Creatures of Light and Darkness

FEMINA EX MACHINA

And she lies there big with child within the chassis of the machine. A wall of the cubicle has drawn back. The wires have fallen away from her head and her spine, disconnecting the icy logic, the frigid memory banks, the sex-comp compulsions, the nutrient tubes. She is deprogramed.

“Prince Horus…”

“Megra. Rest easy.”

“… You have broken the enchantment.”

“Who did this terrible thing to you?”

“The Witch of the Loggia.”

“Mother! Her ways have always been wild, Megra. I am sorry.” He places his hand upon her. “Why did she do this thing?”

“She told me that a thing of which I was unaware- that I am to bear Set’s child-is the reason-”

“Set!” and Horus’ fingerprints are imbedded in the metal table. “Set -Did he take you by force?”

“Not exactly.”

“Set… What are your feelings toward him now?”

“I hate him.”

“That will be sufficient.”

“He cares nothing for life…”

“I know. I shall not ask you of him again. You will come away with me to the House of Life, Megra of Kalgan, and dwell with me there forever.”

“But, Horus, I fear that I must be delivered here. I am too weak to go far, and my time is near.”

“Then so be it. We shall abide for a time within this place.”

And she clasps her hands upon her belly and closes her cobalt eyes. The glow of the machine causes her cheeks to blaze.

Horus sits by her side.

Soon she cries out.

The Citadel of Marachek, empty, not empty, empty again. Why? Listen…

Set stands his ground, facing the monster, and it lunges toward him.

For a long while they wrestle, there in the courtyard.

Then Set breaks its back, and it lies a groaning.

His eyes blaze like suns, and he turns them once again to the place where he had been headed.

Then Thoth, his son, his father, the Prince Who Was A Thousand, opens again the bottle of instant monsters and removes another seed.

Sowing it there in the dust, another menace blooms beneath his hand, then bends toward Set.

The madness that lies within Set’s eyes falls upon the creature and there is more conflict.

Standing above its broken body, Set bows his head and vanishes.

But Thoth follows after him sowing monsters, and the ghosts of Set and the monsters he fights rage through the marble memory that is wrecked and rebuilt Marachek, the oldest city.

And each time that Set destroys a creature, he turns his eyes once again toward a place, a moment, where he had battled the Nameless and destroyed a world and where the dark horse shadow his son rears and blazes; and heeding the beck of annihilation he moves toward that place, that moment. But Thoth follows, distracting him with monsters.

This is because Set is destruction, and he will destroy himself if there is nothing else that is suitable at hand or somewhere in sight, in time or in space. But the Prince is wise and realizes this. This is why he follows after his father on his temporal journey toward the altar of annihilation, after his awakening from the trance of battle against the Thing That Cries In The Night. For Thoth knows that if he can distract him long enough from his pilgrimage, new things will arise toward which Set’s hand may be turned. This is because such things always arise.

But not they move through time, filling perhaps all of time, considered from this moment of it-the wise Prince and his deadly father/son-skirting always the Abyss that is Skagganauk, son, brother and grandson.

This is why the ghosts of Set and the monsters he fights rage through the marble memory that is wrecked and rebuilt Marachek, the oldest city.

She sleeps, in the House of the Dead, in a deep, dark, buried crypt, and consciousness is a snowflake, melting, gone now. But the motorcycle that is Time backfires as it races by, and there, within the remembered mirror, lie the last days’ battles: Osiris dead, and gone away Set. And there is the green laughter of Vramin; Vramin, mad and a poet, too. Hardly fit Lord for the Witch of the Loggia. Better not to set an alarm. Sleep away an age, then see what Thoth hath wrought. Here, amid the mummy-dust and the burned-out tapers, here in the bottommost cellar of the House of the Dead, where none have names nor seek them, and where none will be sought; here: Sleep. Sleep, and let the Middle Worlds go by, ignorant of the Red Lady who is Lust, Cruelty, Wisdom and mother and mistress of invention and violent beauty.

The creatures of light and darkness dance on the guillotine’s lip, and Isis fears the poet. The creatures of light and darkness don and discard the garments of man, machine and god; and Isis loves the dance. The creatures of light and darkness are born in great numbers, die in an instant, may rise again, may not rise again; and Isis approves of the garments.

Dreaming these dreams and fearful, her familiar presses close against her, a little thing that cries in the night.

Wheels turning, the motorcycle’s roar grows steady, which, too, is a form of silence.