Disorder

An excerpt from today's writing.

Last night, the guard returned to my cell.
In fact, there were three of them. All masked and dressed in those rotting, moldy robes. One replaced the great clam shell, one searched my room and the other placed a stack of papers on my desk.
Two of them left, and one remained. It indicated that I should sit, and then it stood behind me, clicking and chattering.
I looked at the papers. It was my writing. But it wasn’t what I had written.
The great clam shell spoke in its flat, empty voice. “There is confusion in your narrative.” The carved ivory device was translating the clicks and clacks of the guard. The breathy, percussive sounds that issued from beneath the mask were speech of a kind I had never heard before.
But such details barely registered at the time. I just sat at the desk and stared at the story, feeling the walls pressing tighter around me. Never had I been so aware of the suffocating reality of my imprisonment.

My text had been converted into their language by the magic of the clam shell, and then changed back for me to read. This was the tale that I had spent so long narrating, and it was almost unrecognizable to me.
“Elements of your text indicate male and female members of your species. But we believe you have assigned the wrong genders. Descriptions of your biology and social formation suggest you are unaware of the real order of life.” The thing spoke but I was hardly listening.
It was indeed true that they had switched around the genders in my tale. All those who had been men, were now women. And turnabout true as well. Including myself. “He” became “she” and “she” became “he”.
Mother was now father, and sister had become brother.
But that wasn’t all that had changed.

Much of the lengthy social commentary and translator’s notes I had written were gone. Excised by an unseen editor. In their place was a dry account of events that read like the world’s most uninteresting history book.

A degree of cultural transliteration had taken place too. A house became a nest. A family became a brood. Mouths became mandibles. The forest became the ocean. Birds became fish and the Culture became the Mother Nest.
In a few pages, it was possible for me to understand more of my captors than they obviously understood about me.

Clack, crrrick! “You will continue your narrative. You will stick to the terms outlined in this sample. You will not deviate from the truth.” Click, click, clack, crunch. 

Rustle, hiss.
“The truth?” I asked. The pages before me grew unfocused. I lacked the will to bring them back to my attention.
The jailer’s musk intensified as it leaned close to me. A scaly claw closed on my shoulder. “The world is as it is. Every brood mate knows how the world works and the proper order of things. This tale is disorder. It is lies and fantasy.”

I gestured to myself. “Fantasy? Look at me. Am I a lie? Is this body an untruth?”
“The wheel turns a final time. When it has crushed all untruths, only the truth will be preserved. Our eggs are planted deep, and long after we are gone they will awake in a new world, without the disorder of the past.”
The jailer turned and knocked on the door. It was opened and the beast left, taking its odor with it.

I stared at the sample they had left. I felt hollow, like my guts had just dropped out on the floor.
Never had I felt more kinship with that poor tugaan; the accursed Daanzolnam.
Just as he was damned by the gods to spend every day trying to build a tower upon the sucking earth of a stinking bog, I was destined to spend my efforts for nothing. Every word and sentence I had put forward was slipping beneath the surface of the swampy ground, to leave no trace of the world that I had lived in. No real account of those who lived and died and trusted in me to carry their legacy forward.

If I had managed to imagine myself happy before, now any illusions were banished.
But I had no choice. I would write on, while I thought of what I might do about this intolerable situation. Maybe something would present itself.
My sister would have made an opportunity appear. She would have demanded, and probably received, a different fate than the goddess offered her. But she wasn’t here.

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