In the most ancient of lands, where the tribes of the first men rode on bareback horses, there lived a great warrior chieftain. The fierce chieftain had lead his tribe from the days before the sun was set in the sky, to beyond the days when the lady Night first sewed the stars into her cloak. In the old times, great men and women lived longer, for as long as the memories of mankind. It was this warrior who defended his people and their land from the dark things, before there was light, and it was he who drove them into the depths of the ocean when the lady Night took the moon for her eye.
The dark things both hated and feared the chieftain, and he knew well how they burned in their empty black hearts with thoughts of revenge. Though he strung all his doorways with silver bells, and planted sage trees at every crossroads, still the dark things stalked him on moonless nights in the winter. He became determined that he should have a place of refuge and a sacred place of final rest.
The great chieftain knew the dark things could only come at him from the cardinal points, because he was so forthright, none could come at him sideways. He knew the dark things could not help but play a game, as well, for they were endless fascinated by artifice. The chieftain determined to construct a confounding labyrinth, of the sort which no dark thing should ever be able to solve, and so find peace at its center. With his course set, the chieftain set out in search of four great artisans, who would also lay down their life and give up all mortal sights.
Each artisan dug into the soft earth at the four cardinal points. Each artisan built, in total darkness, a room of his own design. And when the rooms were finished, each artisan came forth, letting no light spill upon his creation, shutting his eyes to the light of the sun, and each one then carved out his eyes, never to see again. In this way, the rooms of each artisan were never seen by the sun, and so were unknown by all eyes, mortal and immortal alike.
The chieftain made his home between the four rooms, and he made the last, blind days of the artisans comfortable as best he was able. The dark things would come to his home, seeking blood and atonement, but at each corner they would find a labyrinth, a room whose nature could not be divined. For hours the dark things would sit and waste away their energy, until the cloak of night began to slip over the horizon. Weak and exhausted, they would crawl into the rooms and would never be seen again.
But even the great chieftain’s memory would come to be lost in the mists of time’s passage, and so he would pass on from this world. More years then any mortal could know came and went, and the sacred four rooms werebe forgotten. Men would make their homes on the very same spot, though for every generation born into the house of four rooms, madness would come.
Marry X was born into the house of four rooms in the second age of machines. When she was just a little girl, she dreamed that there were monsters under her bed, as little girls often do. She would see the shadows swirl like smoke in her nightlight. Her parents thought it merely a childish overactive imagination, and (in truth) as she grew, older she no longer saw the ghosts of the dark things, but only because her thoughts no longer spilled over into the night to give them substance.
When Marry X was a young woman, she would stand in the hallway at the top of the stairs, in the middle of the night, when no one was awake. She would look around at the four closed doors and shiver, for their bland wooden facade promised an ominous secret behind each one. At night the prosaic reality became mutable, and she would shiver to herself, conjuring up the unknown inside the rooms of her house. Her thoughts in these moments did not spill out of her mind like the eager but unschooled thoughts of a child. She stepped behind each door, her mind, herself, full and entire. Behind each door, so late at night, were the four rooms and thus, in each of the four rooms, a part of Marry X became trapped.
The house of four rooms came to belong to Marry X when she was a woman, as it had come down to her mother and her mother’s mother, and she often found herself before the mirrors in the bathrooms and in the downstairs hallway. She would look into the mirror, and see another reflection, and wonder if the reflection was whole, or if it was not missing some part of herself. But the reflection was where those missing parts of herself were to be found. Her reflection would gaze back upon her, and her reflection’s eyes were unsettling for holding in them all the parts of herself lost inside the four rooms.
When Marry X dreamed at night, her reflection came to her. “Do not search for what is missing in my eyes, for that is only where you will find it. Find your way through the fog and let me carry you.”
When the sun was looking over the horizon, she took her shower as was customary, but as she stepped out from the curtain, she saw herself through the haze of steam in the mirror. Marry X reached out to wipe the steam away, and it parted as fog. She stepped though the fog, but for every step she took towards her hazy reflection, her reflection took a step away. She did not know how long she chased her shadow before she realized she was lost. Marry X looked around, fearing for a moment her reflection had fled and left her alone, and in that moment she found herself facing her mirror image. In that moment, she saw those parts of herself trapped in the four rooms.
The Marry X who emerged from the fog was the same girl trapped in the four rooms, and the same woman in her reflection, and all of them the woman who stared at the mirror. She turned her eyes to the sun, and in this way the sun and mortal eyes saw what lay in the four rooms. The labyrinth vanished in the glimmer of a tear and the ghosts of the dark things and the past troubled the house of four rooms no longer.
