were difficult to discern because it was so dark, but the shape was not human, nor that of any animal I had seen before. I got the impression of bulbous eyes and an elongated head and many arms, like the Hindu goddess Kali, but no matter how I squinted, I could not determine the exact features of the statue. Finally, thinking that perhaps my fingers could make sense of what perplexed my eyes, I reached out and ran my fingers over the stone.