The Meat Tree by Gwyneth Lewis Page B

the VR? The story takes on a life of its own. A death of its own.
    And whose bodies are behind the tale? I look, but I can’t find Math or Gwydion, except in the layer of tricks. The narrative has entered an entirely new phase, in my body and Nona’s and I feel that sight – realm of magicians – is now a liability. This chapter’s written in blood, which has its own plots.

    She
    As does time. We sit at dinner and gaze at each other. The hunter’s unafraid of waiting and takes pleasure in letting things develop in front of him, without interference. I feel myself unfurl.
    He smells me.

    He
    What if everything up to this point has been a distraction? A cover story to lead us away from what really happened here? And what if that was a battle between meat and magic? The body and imagination?

    She
    He’s a man used to reading the air for clues of an animal. He kept the stag’s scent glands, which he cut out carefully, to help him with hunting. He knows how to hide in the subtle forest of smells.

    He
    And what if Nona’s being eaten alive by this myth? I need to get back to her, but Math and his talking keep me at court.

    She
    No need to delay, when things take place in their proper time.
    He comes to me like an idea and in the darkness we know the same laws. I lean backwards and let the bees of kissing come to me, their parabolas making a fountain that falls back into a basin. My suitor claims the pollen of a nuptial embrace. Labellum, proboscis, bristle and saddle strain to get closer. He feels the silk of my skin, is not afraid to tear the folded pedicle up, it straightens like a spring. I’m rich as an orchid under him. My new lover’s a guest at the nectary whose scent makes a conjugal tent above us.
    And the shadow beneath us is Lleu’s death.

    *

    She
    He breathes me in. The following day I won’t let him go.
    He stalks me, the way a hunter should, every day a little closer. He pays me the compliment of hunting me blind, using only the senses of hearing and smell.
    Second night, deeper, he feels me plunging down into the cold earth, seeking out moisture in the dark. Tendrils are a matter of principle, greeting the roots of trees like old friends, dancing with the molecules of birds decayed in the humus. I keep him with me another night.
    Then he drinks me fully because he sees how flowers are meaningless in themselves apart from the seed and the falling leaf. The hunter loves me for how I was in bud and for my future descent into dead leaves and litter. And so we talk about how to kill Lleu.

    *

    He
    With Math I learn nothing. At court, everything’s going well for Math. He’s there with his new wife, Goewin. He has a new footholder, a gorgeous young maid, whose lap he uses now that the war’s over.
    I’m none the wiser about this case, except that I’m beginning to suspect that I should rethink the timescales involved. Myth is a shorthand for what happens over many generations. What looks, in the story, like a surreal event is in fact a hugely significant change in a society’s way of conducting itself. And in space, history means distance.
    From exactly how far away did this ship originate? Forget for a moment how it appears – an Earth vessel of a certain age. Close your eyes to the design, the period touches, the tiny details which date a vessel. No, Campion, think, for once, with a myth­ical mind.
    I scroll through the charts of stars I’ve memorised near to Earth. Corona Australis Nebula, five hundred years out, in the constellation Southern Crown. A smudged cirrus of debris and two bright eyes of new stars, where the radiation from explosions has cleared away the gas. It looks like an owl. Or the Pleiades, whose seven sisters are really a thousand or more. A blue light, Merope six hundred times more luminous than the sun.
    I try to remember the next stage further out. As a boy, I took pleasure in devouring these sky maps but