Inner Circle by Jerzy Peterkiewicz Read Free Book Online Page B

animals between me and my husband.

    I know my age by my children. Nineteen children ago, we were living just beneath him in the treeland that must have been afloat between two skies, because I still remember the roots of the thickest trees dipped in the rain clouds on which we could walk then without falling down. And I remember the animals which had wings to protect us and themselves against the light, for the light was always burning in the hands of the Sky Man, one in his day hand and the other in his night hand. With both he struck us, and put the animals between me and my husband.

    The animals with wings are now smaller and have timid eyes; they wash their feathers in the sky all day and hide in the rocks after dusk; I never see them walk with their wings spread out, flapping the air and turning the shadows around me. I walk between my cedar tree and my lake alone, unattended; the animals step aside from the paths I choose, even when I have to cross the shadow circles which are crowded with their young. They multiply and will multiply, because the Sky Man put them in our place, and handed the dominion over the surface of the earth to their mute breed. They prowl around my home on dark nights before a storm, but none of them, even the hissing cat, would know how to attack us when we are unprotected by our eyes in sleep. And we have lightning and thunder on our side.

    My eyes reflect in the water like the green jewels on the dragon’s fins: I am afraid to stare into the reflection for long, because I might lose power over my body and drown in my own eyes. Once I crouched to pick snails from the reeds and a water animal, spiked with big red bones, slid out of the slime and crushing the reeds, came close to me. My eyes were at the same height as his, and he was stupid to look at me. I did nothing. I only held my glare, and his wet eyes without any hairs around them tried to close and couldn’t.
    Tears dribbled from them, larger and thicker, then he fell to the side, his red bones cutting the reeds as his whole body shook, trying to slide back into the slime. I bent over him and watched his eyes. Now they didn’t move: the water animal was blind. And I despised him, as I despise all the mute breed on land and in water.

    Only the serpents have eyes that cannot be harmed by mine, yet they slither away from my echoes, because they know me by the sound of my feet. And I, too, feel their wriggling presence about me in the grass as I wade through it, marking the beginning of a new path. Some trees still bow before me; like the dragons they are old enough to remember the two skies and the rain clouds at their roots. And if I lie asleep in the grass, one of the old trees always stands in attendance, and the animals keep at a distance, watching how it twists and unfolds its arms.

    My son told me after a hunt that he could have killed the whole herd of them, so heavy they were and so unable to run; and the tree, my son said, walked in a circle while I slept. Did I dream then, he asked me, because only my dreams could make the ancient race of the forest turn on their roots in the light of day. He was afraid of his dreams, and I had none since his birth, ten children ago. No, I didn’t see a dream, I told him, it was the grass that must have reminded the tree of its ancient duty. My son kissed the edge of my hair and kissing it touched my hip with his hand. If only I could call a dream that had an obedient touch on its fingers. The touch of the grass on awaking was like a voice. Could I tell him more? That I longed to hear my name spoken aloud, spoken in a whisper, it could even be a humming sound, no higher than the blades of grass, passed from butterfly to butterfly, and scented by the fallen scales of pine-cones.

    My seventh son, born ten children ago, must be afraid of my name. He said it once in his sick sleep, but it was a cry thrown down a cliff into a dark cave from which no echoes come. I call him Amo, against the wish