dangers in life, the cats that stalked them and the snakes that when disturbed would strike and bite, had only their senses of smell and movement. Lyaa and her lover-neighbor used these senses they learned to good effect by watching the animals but also found themselves in the dream world in which the goddess taught them lessons about the waking world. Did the big cats dream also? Did the snakes? Could there be a goddess of cats and snakes?
That handsome fellow shook his head.
Lyaa touched him on the throat.
She agreed.
Lo and behold, they discovered one morning, early, when the air smelled of smoke, and the birds remained silent, that they each had slept with the same dream.
Yes, yes, yes, Lyaa showed him the picture in her mind and he looked and tilted his head as if he were in thought. And she could see the picture in his mind, yes, yes, she could.
This land was once no-land, lying on the bottom of a bitter salt-sea, no trees, let alone forests, only curling undersea shrubs, among which lived large flat-bottomed fish with eyes at the end of long tentacles, if they had eyes at all. Sea-snakes as long as the line of the horizon shimmied here and there on the pebbly floor of the sea while sharks as large as tall trees roamed with impunity, and now and then a broad-beamed swimmer—whales?—floated past, bigger than entire hillsides.
Yemaya, splashing silently with her tail, drifted in and among these creatures, hand in hand with her brother Okolun.
At that time the sea tasted of sulfur and sweet oxygen, a flavor like berries and tart stones, or the rank stink of a kiss when the other body has not yet digested the flesh of the other he has eaten.
Shssssssss…Ay!
Whale ate shark ate snake ate proto-flounder, all digesting all, and the least of the fish merely working its jaws as it itself became another’s meal, with a watery burp!
Okolun thought this was enormously comical.
He laughed and laughed, and his belly grew as he did so, and the noiseless sound of his laughter grew ten-fold and finally a thousand-fold—so it increased, and the sea-floor jiggled and tilted. He pointed to the comedy of meal-time and danced on the buckling ocean floor. Yemaya cocked her head at him and then took him by the hand.
“You’ve done it now,” she said. “There are powers here as great as yours, I feel them, though I don’t know what to call them or where they live. Inside the core of our world, where the fires boil and bubble and flow?”
She leaned over and gave him a more-than-sisterly kiss on the mouth.
Oh, the force below took the moment to burst open before them!
Stand back! Steam and undersea fire upshot straight to the surface and kept on going, even less deterred by air than it was by water.
Sister and brother looked at each other and instantly understood. Their father, a god beyond description, had decided to play some games in the molten sea beneath the salt-sea. Who could not bow to his power?
Some time later—a million years?—the sister and brother marveled at the mountain the father force had created, a tower that stooped above a green and all-spreading forest. So beautiful! Another couple of hundreds of thousand years went by—where was Yemaya during all this time? Amusing herself, swimming out to other planets to search for creatures who might accept her as their deity, but aside from some heat-worms who lived in the fumes beneath the surface of the ice on one of the moons of Jupiter, finding nothing. She accepted the fealty of the Ionian worms and returned to earth with a feeling of emptiness.
She arrived in this part of Africa, her old haunt, just as her father had decided to play around again with melted rocks and the earth’s storehouse of steam. Up blew a rain of rocks and ash, lava poured down the lip of the hot mountain like stew from a tipped pot, and she could see from afar the first couple, first woman, first man, first child, walking quickly and steadily across the plain to escape the
That handsome fellow shook his head.
Lyaa touched him on the throat.
She agreed.
Lo and behold, they discovered one morning, early, when the air smelled of smoke, and the birds remained silent, that they each had slept with the same dream.
Yes, yes, yes, Lyaa showed him the picture in her mind and he looked and tilted his head as if he were in thought. And she could see the picture in his mind, yes, yes, she could.
This land was once no-land, lying on the bottom of a bitter salt-sea, no trees, let alone forests, only curling undersea shrubs, among which lived large flat-bottomed fish with eyes at the end of long tentacles, if they had eyes at all. Sea-snakes as long as the line of the horizon shimmied here and there on the pebbly floor of the sea while sharks as large as tall trees roamed with impunity, and now and then a broad-beamed swimmer—whales?—floated past, bigger than entire hillsides.
Yemaya, splashing silently with her tail, drifted in and among these creatures, hand in hand with her brother Okolun.
At that time the sea tasted of sulfur and sweet oxygen, a flavor like berries and tart stones, or the rank stink of a kiss when the other body has not yet digested the flesh of the other he has eaten.
Shssssssss…Ay!
Whale ate shark ate snake ate proto-flounder, all digesting all, and the least of the fish merely working its jaws as it itself became another’s meal, with a watery burp!
Okolun thought this was enormously comical.
He laughed and laughed, and his belly grew as he did so, and the noiseless sound of his laughter grew ten-fold and finally a thousand-fold—so it increased, and the sea-floor jiggled and tilted. He pointed to the comedy of meal-time and danced on the buckling ocean floor. Yemaya cocked her head at him and then took him by the hand.
“You’ve done it now,” she said. “There are powers here as great as yours, I feel them, though I don’t know what to call them or where they live. Inside the core of our world, where the fires boil and bubble and flow?”
She leaned over and gave him a more-than-sisterly kiss on the mouth.
Oh, the force below took the moment to burst open before them!
Stand back! Steam and undersea fire upshot straight to the surface and kept on going, even less deterred by air than it was by water.
Sister and brother looked at each other and instantly understood. Their father, a god beyond description, had decided to play some games in the molten sea beneath the salt-sea. Who could not bow to his power?
Some time later—a million years?—the sister and brother marveled at the mountain the father force had created, a tower that stooped above a green and all-spreading forest. So beautiful! Another couple of hundreds of thousand years went by—where was Yemaya during all this time? Amusing herself, swimming out to other planets to search for creatures who might accept her as their deity, but aside from some heat-worms who lived in the fumes beneath the surface of the ice on one of the moons of Jupiter, finding nothing. She accepted the fealty of the Ionian worms and returned to earth with a feeling of emptiness.
She arrived in this part of Africa, her old haunt, just as her father had decided to play around again with melted rocks and the earth’s storehouse of steam. Up blew a rain of rocks and ash, lava poured down the lip of the hot mountain like stew from a tipped pot, and she could see from afar the first couple, first woman, first man, first child, walking quickly and steadily across the plain to escape the
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