The head bent; a mighty hooved forefoot withdrew from the sea, rivers running from its fetlock, alive with silver fishes. The foot stamped down.
The world shook to its roots.
“Come forth,” said the voice once more.
There was no denying that voice. There was no hiding from it. All of us shambled out into the open air, where we stood like drunken, tethered creatures, unable to move unless the voice commanded us.
We didn’t have to move. It came to us, jarring the world with every step. We fell and got up. It took another step. We fell again, and got up. We leaned together, like floppy dolls, holding each other erect. Leely lay on the ground where he had stayed all along, waving his hands, saying nothing, nothing at all, his eyes fastened on that which came.
Beyond the hugeness was a sky full of birds, a million pairs of beating wings, a whirl of white terns, a swerve of black-backed puffins, a spiral of silver gulls rising on the wind. I knew their names. They all had names. Before each mighty foreleg, a bow wave of life rushed upon the shore to wriggle, to stride, to fly, to crawl. I tasted a sweetness of mown grass and a salt-clean tang of the ocean wind.
In the end, we stayed on our knees, unable to get up again.
“Is this your tempter?” Leelson asked me, through trembling lips.
The stories had not said it was so huge. The stories had said it was male. This was not male. It smelled like flowers and spices and fragrant smoke. It tasted of … marvel. It wore a high crown. It spoke to us in thunder.
“Will you go home again?” it asked. “Will you go to your proper place? To Dinadh, where I had placed you?”
I saw Lutha’s head move. Nod, nod. There was Leelson, nodding. Mitigan nodding. I felt what they felt. How tempting to go home once more. To Dinadh. To the winding canyons. To the sweet songs of the songfathers.
“Will you go home again?”
Would I go home again? To the lies the songfathers told? To the pain of the House Without a Name? To that terrible destiny for my daughters? To connivance at that evil by my sons? To sell truth and wisdom short in order to buy the false hope of immortality?
Somehow I got to my feet.
“No,” I cried. My voice was the cry of a small bird against that mighty thunder. Still I cried, “No. I will not!”
“Not me, neither!” trumpeted Snark, as though my words had wakened an echo in her.
I felt Lutha’s eyes, and Poracious’s. They didn’t understand. Ah, but they hadn’t known the House Without a Name. Their wombs had not held what mine had held.
The mighty head bent above us like a cloud descending.
“You were given worlds to share,” it whispered in a voice like an avalanche. “But you would not share. You were given life to treasure, but you did not treasure. You counted your own lives holy and all other lives expendable. All my creations you have subverted, all my wonders lost and slaughtered and betrayed. I made a garden to receive you. To make clear my intention, I set my creatures around you to be your companions; you have made of your habitation a termite mound, and of that garden a desolation!
“So now I have made your world suitable, a place where you can serve my creation. What more do you deserve than that?”
I couldn’t answer. There was no answer.
“Now I have drawn a bowstring around all mankind, and in the fullness of time, I shall leash him with it. He who will not share shall serve instead.
“Will you go to the place I have allotted you?”
Somehow I kept upright. “No,” I cried, my voice breaking. “Mankind deserves no more, but this woman would rather die, knowing the truth, than go back to live that lie! I choose truth! We are not immortal. My mother wasn’t immortal. She died. She did not eat my face; she died!”
The face faded. For a moment it was not there. The place it had been was blank. Then the earth shook again mightily, tumbling us about, and a face returned, a lion’s face, an eagle’s face, a face of leaves, of fruits, of fishes, a woman’s face, terrible and pitying. I knew that face. A mother’s face!