There were enough diversions and wonders to keep them enchanted for decades to come. Though the heavens were fixed in the same configuration whenever she visited the Country, there was nevertheless evidence that the earth was still obeying some of its ancient rhythms.
There was, for instance, in the swamp, a manmade lake perhaps half a mile wide, which seemed to have been for many generations the place where a certain species of eel, the infants silver-blue, with great golden eyes, came in their millions — each no longer than her little finger — but sufficient in number that they filled the place of their birth to brimming when they spawned. For a day — when the larval eels appeared — this Genesis Bowl, as Katya had named it, was a feasting place for birds of every kind, who were literally able to walk on the squirming backs of their feast, taking all they could before lifting off (some so fat with food they could barely fly) and retiring to the nearest branch to digest their mighty meal. The next day (if the Country could be said to have days) the Genesis Bowl was empty, but for a few thousand runts that had perished in the exodus, and were being picked up by carrion cows and wild dogs.
She wanted to show this glorious spectacle to Todd; wanted to wade into the living mass of baby eels and feel them against her naked flesh.
On another day they might to a place she knew where there was a beast that spoke prophetic riddles; which had twice engaged her in conversation which she knew would make sense if she had the education to decode its strange poetry. It had the body of a huge bird, this tiddler, with a man’s head, and it sat, close to the ground, with a vast array of glittering gifts around the base of its tree, offered for its prophecies. She’d come to it a year ago, with some jewelry she had worn in Nefertiti.
“Is it real, the gift you give me?” the creature, whose name was Yiacaxis, had asked her.
“No,” she had admitted. “I am an actress. These baubles are what I wore when I was an actress.”
“Then make them real for me,” Yiacaxis had said, clicking his old grey tongue against his cracked beak. “Play me the scene in which you wore them.”
“It was silent,” she said.
“That’s good,” he replied. “For I am very deaf in my old age.”
She shed most of her clothes, and put on the jewelry. Then she played the scene from Nefertiti in which she discovers that her lover is dead by the order of the envious Queen, and she kills herself out of tragic longing for him.
The old bird-man wept freely at her performance.
“I’m pleased it moved you so much,” Katya had said when she was done.
“I accept your offering,” the creature had replied, “and I will give you your answer.”
“But you don’t even know my question yet.”
Yiacaxis clicked and cocked his head. “I know you wonder if there will ever be a love worth dying for in your life? Is that your question?”
“Yes,” she said. She would perhaps not have asked it that way, but the prophet was notoriously short-tempered with those who attempted to press him.
“There are two multitudes,” he said. “One within you. One without. Should he love you enough to name one of these legions, then you will live in bliss with the other.”
Of course she desperately wanted to ask him what this meant; but the audience was apparently already over, for Yiacaxis was raising his black wings, which were lined with little knots of human hair, tied up in ribbons that had long-ago lost their colour. Thousands of locks of hair, in wings that spread perhaps twenty feet from tip to tip. Without further word, he closed them over his melancholy face, and the shadows of the tree seemed to close around him a second time, so that he was invisible.
Perhaps, if she had the courage, she would go back to Yiacaxis, with Todd, and ask him another question. Or this time Todd should do the asking.