When the land was newborn and the gods were still young, monsters lived in the world. Before life and light, there was only the ocean, and those creatures of the ocean which came before light and life: made of the dark, these things had no life in them. When the ocean made land, the dark things came up from the ocean to claim the land. And when the gods made light, the dark things despised it, and made to undo the light. And so when the gods and the ocean made life, this was the enemy of the dark things. Thus the dark things sought to undo and corrupt all the gods and the ocean brought forth.
This was before the great furnace was set in the sky to drive away the dark things, so that it was only gods and life’s light which stood against them. In these days of long ago there was no sky. Around the land was the ocean, as well as above. The dark things were numerous and powerful, and they killed many gods, and corrupted all they touched.
The gods knew their numbers would dwindle and vanish if the dark things had their way, and they knew they must stop the spread of the dark things terrible corruption before still more of the gods fell. Thus when any god fell to the dark things, the other gods would strike its head from its body, and in this way no god would be corrupted. And for every dark thing they felled, they would strike off its head as well.
Some gods were immortal, and these gods would be born anew from their own heads. As for those gods who were not immortal, the other gods would bury their heads in the land. In each skull of the gods, they would plant a seed. The skulls of the dark things, too, were treated in this manner, buried with a seed. Great trees grew from the heads of the gods, and they bore the fruits of knowledge and creation. Those seeds planted in the skulls of the dark things grew more slowly, for the trees there did not draw life from the dark things (as they did from the gods), but fed life into the corruption where once was the dark thing’s absence of life.
Those trees grown from the skulls of gods towered so high that they reached deep into the ocean above the land, and the light of knowledge in them drove the dark things away. Those trees grown from the skulls of the dark things did not tower so high, but they could not be cut down, or killed, and to touch them meant death for all any dark thing. As the trees of the gods bore the fruit of knowledge, so the trees of the dark things bore the fruit of life. The first of these fruits of life was a woman and, like the trees from which she was born, she could not be corrupted by the dark things, or killed, though her touch was not death. Still, they feared her, and she stood between them and the gods. In this way the gods lived in the shade of her tree.
Yet she was not happy. She looked to the ocean and wondered why it must stand on all sides of the land, and above it. She took the fruits of knowledge and creation from the trees of the gods, and she took the fruits of life from the trees of the dark things. First she planted the seeds of life, eating all the fruit, and from these seeds she grew all manner of birds. She ate the fruits of knowledge, and in this way she learned to speak with the birds of the seeds of life.
“Take these seeds of knowledge,” she said to the birds, “and these seeds of life, and plant them all amongst the trees of the gods and the dark things.” The birds carried off the seeds of life and knowledge and planted them all throughout the trees of the gods and dark things. When the seeds were planted, the woman poured the water of life over each one, and a tree immediately began to grow.
Each tree which grew up in the great forest was made of knowledge and life, and the leaves of the trees filled up the ocean above the land. “Because you helped plant my forest,” the woman said to the birds, “it shall be your dwelling place, and you shall be able to fly to the highest leaves where no other living creature may reach.”
The birds from the seeds of life flew about the highest reaches of the trees, and therein built their nests of light and life and knowledge. So high and thick were the nests and branches that the ocean above the land was entirely obscured. “Here,” said the woman to the gods. “No dark things will come from the ocean above the land to trouble you.”
The tops of the trees were called the sky, and the forest where the gods dwelt was called the world. In time there would be more life, and more light, and more land, but above the sky is still the great ocean which has always existed, and the dark things dwell there to this day.
In a cove on the shore of the lands to the distant west and far north, in a time not long after the lady Night gave her eye away for the moon, there lived a girl named Jane. She lived by the ocean, and sewed nets. She lived off the boon of the waters, which provided all the necessities of life. It was the ocean who brought life and land into the world, and for those who would accept its gifts, it held nothing but generosity.
Jane wove clever nets. When she wished to eat the silver-backed fish, she wove a net that would draw forth their glittering forms. When she desired sea bass, she wove a net that would pull them from the depths. When she wished for shrimp or crab or lobster, her deft fingers would weave such forms as to entrap them as well. She never took more than she needed, and the ocean was always generous.
