HENBANE GRAVITY (Pt. 4 - The End)

The Goddess, the Artist, and the boxed-up statue sat in heightened chairs around a table in the back of the bar. Amidst the din of inebriated trivialities the two women nursed their drinks, Nella a vodka-cranberry, Ieajaita a beer.

“I think there’s something to the idea of the Muse,” said Nella. “You know? I mean, like, the actual Muses from Greek mythology.”

Ieajaita smiled. “Do you?”

“Well, look at it this way: the idea of art being a fundamental part of a human being basically exists in every pagan religion. Greco-Roman obviously. And in Hinduism you have the Apsaras.”

“The twenty-six dancers of Indra’s court, /” said Ieajaita, “each the embodiment of a different art.”

Nella nodded, her face pained. “In the Vana Parva they’re supposed to seduce virtuous men.”

“The Vana Parva does not say ‘men.’ / It states, ‘persons practicing rigid austerities.’ ”

“Yeah,” Nella smirked, “but we know what that means.”

Ieajaita leaned forward. “Saraswati, / goddess of art and wisdom, / is essential to Brahma’s mechanism / of cyclical creation.”

“Doesn’t change the fact that every civilization that ever lasted was a patriarchy. The matriarchies get wiped out.”

“Does that disqualify / our necessity?”

Nella scoffed. “You should ask my father that.”

Ieajaita leaned back. “The man does not approve of your vocation.”

“He doesn’t approve of taking on student loan debt for me to go be an artist.”

“And for what occupation / has your father / agreed to indebt himself?”

“Physical therapy. His least objectionable idea.”

Ieajaita nodded and allowed a moment of silent thought to pass. She said, “My father too derided My calling. / He considered it a travesty, tantamount to sin.”

“What d’you do?”

“My job, dear girl, / as meant to be.”

Ieajaita’s smile washed the scars on Nella’s heart. The Artist opened her mouth to speak, but she swallowed every word that pricked her tongue. She closed her mouth and looked away.

“You remind me of a boy,” said Ieajaita. “I knew long ago. / A tad younger than you are now, / his talent was unparalleled, / his passion without peer. / But sadly he practiced his Art among / ignorant men who balked at his proclivities. / His medium was the human heart / in all its splendor and buffoonery, / and he deployed his Art in aid / of his father and his kin. / But in this boy’s time and place / the Art was the realm of the feminine. / For the masculine to practice was / to invite a sentence of death.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“And yet the boy persisted, / for to not embrace The Promise / that resided in his heart / would have incurred a far worse fate.”

“Did they kill him?”

“Would have, were it not / for the women of his ilk, /” said Ieajaita. “They claimed the boy as one of their own. / An adept with a wand, / and so natural a weaver, / they could not in conscience geld / an ergi of such potency. / They fed him henbane twice, / ensconced him in their twine, / and once unwound, their cocoon / revealed him in her distaff glory.”

Nella sat, mouth ajar, lost in a dense tangle of the story’s fantastical shadows and the illumination beaming through the wood above.

Ieajaita’s eyes invited belief, insisted on it. “The Art unveils Truth, / even to those who live by the bridle, / and Truth is a River that nourishes all.”

Nella swallowed. “They remade him.”

“Through The Art.”

Nella met Ieajaita’s gaze. “You make art sound magical.”

“Only, my girl, / because it is.”

“I feel like I’ve heard the story before.”

Ieajaita leaned toward Nella. “It may never before have graced your ears, / but know you Truth—assuaged are your fears.”

“I just realized You never told me Your name.”

“Must you hear a symbol / to know of what it speaks?”

Nella’s breaths grew fast and loud. Ieajaita placed Her hand on Nella’s, and the boisterous surroundings vanished. There was only Ieajaita and Nella, everything else erased by consequence.

Nella whispered, “I knew. Somehow I knew.”

