She nods to the snow bear and the Arctic Cat on the dance floor, and the Red Fox, and the Egret, and the herd of Caribou, and suddenly her dance card is filled. No one comments on, though everyone notices, the conspicuous absence of bats. It is nighttime, after all, and the vessel for bats.
Shining from the corner are fragments of Rabbit, and Whooping Crane fledglings, and also in the gleam, one can see a soldier licking its hind leg. Sorrow is iridescent and the whole room is glistening. Human troops in turtle shells make their way to the fore. Their mothers accompany them wearing kidskin dresses — the softest dresses in the world — more soft than anything anyone has ever touched.
The Armadillo escorts some children across a floor festooned with exploding things. Above them flies the Gray Goose. The Grandmother appears and rubs her lucky rabbit’s foot, courtesy of the cat. Maybe the Girl with the Matted Hair will never see day again — she could live like this forever, she thinks, with the night creatures, protected. Love floods the room. A Reindeer nuzzles her; lichen silently grows on its hoofs.
The Bat is a gentle creature, it is true, and everyone casually scans the rafters. Inside the body of a mother, a small creature is lepping.
In the great swells of music, the Girl might be carried anywhere next. The Mantis, Archivist of Lost Mothers, takes the Girl’s hand and leads her to a clearing in the music.
In the clearing, the Grandmother from the North Pole in sealskin now stands. She bows deeply and says to the Girl in the Ermine Head that she has, as recently as yesterday, seen her mother. The girl peers at the Grandmother through her shining, ferocious Ermine eyes. It is a night of fear and awe, but also a night of unspeakable splendor, and it unfolds quickly now. First the Grandmother gives the Girl a living sled dog to hold. When the child is settled, the Grandmother continues. Your mother, she says, calmly and directly, is an Arctic Tern, who flies from Pole to Pole and back again, traveling the entire globe every year, twice. She sees now on her flights all there is to see. The Girl thinks her mother must be very tired by now. On the contrary, the Grandmother smiles. The Grandmother from the North Pole touches the Girl’s shoulder blades and feels the first inkling of wings. She has been watching you all this time.
With this news, a very deep sleep-like state overcomes the Girl, and her heartbeat slows to almost nothing. Because it is winter, her ermine head is thick and white.
Mother, she says, and she reaches her hand up toward the tern, who had materialized, and sure enough, the tern comes to her. How easy it all is. Though she is afraid, she knows, if invited, she would not hesitate to fly away with her. But before the Girl can give it another thought, the mother has swooped down and taken her child high, high up into the sky. From on high, she scans the floor for her white-maned father, who is little more than a speck. There he is in the distance, foxtrotting, nonetheless. His horse hoofs gleam in the moonlight.
How very much I love you, the feathered mother says through her beak. And how very lucky I have been to see you twice in every year!
Later when the Girl takes off the ermine head, her hair is not matted anymore.
And they fly like that for some time until the mother grows large and white like a stork, and carries the Girl for a moment longer, then opens her beak, and allows her to drop.
32. wings
THE JACKAL HAD returned. But it was okay, the mother said — it had not come for them this time. The activity that had once attended them had ceased. Perhaps they were no longer in transit. Perhaps they had now crossed the line, the line of accessibility; perhaps they were closed off now, the mother thought, sealed off — it was difficult to take in, but it was now how she felt. They had already been come for. Anubis had been the usher, the go-between, and had taken many shapes: coyote, jackal, bat. Silently he had walked between the shadows of life and death and lurked in the dark places. Perhaps they had crossed over, but if so, when, when had that happened?
Still, she could not help but think it — perhaps they were no longer in the in-between state.
IT WAS THE fluttering sound behind the walls of the house, or outside on a pure clear summer night — the flapping of unseen wings — that had once made it so hard to go on. Or the wing-beat that seemed to come from within her, and which she had always dreaded — that inward movement, that imperceptible fluttering. She wondered whether it was wrong to move without fear now, because anything could happen then.
ALL SHE COULD do was notice. Now the step into fearlessness was as easy as crossing the rabbit path. It was that absence of fear that would make it impossible to understand exactly what the bat exacted.
Sensate life was falling away. The mother could not help but notice and feel a tremendous gratitude. She was not far now.
TAKE THE CHILD, the mother whispers to the wolf, as you once took me. Ferry her across the divide now back into life. Initiate her into the world of grown up charms. How beautiful you are and how handsome; look at the stars in your fur!
The wolf’s eyes glistened sadly.
Help me. I’ve not much time.
THE BAT WAS an angel. The bat was a messenger. The bat, it is true, has an enormous capacity for poignancy — a marvelous creature — it has a true aptitude for geometry. All in all, it is a miraculous being.
The wind came up and they walked looking straight ahead and at no time from side to side. Behold, the bat says, and it begins its Annunciation. The mother is desperately trying to decipher what it says at this moment from the shape its mouth takes. And then, just like that and no one knows why, least of all the mother, she gives up trying and lets the bat sink back into its jibber and lets the revelation slip away.
Whatever metaphors the bat dragged and carried with it, it could no longer touch her. Whatever associations there might have once been slip from her as if off utterly smooth black wings.
EVERYTHING WAS HAPPENING so quickly and seemed now to be speeding up. The mother did not know why everything had to change; she just knew that it did. Things were changing even when they seemed not to be.
THE MOTHER PICTURES a wondrous girl. One day she will awake and the child, gigantic, beautiful beyond belief, will stand before her, a girl capable of anything, towering impossibly in just a few years’ time, surpassing even the height of the Spiegelpalais.
Pupa is from the Latin for puppet, and from puppet, or young girl, comes an animated doll-like puppet creature. Pupa is the life stage of some insects undergoing transformation. The Romans also noted that when you looked into the center of the eye, you saw a small doll-like image of yourself reflected, and this was called the pupil. Look, the child said, shining a light into the Grandmother’s eyes.
THE CHILD HAD a plan. She would place the Grandmother in salt for forty days. Then she would soak her in molten resin and preserve her in perfumed oils. Then she would wrap her in linen. After that, she would put her in her kayak and climb in beside her.
THE GRANDFATHER FROM the North Pole says that the ice is a dynamic, living entity. The Grandmother says mush, and eight huskies obey. Frosty Boy leads the pack. Visibility is so low you can’t see from flag to flag. Whiteout conditions, someone manages to call, above the snow!
From the gleaming depths, the Grandfather from the North Pole sits bolt upright and bellows in an arresting baritone:
Who has made me rise
unwillingly and slow,