Part Two: Serpent Stories
“You want literal monster girls.”
“I mean, when you put it like that... yes. I guess so.”
“Damn, kid. I can't believe you done fucked so many human girls you're tryna hump girls with animal parts.”
“Fuck you.”
“Well, that's just rude,” he says, grinning. “You ever heard of the Rod of Asclepius?”
I nod, but feel inclined to say nothing more.
“What do you know about serpents?”
“Serpents are the Goddess,” I laugh “Snakes are a... convenient metaphor for the feminine Aspect. It is easy to imagine a woman as a snake during the coital act.”
“The coital act? Fuckin?”
I Shrug. “Especially if she's on top. But it's more effectual than that. Serpents are a dangerous creature. Often inane, even beautiful, charming and mysterious; it can be difficult, especially for the ignorant, to know the difference in a venomous and non-venomous serpent. They can strike in a blink, often with little to no warning. It can be necessary to be vigilant for and wary of them even when they are not around. But more than that, to Experiential spiritual practitioners—“
“Wizards?”
“By many better names, yes. But let's use the Siberian word Shaman. It feels comfortable. They say that when they meet her, the feminine Aspect, the Goddess, she reveals herself first as as serpent.”
“Be honest, kid—“
“No promises.”
“Hah. Have you? Seen her?”
“I've never seen anything like that. I've never seen... anything. Not in that sort of context.” I say this, still marveling at the change to his appearance, the light filling the tavern.
“What do you mean?”
“Visions. Delusions. Prophecy. I have never experienced the Divine in that way. Maybe I've just never experienced the divine.” I chuckle a little, and don't really know why. Then look at him, peering into the golden glow of his face. “You know it when you're dealing with the Other. That's what they say, people who've done it – the stories. But you're just a tavernmaster.” I have to resist the urge to ask, What do you know? “You can be shown them during meditation. There are lots of ways. But the best way is through Soma. Or Ambrosia. I could give it 1000 names, I feel like – a substance, granted by the gods to mortals to make them immortal or gods themselves. The Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. And the Serpent is the ancient priestesses who used to brew and administer the sacrament.”
I'm looking at the tavernmaster when I hear myself giving voice to my thoughts, like reading a message on a teleprompter for the first time.
“But this was hundreds, often thousands of years ago. The Romans, with the advent of Christianity, crushed the Dionysian cult – maybe the last to perform this sacrament? I don't know. So much is lost. So much was diluted by the time the historical record reaches us. What little of it can be said to reach us at all. Lost, deep, in the swamp of history. Stamped out by ordered societies. By the Church and the Roman nobility and every other System in the world. There are people who still remember those ways. Not all of them the same way or with the same substances.... You know – When I was a boy, I went through a Visionary ceremony.”
“How did that go?”
I shrug. I didn't see anything. I puked a lot.”
He laughs.
“So, no. I've never seen The Goddess – not as a serpent – not at all. If I've met any god, I don't know it. And you're supposed to know that kind of thing. … You think the gods ever used to just... hang out among us? Like, they got tired of being a god, so they come down here to live common lives – as farmers or merchants or—“
“Tavernmasters?”
I regard him with a half-grin. “That could explain some things about you.”
Slow blink. “Yeah? Like what?”
I laugh drunkenly. “I don't know. Just trying to be funny.”
“How many tavernmasters have you known, kid?”
“How many? I'm not sure. Dozens?”
“Not how many have you met. Not how many taverns and inns have you spent time in— How many of us, Hospitaliers for lack of better word, have you taken the time to know?”
I meet his eyes. “None.”
“Hm. Well, we don't exactly have a creed, like other societies. But we do have long memories. We would. We're not storykeepers, Shaman, but part of what we do keeps us connected to that oral storytelling tradition you talk so much about.”
Do I talk about the Oral Storytelling Tradition?
“I wonder where you would put someone such as I in your little Triangle theory. With you, I wonder? Or on the outside lookin in?”
Triangle theory?
Had I said aloud my ideas that society is a triange – Rulers, Priest, People? I can't remember.
“We are not the Rulers,” he says. “I am no Priest. But neither am I Common, eh? We live, most of us, outside the borders of society, at the crossplaces between places.”
He falls contemplatively silent.
“Do you believe in magick, Rob?”
I could hear the K in his tone. I could not discern whether I should answer truthfully or not, however.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean magick. Crossroads. Liminal spaces. Do you believe in the power, the natural energies of the world, the Cosmos?”