Ieajaita near-chanted, “The spirit coursing through your tender hands / was born in water flowing recherché. / You know the number not who beg and pray / to swim, consigned to trudge across the sand. / Possess you talent foreign to the mind / but well acquainted with the well-sprung blood. / It Speaks to Me in torrents, as a flood / baptizes Truths that only you will find. / But you must grasp your due, invoke your touch / of whimsy and your gloom to turn a stone / expunged into illuminated psalm. / And lift your head you must to do as much. / The fearless Artist never is alone, / for only she will God sit in her palm.”

Nella braced herself for the sky to open and speak to her. “What do I need to do?”

“Only relent, /” said Ieajaita. “But be warned: / you will never be the same.”

“I don’t want to be.”

Ieajaita nodded. She tossed two twenties onto the table, picked up her boxed statue by the string, and motioned for Nella to follow her.

They exited the bar, turned down an alley, then turned down another. Ieajaita and Nella faced one another in a sliver of shrouded space between two buildings, on an single plane choking on the lightlessness. Their faces stood inches apart.

Ieajaita took Nella’s hands. “I love Artists, /” She intoned. “They are My people. / I only regret / that I cannot do more.”

Nella’s lip quivered. “Please,” she whispered. “Help me.”

Ieajaita barely nodded as a tear welled. She removed the glove from Her right hand. The alley bloomed white, as Ieajaita placed Her hand over Nella’s eyes.

The bus screamed to a stop at the corner. Ieajaita and Nella stepped off and started down the street, Ieajaita holding the woman’s hand, leading her, while Her other hand held the statue in its box. Nella’s eyes floated in syrup, lost in sweetened magnificence. She was jetsam on The Endless River.

Ieajaita turned to her as they neared 433 Mellon. “It won’t be long, / my dear girl.”

Nella didn’t hear a word.

Ieajaita took her by the shoulders as they neared the porch. “There are steps before you. /” She said. “Raise high your roof beam, carpenter.”

Nella’s head stared across the water, blind to the material world, as she lifted her feet and ascended the stairs.

Ieajaita swung open the front door and walked Nella through. She closed it, then led the young woman through Her bedroom, to the door to the basement. She turned Nella toward Her, grasped the sides of her head, and aimed her eyes at Her own. “Nella, my dear, you are almost there. / You need only make a brief descent. / Keep in mind the lyre of Orpheus, / and follow the music down your path.”

Nella, feeble-minded, smiled.

Ieajaita bowed Her head. She opened the door to the basement, and turned Nella around. “Go, dear child.”

Nella started down the staircase.

Ieajaita closed the door and headed back through Her bedroom. She went up to the second floor and opened the door at the top of the stairs. She walked into the bedroom, unoccupied save for dozens of pieces entombed in wooden boxes and paper wrappings. Ieajaita placed Nella’s statue amongst the other boxes. Let your discovery augur your greatness, She prayed, then closed the door as She left the room.

She returned to the basement. She heard Her friends feeding beneath the stairs before She’d fully descended. She walked to the opposite wall and slumped to the floor, ignoring the stains on the ground.

She stared into the black beneath the staircase, saw the shadow-cloaked churnings of the Charchilla and Aberras as the moist sounds of slaughter drooled across the room. She spun her mind back to paintings and etchings and sculptures She’d once granted credence, long lost works whose Creators’ names have been exiled to anonymity. She remembered their imaginings, representations of the horrors that were Her friends. Ground littered with mortal remains, survivors fleeing with mouths open in terror, nightmares drawn into the waking world. Try as She did, She saw none of that beneath the stairs.

When the sound of crunching bone came to a halt and blood ceased to drip onto the floor, the Charchilla and Aberras padded out from beneath the staircase, into the dying halogen of the basement. Ieajaita waved them over. They curled up beside Her, the Charchilla on Her left and Aberras on her right. Ieajaita stroked Aberras’ exposed spine. A tumor popped and flecked Her cheek, and Ieajaita pet the Charchilla’s open wound.

“Medication fades apace, /” she said, “faster than a friendly face.” A tear escaped Her eye. “Await the day that I may die / on the sword that’s my own lie.”