Thus she lived in the cove for many years, just Jane and the ocean, until a fog came from far across the waters. When the fog rolled over the waters of the ocean, Jane could not see to fish. She would have to wait for hours or days, and sometimes she would get very hungry. During these times when her hunger was greatest, Jane thought about taking more from the ocean, so she would not be hungry when the fog came, but she respected the ocean’s generosity too much. There was no telling when the fog would appear, and there would be no end to what she might take.
The fog would come creeping in, and steal away with her fish, and there was little she could do about it. She sewed her nets and cast them into the ocean when there was no fog, and mused to herself and to the waves. “What of this fog, dear ocean, which takes the food from me it does not need? What to make of a thing which is visible but which I cannot see, which I can feel but cannot touch?” The ocean had no answer.
Having no answer from the ocean, Jane did as she had always done. She wove a clever net, and waited for the fog to return. She waited for a night and a day and another night, and when the moon was full she saw the fog rolling in again. Jane cast her net, but the fog slipped through it. Once more she found herself waiting and hungry.
“The fog must be hungry too,” she said to the silent ocean, “but what sort of milk does an animal walking on silent paws seek?” As she stared at the moon above the fog, she found herself answered. She took up her heavy needle and thread, and she sewed another net. She made her net long and fine, longer and finer than any net she had woven.
When her net was finished, Jane cast it up into the sky, and filled it with stars. She carried the net of stars into her cove and filled the tide pools with the their light. Soon the pools of the cove glowed with white, cool light, and so Jane returned the stars to the sky, where they belonged.
Another day she waited, and another night, and a day again, until the fog returned once more. She cast no net this time, only waited as the fog crept in on silent paws. It came in gray and low, and curled up around the pools. It tried to touch them and tried to lap them up, but it was fog, and so it could not. The fog had to become a real shape with a real form. It had gray paws and oval eyes, with pointed ears and teeth. The fog crept in on silent paws, and knelt by the pool, and drank deeply of the stars.
Jane sat down by the fog and scratched it upon its head. “See now,” she said, “If you wish I will feed you all the fish you want, and all the stars in the sky. But please do not blanket the ocean anymore, leaving me hungry and cold.”
The fog agreed and troubled Jane no more. Thus from the fog came the cat, and the gray cat was ever after the king of all cats.
Long ago, before the Ocean’s daughter became the Ocean, before the first age of machines, when the fires of men still burned bright with the potency of the god’s furnace from whence they came, a woman named Simone lived in a high tower. The tower stood upon a long and toothed archipelago of rocks, and all around it was the ocean. Only at low tide was it possible for the woman to leave her tower, and at high tide she saw the ocean in all four directions.
The lady Simone often would wander the long, winding stairwells of her tower, having nothing to do but watch the ocean as its waves rolled in towards the shore, while some few crashed about the jagged foundations. At other times she would dance, but always alone, for no one else lived in the towers. She would sing, but only to herself, for only the ocean could hear her. She would write, and she would leave these missives to flutter from her window, to be washed away on the tide.
While the lady Simone watched the ocean, and sang for it, and wrote letters to it, the Ocean was watching her. He had little else to do, as he rolled his waves towards the shore, and crashed at the base of her tower. He listened to her sing, and wondered what siren lived in the tower. He read her letters, and wondered what poet lived in the tower. He watched her at the windows and wondered what beauty lived in the tower.
At last the Ocean could no longer bear to wonder. One evening, he rose up before the window where he saw the beauty and spoke. “You are more beautiful than all the gold of all the sunsets I have ever witnessed, and the woman who sings has a voice lovelier than any song ever sung to my honor, and she who writes speaks of greater depths than my deepest chasms. Please, I beg of you, let me make my introductions to all of these women. Let me give them my thanks for all their beauty, and with their permission, court one of them.”
The lady Simone bowed her head to the god and gave him leave to enter her home. “I am the lady Simone, and I shall introduce you to each fair lady of the castle. I am pleased to meet you, but the singer is very shy. You must promise to close your eyes and not even turn to see her while she sings to you.”
The patience of the Ocean is eternal, and he bowed his head to the lady Simone as she led him to the second floor of the tower. She left him there, and presently returned. While the Ocean stood, eyes closed and facing away from her, she sang to him most beautifully for hours on end. With music still in her voice, she came up behind the ocean and place a hand over his eyes. “Now, come, and you shall meet the poet. But she is the shiest of us all, and so you may only see her hands.”