“Why don't you just tell me what you want to tell me? Whether I already agree with you or not, you feel the need to say this. You can neither change what I think nor form your opinion around mine. Speak what you will or don't. Just, please – don't bore me.” I laugh; but he isn't joking.
“Not sure which I'm more offended about: What ya said, or that ya waited two years to tell me I bore you.”
I shrug
“Hmm. The world is older than we think. A long, long, looooooong time ago, before the stories you think you know (Jus cus you know em doesn't mean you understand em)— There was gods in those days. Beings we would understand to call gods at any rate. Back then, they lived in this world the way we do. But, eventually, they got tired of doing their work for themselves. Imagine – bein immortal, doin the same thing, day in, day out, forever. You can only raise so many children with so many different women before it's time to set your mind to something new.
“So them gods, they got together – now it might've only taken two, or it might've been a village, or it might've been all of em workin together. I don't know. But they birthed the first healthy human baby boy that way. Maybe it was only one of em. I like to imagine they made bunches of em. But the gods didn't make that human baby to love and care for like good parents. No. They had generations of grandbabies they'd already done that with.
“No. Man was made to glorify his gods.
“I don't wanna bore you, kid, and this ain't what I wanted to talk about any way. When the gods was in charge, Man was safe. He had a warm place to sleep, food for eatin, and work to keep his back strong. But that Order was not to remain. Chaos came, as it nearly always does, and it destroyed what we had.
“The gods – most of em – left. Or were killed in the conflict. Man was left on his own. He was scattered across the face of the world. And without his gods to remember the old ways, he forget em and their languages. Men came to see one another not as one being, but as the gods saw one another: by their differences.
“The greatest Darkness was an Age of death, war, famine, disasters... the face of the world was changed. ...That's what my father said. He said that we do this, tavernmasters, innkeepers, restauranteurs – we dedicate our lives to hospitality because it was the first Decree the gods who emerged to lead their people from that Darkness gave us: Help one another.”
“Did your father really tell you all that?”
He looked at me, unflinching. “Yes.”
He didn't seem to be lying. Why didn't I believe him?
“I don't know anything about your father, but he certainly has an interesting opinion of the past. A noble ideal to follow. You do this only to help people?”
He laughs. “What do I get out of it? Do I want to be the richest man in town like the Executioner? And loved about as well? Selflessness is its own goal, its own reward. But no – before you can ask – I'm not always good or selfless. Sometimes—“ He shoots me a glance. “Sometimes I have to answer to a higher power, too.”
That's a weird thing to say. I shrug it off.
“Are you a liar, Tavernmaster?”
“Everyone lies, kid. Now just be quiet a minute and let me tell you this story.
“The Captain – same one who brought the girl, that I bought that food n drink from, he told me a story that had me instantly thinkin o you. You know us tavern masters, we gotta talk to people that come into town, news n the like – where they been, sights they seen, that sorta stuff. But ever since I first met you— You remember the first thing you asked me when you was awake and had eaten? The only thing you asked me?”
I don't, but I nod anyway.
“Have you ever seen or heard of anything strange happenin in town. I said, 'You're the strangest thing I ever seen,' and 'That question's the strangest thing I ever heard.'” He laughs at the memory, and I am beginning to recall. “Turns out, I think you went around askin everyone that same question.”
I nod. “Never got an interesting answer, either.”
“I'm sure not. Ghosts n bumps in the night is what you made your early livin fixin for people, n I'd bet didn't a single spirit or boogedeeboo show itself. But, hey, ya helped people not be afraid o their homes n their beds in the dark. But, anyway, I'm talkin to this captain, n I dno't know why, but I thought o you. So I ask him, I said, 'You ever seen or heard of anything strange in your travels?'
Now, sailors is a different breed o person. Superstitious unlike any other kind o man. So I expect he might wanna fill my ears with tales o sea beasts n mermaids n the like. But he looks at me, n just as serious as can bee, his face gone all pale— N mind ya, he's an Easterner, all right? One o them Saracens, no doubt, though I ain't never known one o them to trade with no Christians. Pirates're pirates, right? Well, he weren't no pirate, no barbarian. Just as civilized as you'n me, n spoke Genoese like he was born to it. N when I say he went pale, boy, you better believe I mean it. He says,
“'You know what? I have heard somethin recently.' And I just knew I done right in askin, so I pour him another beer. Then he goes on to tell me aobut how he was stopping at this little island out there in the Aegean, right? He didn't tell me where, n after hearin the story I can imagine he didn't want nobody chasin the best he heart about.”
“And yet here you are telling me.”
