Silence! Silence!
Listen!
Once
there were two sisters.
Regal, entitled to thrones both.
One bright, radiant, shining, buoyant, seated above;
the other dark, hidden, shadowed, sinking, seated below.
The one greedy, drawing up into herself all that is.
The other spare, taking only that which is given.
The stories of the one are known and famed throughout the worlds
for she aimed to take all stories into herself as well.
The stories of the other, however, are mostly lost,
and those that survived did so because they also tell of the one.
But the other had many adventures and performed many feats alone.
This is one of those stories.
Hail Ereshkigal, Queen Below!
You are holy and sweet is your praise.
You are fair and modest in your consumption
though all are eventually consumed and come to you.
You speak a word that is silence and it eats all sound, eats the ears that would hear it.
You rule the no-place someplace.
Hail Ereshkigal, Queen Below!
You are holy and sweet is your praise.
You are compassionate, just, and powerful,
a keeper of the sacred silences.
A warden of the soul guests.
A sponge that soaks up and cleans away pain, trouble, and discomfort,
leaving behind only peaceful emptinesses.
Hail Ereshkigal, Queen Below!
You are holy and sweet is your praise.
Your true name is unpronounced for you are tongueless.
You cannot be tempted by the flesh for you are fleshless.
Your rotting eyes spy the spoil on the meat.
Hail Ereshkigal, Queen Below!
You are holy and sweet is your praise!
You dwell in the desert sands (speaking is forbidden there).
and in the glades of the leafless trees.
You make your humble throne in the rock caves
and your royal palace is also there.
Hail Ereshkigal, Queen Below!
You are holy and sweet is your praise!
All roads pass through your realm
All souls eventually do you homage
All flesh feeds your birds’ appetites.
Hail Ereshkigal, Queen Below!
You are holy and sweet is your praise!
I will speak one of your stories:
Once, the Queen of Hell got bored.
(Hell being a perfectly comfortable and hospitable place,
but chiefly a collection of emtpinesses
with little for diversion or amusement.)
The Queen is a good queen,
that is to say, she is good at queen-ing,
But ruling is hard work and lonely.
She surveyed her domain and said to herself,
“Am I not Queen? A slave stays bound to his master’s house never to leave.
But I am master of the house of the dead.
And I am due a vacation!”
So she commanded one of her guests, “lend me your garment!”
and buttoned herself into that fine fine soul.
Once dressed,
she packed up for herself a picnic basket
with anything she might need on her journey
and ascended.
At each of the seven gates, she further dressed for travel,
donning her gown of pale feathers
her ring of darkness and fire
her veil of gossamer
her pearl diadem
her lantern of captured moonbeams
her crêpe parasol
and she swallowed a blind serpent for a tongue
(for she is tongueless and her true name is unpronounceable).
Each of the seven gates she locked behind her with her fingerbone,
and sealed with a royal kiss.
So for a time, Hell was not admitting visitors
but went instead to visit the wide wide world.
The dead tell tales of their former lives,
but much of those memories fades quite quickly,
What remains is connections and relationships,
Who you loved, who you hated
Your granddaughter’s giggle
Your mother’s disapproval.
But the taste of lemon-honey-buttered pancakes
the snow-covered road home from hockey practice
where you buried that class ring
… these are harder to recall.
So the Queen was delighted to once again meet the fullness of the World
at whose wonders the dead could only hint
and for whose comforts yearn.
The mossy roots of the Tree disgorged her onto the loam.
On her emergence, the Queen surveyed the world
and my it really was full of things:
Spiky grasses, cold wet creek stones, cacophonous starlings
gravity,
object permanence
the convenience of telephones
but also ice cream delivery trucks,
waiting in line for concert tickets,
smog.
“Souvenirs!” she reminded herself,
and picked up a fluffy dandelion seed
a popsicle stick
a ticket stub
and stowed them in her picnic basket.
And she set forth to wander and enjoyed the wandering
letting her feet take her where they would.
She travelled through the forest
and compared it to a city park,
to a grain field,
to a pasture.
She skipped through five acres of lavender
revelling in the scent released from crushed blooms.
She toured a metropolis
making a game out of keeping always to the dark.
She decorated her parasol with poppies and chrysanthemums
stretching its little shadow around her
to keep away the oppressive sunshine.
She stepped slowly down into the docks at noon
and kept walking down into the sea’s shelf.
Seahorses darted through the gaps in her bones
and small fishes wove in and out of the loops of her hair.
The weight of the waves swallowed her laughter.