This, too, the Ocean agreed upon, and the lady Simone led him up to the third floor, still covering his eyes. She left him facing away from the door and presently returned, carrying paper, quill, and ink. She secreted herself behind a heavy tapestry, so that only her hands were visible, and placed her implements of writing upon her desk. “Thank you for your patience. If you wish to turn around, you may.” The Ocean watched as her hands and fingers moved in quick and determined strokes, and over the following hour she wrote for him a fabulous story. “Now, wait here, for you shall speak once more with the lady Simone.” With these words, she slipped out of the room.
Presently the lady Simone returned, and led the Ocean up to the fourth floor. “My thanks,” said the Ocean, “but I still know no more of the other fair ladies than when I first beheld all your beauty, your enchanting voice, and your poetry.”
“Well,” said the lady Simone, “come and dance with me, and if you dance well I will tell you their names, or you may guess.” Thus the Ocean then took the lady Simone’s hand, and for hours and hours they danced, until at last the Ocean spoke again, “I know you by your beauty, and yet as you breathe I cannot tell you apart from the singer, and as your hand is enclosed in mine I cannot tell you apart from the writer. I beg of you, tell me their names.”
“I suspect there is no need,” said the lady Simone, “as you have the answer already. There is no other living man or woman in this tower save me.”
The Ocean was greatly pleased by this, and he clasped her hand between his. “My lady, I have wondered nothing for the past years but who this poet and singer and beauty might be, and now I find they are all of them one. As it is fed, my curiosity grows. I wish to know what it is to have such beauty and poetry and song inside me. I will grant you the whole ocean for a year if only, during that same time, you grant me yourself.”
“You are generous, but I do not think I could live as the ocean. Certainly not for a year. You are vast and I know of the dark things which lurk in your depths. If there is any other way I may aid you than that, please ask.”
The Ocean pondered this and spoke again, “There is, perhaps, another way. For one year, if I may have all of your dreams, you may have all of mine. Then I may know something of what it is to be you, and you will have all the dreams of the world.”
The lady Simone allowed as that this was acceptable, and on that night she and the Ocean exchanged their dreams.
That same night, as she lay down to sleep, the dreams of the Ocean rushed into her head. She tried her best to contain them, but she could not, and soon they flooded into her body, and escaped into the waking world. When the lady Simone woke the next day, her tower was awash in the dreams of the ocean. The memories of the world’s beginning, of the time before there was light or land or life, all these mixed together with the strange and exotic creatures from all his shores.
Every morning, she struggled to forget the memories of Ocean’s dreams, but they persisted, crawling through the tower, filling it, and overflowing it. She could no longer sing, or dance, or write. She ceased to watch the ocean, and had nothing else to do but to grasp her sanity tightly, as more and more dreams flooded from her mind, and the world became less and less a waking thing. Even the day and the night became twisted by her borrowed dreams, and time fell into a fugue from which it seemed she would never escape.
But Time more than anyone else will let nothing sully his honor. The year proceeded and, at its end, the Ocean rose before the lady Simone’s tower once again. She allowed him in, as she did not know if he was real or not, but soon she was assured that he was. She fell into his arms and said, “Please, take back all your dreams. You see how they have filled my home, escaped my grasp, and run amok. Please, take them back, for I cannot contain an ocean of dreams.”
The Ocean held her tight as she spoke, but as she begged, he began to shake, and when she looked to his eyes, he was crying. “Oh, lady Simone, how foolish I have been. I thought it nothing to exchange so small a thing as our dreams but here I find you in pain and me… Your dreams, lady Simone, are too large for me. They have filled me up and even now flood the lands around my borders. But do you see? If I cannot contain your dreams, and you cannot contain mine, what else is there to do?”
Thus the Ocean and the lady Simone comforted one another as best as they could. And that night, by unspoken accord, the lady Simone took the Ocean into her bed.
Upon waking, the lady Simone looked about in wonderment. The dreams of the Ocean no longer filled her house, and that night she had dreamed her own dreams, and not a single one overflowed into the waking world. She turned to speak to the Ocean, but he was staring about her bedchambers in the same bewilderment, until his eyes alighted on her, and understanding dawned.
“Ah, my fairest lady Simone, this is what has become of our dreams. My share has returned to me, and yours to you, and what we cannot share between us has been given over to another.” He placed a hand over the lady Simone’s belly. “Someday, your child will become the Ocean. She will share your dreams and my own, your beauty and my depths, your song and my voice. But until she is ready to return to me, she will be yours, and will inherit all her wisdom from her mother.”
And that is how the lady Simone dreamed the dreams of the ocean and, in so doing, become the ocean’s mother.