“Weren't you just pissin n moanin about wantin somethin better'n Genoa? A man like you, his heart dies without adventure, without a monster to track down, a dragon to slay, a mystery to solve – a quest to go out questin after! Now, dammit – this ain't the time to turn into a chatterbox. Just let me tell the tale without ya getting bored.
“The Captain, he paints for me a picture o bein on this idyllic island, sittin with the townsfolk in their taverna, enjoyin the afternoon turnin to night with cups o ouzo – n listenin to these men tell the sorts o tall tales men tell when they known each other forever n got cups o good drink in their hands. N that's what he says he think they is at first, when talk turns to snakes – tall tales. These men, farmers n herders, mostly, he figures – they start talkin about a great big snake a bunch of em been seein round the island.”
He pauses dramatically, and I take this as my cue to ask:
“How big was it?”
“Now, see, this si the part ya just ain't gonna believe. He says to me, 'I didn't believe em at first. One of em said he'd seen it and it was ten feet long and big aroud as your leg. Another said it was at least 20, and wider than your waist, and another, the last before all Hell broke loose, said he'd seen it in broad-ass daylight— Now, the others, they'd been guessin, see? Found tracks or maybe glimpsed it out of the corner of their eyes, right? But this man, an old farmer-type, grey hairs for a beard n streamin outta his nose n ears, he said he saw it clear as can be snatch up one o his full-grown cows in its mouth n carry it off just as happy as you please, like a puppy prancin off with a bone for gnawin.' Now, mind you, this is the Captain's words:
“He said it had to be fifty damn feet long. Two grown men could stand comfortably shoulder-to shoulder in that fuckin thing's maw!”
The tavernmaster laughs, and I exclaim:
“That's fuckin impossible!” But I'm laughing right with him.
“I know it,” the tavernmaster chortles. “That's what I said: Ain't no serpent ever got 50 feet long!”
“Aegean snakes don't get over five feet long!” I laugh. “Five feet is huge for an Aegean snake.”
“I know! What a monster that would be! And I never known a farmer not to know a measurment with his eye – definitely not so much as to mistake a five foot snake for a fifty-footer! But that's not even the craziest part of the story.”
For the record, Listener, the Titanoboa, a snake which went extinct some 60 million years ago, was approximately 40 feet long. At its widest point, an adult's shoulders would be a snug fit in its mouth. Today's Anacondas are only some 15 feet – and both were/are in South America – not the Aegean.
I'm shaking my head in frank disbelief, but as amused as I have been in years – maybe as many as seven of them.
“So, anyway, the Captain is having fun listening to all of this when a man suddenly stands up in the taverna. Instantly, he says, you could tell that the man wasn't one of em – a foreigner, right? And that somethin weren't right about him. Said he was too skinny, 'All skin and bones, and his clothes hung on him like a boy wearin his dad's pants n shirt.' His hair was too long n dirty n jutted out this way n that like it was his habit to ball his fists in it n yank, right? But it was his eyes where you could see the madness.
“The Captain said they was sunk in his head, dark as empty sockets, cept the eyelids was puffy n red like he'd been cryin – and there weren't no whites. Just angry bloodshot red all around them cobalt blues.”
I shudder a little, imagining the man.
“'He had the shrillest voice I ever heard from a man's chest,' The Captain said. 'Like he was shriekin from a horror he could never escape from.' You'll just have to imagine it. Not sure either of us wanna hear me attempt it.”
I chuckle, but my heart is in my throat.
“'You have to kill it!' He said he said. 'You don't understand what it is!' The other men start laughin at him. 'Relax, stranger,' one calls out. 'It ain't real. Just a story. And not the worst ol Philetas ever conjured up.' The men all laugh, but the stranger, his eyes jump between the men who had spoken earlier. None of them will meet his eye, either. Finally, he says, so low you can barely hear him: 'It's dangerous. More dangerous than you know. What happens when it comes for your sons – your daughters – for you n your wives? Will you believe me then?' All at once, they drown him out in capering laughter. Many even rise and dance round one another like the coils of a titanic serpent.
“'I've seen it. Up close. It's not just a serpent,' he screeches into the cacophony. 'Sure, it has serpent parts. But the top part is that of a woman. The most beautiful woman you ever saw. Tits like— But hands with razor claws and a mouth filled with fangs to put a lion to shame.'
“And that's it,” the tavernmaster says. “That's the whole story.”
The abrupt ending catches me off guard. But, I decide, That's how stories like this end.
“Wooooow,” I hear, and am astonished by, my astonishment. “A Lamia.”
“A what?”
“What the fuck do you think you're doing?”
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