[P] thus spoke zarathustra. [catacombs]

[Adonai]

A D O N A I

T

he maid with the lake-blue eyes lifts my sleeping robe from my shoulders and I try not to think about the magnitude of what I am attempting as she moves around me, dressing me, washing me, executing perfectly the dance she has done for a hundred mornings.

“Do you wish to eat, prince?”

“I think... it wise,” I say, my smile thin, yet it is enough to please her. A boy from the kitchens steps through the door bearing a plate of figs sliced with surgical precision; with effort I bring one to my lips, chew, swallow, do not taste, do not savour. I think I used to like figs. I think that is why she fetched them for me. She had been one of Miriam’s in the time before my illness. She had known me before. 

That is important.

Mechanically, I eat. In this way, the plate lightens. In this way, I will not risk hunger when I step into the mouth of the catacombs. I have gained enough awareness of my condition, by now, to know how to map my weaknesses like an astrologist charts constellations.

Outside the caravan is waiting, its roof of buttery silk snapping in the updrafts of dawn. The footman dozes lightly by the door. As I cross the tiles he snaps to attention, guilt clouding his face before he realises that it is only me, fallen Adonai, that I have called his caravan as a palanquin to take me from the courtyard flanking my room to our sprawling, labyrinthine gardens, like I have done so for a hundred mornings.

“Greetings, prince! D'you know, the camellias bloomed. Passed them as I came.” Silent, almost reproachful (when had I cared about camellias? when had flowers become currency for conversation?) I look towards the girl, the maid, my hesitation belying my uncertainty. I had not been sure last night and I know now that I will never be sure; nursed awake, nursed asleep, surety slips from the mind neat on the heels of agency.

My lake-eyed maid bends towards the flower footman’s ear and his watery eyes blink slowly, once, twice, into a bewildered nod. Today is not one of my hundred mornings. I catch the trailing end of her murmur: “... catacombs.” And I am quelled.

As I step up into the caravan I am stopped by a quiet “Adonai.” I turn. Her cheeks pale instead of pink; she is bold, but not out of line. We are familiar enough with each other now, in our hundred mornings, that she reaches out to smooth back a lock of my hair and pushes a dark cloak into my chest. At the centre slept a dagger snagged hot off the racks of the armoury. I would know this later. It is a testament to the degree of my decay that I had not thought of it myself.

Her eyes flick up to mine. “All will be as you wish, prince.” 

All will be as you wish. I laugh to drown out my desperation. “And if my brother asks, tell him—” Reasons ranging from the pedestrian to the withering dance in circles across my tongue. I am in no mood for either. Dawn spills red across my cheeks and my smile yearns to be full. “—That he ought not to miss me too much.”

She smiles, shy, like I am sharing with her a secret, and I know she will tell Pilate nothing.

—
I have a naturally pious stare, and I have always known how to use it. 

Only come looking if I haven't emerged by sunset, I had said to the footman, meeting his incredulous smile evenly until he took from my eyes what he wanted. It was a madman's jaunt and he knew it, and he knew I knew it too. Yet from my steady gaze he had seen—or thought he had seen—a faith bordering on the naive, on the zealous: I would find what I wanted, and I would emerge by sunset. All he had to do was wait.

Cheerily he tipped his cap in acknowledgement. I'll be right here, right here waiting. You come on back now. Camellias were waiting for me. At least he could not be faulted. All he had done was believe.

When I look back he has driven the caravan under a jutting rocky appendage that, miraculously, casts a strong, cooling shadow. The sun is enthroned in high noon. Pure rays of sun, cosmic beams, shine down and strike upon the gaping, sand-melted-into-glass crust of the hole that descends into catacomb. Light fractures in a thousand directions. It is breathlessly bright, at the entrance to hell. The cloak that laces like a noose around my neck slips and slides with my sweat. Breathlessly bright, and breathlessly hot.

All will be as you wish.

My footing betrays me as I edge towards the mouth; quickly—as quickly as I am able—I throw my weight to another hoof. I am already shaking. Limited mobility, limited ability, a madman's jaunt, I tell myself, and my smile stumbles towards fullness. 

I do not remember how I make it to the bottom, only that I do, and that as my pupils gape and gape in the blackness, as I fumble to light my torch, that there is a shape at the end of the dark. Pale and gaunt. Like me.

Perhaps it is me. Perhaps I have already found what I came here to find. All I know is, as I step warily towards the shape, my unlit torch clattering to the ground: I don't remember a time I have ever felt more alive.





It was not Death, for I stood up,
And all the Dead, lie down -
It was not Night, for all the Bells
Put out their Tongues, for Noon.

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