So the Queen of Hell wandered
and let her feet take her where they would, but
being as the feet belonged to the borrowed garment
the feet themselves knew where home was
and how to get there from here
and eventually the Queen turned up on the doorstep of number 227.
“I should say hello,” thought she
and being polite and well mannered
in the way of royalty
she knocked before entering.
The master of the house opened the door
and nearly had a heart attack.
He fell to his knees
for here was a ghost come back from the dead!
Someone ages and ages gone
bones and the shimmery memory of flesh
knock knock
shown up at the doorstep
smelling of lavender
and slightly rimed with sea salt.
He trembled, then,
and named the Queen a name that she’d forgot
as he backed away in fear.
The Queen reached out
to bestow a beneficent touch, but
the master of the house fainted dead away.
“One welcomes me,” said the Queen
with her serpent-tongued speech
and swept across the threshold.
Then,
the mistress of the house looked up
from her knitting and her reading
and named the Queen a name that she’d forgot
and screamed a caterwauling wail.
The Queen reached out
to bestow a beneficent touch, but
the mistress of the house parried
and riposted with her needles,
circled her way around the intruder,
and bolted out the door.
“One welcomes me,” said the Queen
with her serpent-tongued speech
and walked into the center of the house.
And from the back emerged a boy
not old; not young
who had ears to hear
the gentleness of the Queen’s words
who had eyes to see
the resemblance of the garment to others of his kin
one
whose knees bent in homage, not terror
whose voice raised in praises, not anguish
who gestured her in
and named the Queen a name that she’d forgot:
“Great grandmother?”
“I am she and yet not she,” she said.
“… Do you like tea?” he asked. “Does she?”
“She does,” said she,
and so they shared a pot.
And while they drank, she talked about her trip.
“I have travelled far and wide over this World
many are its temples,
proud edifices, architectural marvels,
but all are to my sister (or her derivatives
the many faces the morning star wears).
Does no one remember me?
Where is the respect for death?
Your ‘hunters’ do nothing with the meat of their kills;
your butchers divorce themselves from the cudgel;
your elders languish alone in sterile prisons
and I am shut out, despite their calling for me!
I am despised here, when once I was welcome.”
The Queen reached out
to bestow a beneficent touch.
The boy permitted her royal hand to grace his jawline
and sighed at the tenderness of it.
“One welcomes me,” said the Queen
with her serpent-tongued speech
and added, “and receives a blessing.”
And she blessed the boy, then.
Not a downpayment on prosperity, or security
but a blessing that’s actually useful:
“May you love life as long as you have it
and miss it little once you don’t.”
and she taught him how to visit her when he was lonely
and told him not to be a stranger.
At that time, there came a beleaguered crow, begging
“Return, my Queen, the dead pound at the gates
They seek their promised rest
And chaos reigns down there without you.
I don’t want to get into it right now
but you should probably read up on power vacuums
and delegation of authority
and creation of standard operating procedures
because this is just a mess.”
The tale of how Hell coped with the absence of its Queen is told elsewhere.
Suffice it to say that the Queen did hastily return.
Back down through the roots in the well under the Tree
Each of the seven gates
she unsealed with a silent shout
and unlocked with her fingerbone.
At each of the gates she doffed her travel clothes,
setting down her crêpe parasol
– now bleached to fading from the sun
her lantern of captured moonbeams
– brighter for having collected a few more
her pearl diadem
– sporting a few extra pearls
her veil of gossamer
– crusted with sea foam
her ring of darkness and fire
– fitting a bit more snugly
and shedding her gown of pale feathers
– adorned here and there with blossoms
and the garment she had borrowed,
she returned to its soul.
Lastly, she freed the blind serpent
(for there is no need to speak anything but silences
in the emptinesses of Hell).
But while the Queen was out in the fecundity of the world
the snake had hatched eight daughters in her throat.
The Queen sent them out and up
to go where they wished, and explore
and speak with dignitaries
strangers
sisters
and seven of them went.
But the eighth begged to stay with the Queen
and be her tongue when needed
in honor of the serpent’s mother
and share the syllables her sisters said
on all their adventures
(for members of sister snektouplets always hear the other members’ speech).
The Queen accepted the serpent’s service
and got back to the work of ruling.
And so now
if you want to speak with her Royal Lowness
the Queen of Under-the-Earth
Mistress of Silences
you can.
She is entertaining callers
and visits when she can.
Simply listen for the whispers of the serpent
and be prepared to be hospitable when hosting
and gracious when a guest.
Ask her about her trips
she likes to show off her souvenirs.
Hail Ereshkigal, Queen Below!
You are holy and sweet is your praise!
Yes And Further 