James

It takes hours for James to hear the story. The group of children and teenagers—twelve in this tent, part of a larger band—is digressive and rowdy. They continually interrupt each other, each wanting to be the one to tell some particular beloved episode. There is a kind of archetypically childish, sleepover-party atmosphere to the telling that clashes both with the grimness of the story and with the fact that three of the teenagers have guns trained on him the whole time, as they have since the little girl named Selp led him back to this place where her people have pitched camp. Several others, though unarmed, say nothing and spend the whole time staring intently at him from the back of the tent.

The story itself is monstrously complicated and contains many episodes which seem to be near-repetitions of one another. The group has clearly preserved its history orally—everyone in the tent, with the possible exception of the non-speaking members in the back, seems to know it by heart—and there are what seem to James, anyway, like clear indications that numerous events have been conflated or duplicated. But then, it’s not like he’s any kind of anthropologist. He wonders if there’s anyone in the Sphere who is.

Obscuring things even further is the fact that he and these children do not share a language and so he can only understand them via the animatic link. They seem to take this in stride, especially the older ones, and after a while he becomes used to concepts flowing across to him as they speak, so used to it that he forgets that they are speaking words he does not know. But his own pneuma’s attempts to crystalize their concepts into English are unreliable. He keeps hearing, again and again, the word yawning, as in a yawning hole or abyss. Is this some concept of primordial importance to the children, or merely a quirk of the animatic link technology? James has no idea.

But in any case, the story, the mythology-and/or-history of this east coast North American tribe of warrior children, goes something like this:

In the beginning, after the completion of the last cycle (James is not sure what this means), Iah chanted Himself into being by reciting the Thunder Words. There was a time before Iah, but not a time before the Thunder Words, because there can be no time before the Thunder Words. But the Thunder Words began to chant themselves and spun into being a being chanting them, and that being was Iah.

And Iah was vast and roiling and yawning. His bulk sprawled across the utter darkness left in the wake of the last cycle. And Iah’s first thought was dissatisfaction with His vastness and the way He stormed and raged in every part of His body. (Descriptions of Iah’s body are generally vague and it is not clear if His form is human in shape, but virtually every description likens Him to a storm.) And Iah wanted there to be small things in the new world.

But He knew that small things could not survive in the heat and chaos of His yawning form. So He made a great yawning plain to insulate His form from the rest of the new world. And He chanted the Thunder Words again, very, very carefully, to form tiny smooth things which did not roil or yawn like storms. And these things were children and there were ten billion of them dotted across the plain, and they lived in harmony, eating the fruits and frolicking with the animals, which Iah made not with the Thunder Words, but in the same process by which He made the yawning plain. (This metaphysical point was driven home in a long exegesis, of which the animatic link could translate little.)

Among the children there were two who were Iah’s favorites: a boy named Selm and his sister, Herm. Because they were Iah’s favorites, Iah let them live near a deep yawning well in the plain. The best fruits grew around this well, because the well was an unbroken pipe leading through the depth of the plain down to Iah Himself, and Iah’s yawning roiling form catalyzed the growth of strange and beautiful fruits with flavors that could be found nowhere else. And Iah had told Selm and Herm never to peer into the well, and He trusted Selm and Herm as much as He trusted Himself, because they were the best things He had fashioned with the Thunder Words besides His own form.

But one day Selm said to Herm: “The world is boring. There is nothing here for us but eating fruits and running across the plain, again and again. Every day is the same as the last. Iah assured us that we were His favorites, and yet we live this monotony, this mockery of His divine chaos. Can you abide that, sister?”

And Herm told Selm: “We are small and Iah yawns; it is not for us to question Him.”

And Selm told Herm: “I am going to the edge of the well and peering in. You may follow me, sister, or you may stay here with these placid animals and these motionless fruits.”

And Selm ran off to the edge of the well. And Herm wept, but she loved her brother, and could not bear the thought of not sharing the fate, however terrible, that yawned before him.

And brother and sister stood at the edge of the yawning chasm and peered in, and a force pulled them in, past untold miles of darkness, into blinding light. And in that light they felt the core of Iah, which was the Thunder Words.

And Iah knew that there was no going back, and that the small creatures would become larger, and that Thunder would shake the plains. And Iah wept, and placed His favorite brother and sister back on the plain by the well. And they slept, exhausted, for five days and five nights.

And when they awoke the fruits were all shriveled and dried up. But they did not mind, for they felt no hunger: they were filled with an unspeakable, a yawning energy. They shook and trembled and grew in size. Herm began to bleed from her loins and Selm began to pour semen from his.

