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I am tired, the boar’s tooth said

I am sorry for you, I answered

I was only hungry I didn’t mean to eat all those ry What beast is blaer? Only me He cut me up like breakfast and pulled all these creatures out of rier still, I eat for a hundred and forty-five, rowls in one hundred and forty-five skins, and I am so tired

I am sorry for you, I said in the depths of those hundred and forty-five He cut me up, too, like supper, and pulled children out of me, and I am tired, too

If I were ain, I would eat him, and be sated

Would you like me to help you?

Yes, oh yes

But surely you know this story Surely you danced it, or sang it, or heard it at your mother’s breast I am in everyone’s mouth these days, just as I was then

My brother saw to my body It is in a cave so water, and old stones, even now I caain to the lakeside, and this time no one put a hand to my chest, or a wail to my ear It was empty, and the heedled the stones No one came for me I was alone The dock had been painted The sandpipers seemed fat My hair et this ti ti dark water behind it

I came fro which is not a village nor a town nor a city I huddled in the low gray houses, cold and alone It was not pleasant, but it was not unpleasant At least he was gone, and I only moved my own eyes, and not one hundred and forty-five pairs of eyes I called out for my mother, but she did not answer I called out forcame at the ramshackle door

I opened the door, ray I do not knohat I expected, but what I saas a young woman whose body was covered in diamonds so that she had no skin which was not jewels, no pink or brown about her Her hair was a river of ice Around her were fourteen slips of light with no faces, like candles lit in a chapel

“I’irl said, and her voice was so farew up, you know They wanted to find you, they are drawn to you, Mother-moth, but they don’t really understand, they don’t really speak They are just light, light which knows it was once so else, but which cannot quite recall But you called theht them They did want to come”

My children glowed aroundpyre, smallest of the Manikarnika, folded me into her arms

There are so few of us who ever died, this is a sparse and lonely place But we are all together, and soht floats around us, like lairls are here, my Grass-Snake-Stars and my Copperhead-Stars and my Cobra-Stars, my loves and my oracles, and ander as we used to, our little cloister I am never alone

“Who built the houses?” I asked Diamond once She shook her head