Thu, 10 Jan 2008
Heathor
Rather than write something useless tonight, I'll pull another quote from Gene Wolfe's novel, The Shadow of the Torturer. It's the mad stammering eloquence of a speech by Heather, an aged space farer.
M-m-mater, when I was on the Quasar I had a paracoita, a doll, you see, a genicon, so beautiful with her great pupils as dark as wells, her i-irises purple, like asters or pansies blooming in the summer. Master, whole beds of them, I thought, had b-been gathered to make those eyes, that flesh that always felt sun-warmed. Wh-wh-where is she now, my own scopolagna, my poppet? Let h-h-hooks be buried in the hands that took her! Crush them, Master, beneath stones. Where has she gone from the lemon wood box I made for her, where she never slept at all for she lay with me all night, not in the box, the lemon wood box where she waited all day, watch-and-watch, Master, smiling when I laid her in so she might smile when I drew her out. How soft her hands were, her little hands. Like d-d-doves. She might have flown with them about the cabin had she she not chosen instead to be with me. W-w-wind their guts about your w-windlass, stuff their eyes into their mouths. Unman them, shave them clean below so that their doxies may not know them, their leman may rebuke them, leave them to the brazen mouths of st-st-strumpets. Work your will upon the guilty. Where was their mercy on the inocent? When did they tremble, when weep? What kind of men could do as they have done--thieves, false friends, betrayers, bad shipmates, no shipmates, murderers, and kidnappers. W-without you , where are their nightmares, where their restitutions, so long promised? Where are their chains, fetters, manacles, and cangues? Where are their abacinations that shall leave them blind? Where are the defenstrations that shall break their bones, where is the estrapade that shall grind their joints? Where is she, the beloved whom I lost?