They were confused and many forces warred within them. Herm said to Selm: “you are a brother to me, and yet something more.” Selm said to Herm: “you are a sister to me, and yet something more.” They felt ashamed of their transgression and ashamed of what they had broken, of their broken bodies, of the warring forces that raged and impelled them towards contradictory acts. And from their yawning shame and inner chaos was born a great storm, which raged across the plain, casting rain and thunder and destruction wherever it went. And although the ten billion children ran for cover, not a single one survived. Only Herm and Selm were left.

And because Herm and Selm held the Thunder Words within them now they were able to chant into being a new race of children. But Iah, with yawning anger, refused to dignify this new race with the grace of His own creations; He cursed them to contain the Thunder Words, like Him and their parents. And so every child from this moment onward carried the Thunder Words within them and gradually began to be filled with storm and chaos which they, lacking Iah’s yawning size and divine fortitude, could not control.

And then a terrible age dawned. The children of Herm and Selm grew one by one into hulking monsters who fought and clawed at one another, unleashing storms as they did so that felled millions. Iah, in overwhelming disappointment, closed off the well and secluded Himself from the world.

(There followed here numerous stories of battles between armies of monsters, catalogues of generals and their forces, extensive descriptions of the storms conjured by each battle and their death tolls. James cannot keep the many stories straight. The numbers are all fantastic: billions of combatants, millions of deaths.)

These were the days of the Becoming, who turned into the Become, the monsters. But one day a Becoming named Murd thought to herself: must I become a monster? Murd noticed the yawning void within her, noticed the tornadoes that flowed from her as she Became. And she said to herself: must I fling these storms against my enemies, and against innocent children? Or can I capture these storms and make of them fruits and harmless animals, and recreate the plain in the days of Herm and Selm?

And Murd buried herself in study and developed arts known to no one else but Iah, and learned how to tame storms. And so she made a place in which the Becoming tamed their storms and made fruits and animals of them, and did not turn into monsters, but only into strange hulking things like large children.

And Murd’s people broke the stalemate among the monsters, for only Murd’s people knew how to harness storms. But something soon became clear to Murd: only the Becoming could conjure storms. In the Become, like Murd herself, the Thunder Words lay dormant. So Murd knew what she had to do: she sent her forces across the plain and stole all the children and all the Becoming.

(Again, at this point there is a great profusion of extremely similar narratives: Murd conquering, one by one, an extensive list of nations. Some of the tellers seem to trace their ancestry back to one of these nations in particular, and thus to invest particular interest in their variation on the tale.)

Through the veil that separated Him from the skyside of the plain, Iah felt Murd’s iniquity. He opened the veil, for the first time in many centuries, and the full brunt of His yawning fury poured through the well into the skyside of the plain. At that time there was only one nation left unconquered by Murd, the nation of Ab, and the battle was greatly confused by the storms unleashed by Iah. Many on both sides died, and Murd retreated, terrified by Iah’s yawning fury, to her stronghold.

In Murd’s stronghold the Becoming were shut up in pens and their minds toyed with until the Thunder Words within them kindled and storms burst from them. The children were coddled until they began to Become; then they too were put in the pens. Iah, disappointed in His creations, recreated the veil and retreated into seclusion on the other side of the plain. But not before reciting to the nation of Ab His desires. And from this time, yawning millennia ago, to the present day, the nation of Ab has carried on, eluding capture by Murd’s stronghold, awaiting the foretold time when Iah pierces the veil once again and unleashes His holy yawning fury upon the iniquity of Murd’s stronghold.

The children, this nation of Ab, were astonished by the pillar of light that appeared over the Atlantic when the Sphere reintegrated. Apparently, it resembled the descriptions of the fury of Iah pouring out of the well when Murd tried to conquer Ab so many thousand years ago. And although James looks to them like a “Become”—hence the guns—they sense that he is different, that he is not trying to poach them to serve as storm churns in Murd’s stronghold. Everything is different now, they feel. Excitement is in the air.

They end the telling with a song, bounding along with a playful and wistful melody. James has no idea whether the animatic link has rendered it with anything approaching accuracy. But what he hears, if rendered in words, would go something like this:

Bless Iah, whose fury is overflowing!

Bless Iah, whose essence is the essence of the tornado!

Bless Iah, yawning roiling burst of violence!

Iah, in your vast yawning form is remembered every one of our dead sisters.

Iah, in your vast yawning form is remembered every one of our dead brothers.

Iah, only your vast yawning form in all its fury can do justice to the millennia of misfortune wrought by Murd and her kin.

Iah, we dance in the rain and wind you pour upon the plain, which reminds us that your form is yawning chaos.

Iah, we beseech you to bring yawning chaos upon the children of Murd.

Iah, we are yours at the eye of the storm.