Fire

Before my coming into this world, men lived in accordance with the rhythms of nature: of the sun, the circle of night and day, and its withdrawal from the centre to the periphery of heaven; and of the moon, which worked invisibly on the water of their souls. All the winter, they waited for the rebirth of their plains and forests, for when they would feel the freshness of the green under foot. To strike with a spear the heart of a bison! To smear one’s body with the over-sweetness of the grapes! And so, in like manner, as the summer left them, they mourned the loss of time and in their darkening caves lay them down to die.

I shall not recount the manner of my discovery, rather what comes after it. After meditating on the charm for months, disappearing for the interval from the common sight. And then one evening, calm as a man returning from a hunt, I walked into the centre of our gathering. My beard was so long, reaching to my knees, my face so eaten by lack of meat that one could study anatomy in its lines, and my disposition so fearsome, that I did not blame the urchins following me as though I were some circus clown. I beckoned a man over with my finger and bade him bring me then beams of wood and pile them so at the very point I indicated. He mentioned something about payment. ‘Fool!’ I said, and he brought me not only the beams but also a stool, which I was grateful for. I did not sit on it, however, but walked until I was back in the woods. I said that I would anyone who followed me would not return to his supper of entrails. Then, I took the jagged stones from my pocket and putting them together, over which I poured the low incantation I had acquired, I set fire to a large twig. I then placed this on my palm and waited until the blaze covered even my hand, which showed through the blue sphere of light, more golden than the sun.

I appeared from under the trees. Gleefully I heard every possible form of sound that they were capable of gather two a chorus of detestable shrieks and hoots. The murky mass of figures I beheld drew nearer the wood; then I wondered that I could not see my own face, changed as it must be in that magical light. With distracted mind, I threw the twig into the wood and watched the tendrils ascend into the sky, beyond our sight. When it had vaporised its substance, I walked into the space it had cleared, and received disdainfully the vows of all that I should be their lord.

What days were those! I humbled before my staff the chiefs of every tribe the world had known of and imposed the rule of unknown justice of this race of murders. The flame I knew to create made the flesh of beats into the food of heaven and, applied to the soil, for even the earth was not immune to its charm, made it sprout forth more bounteously than imaginable. The hues of heaven and earth were transformed in the eyes of men.

And yet, all this soon grew to me wearisome and I felt it as oppression in my heart. The earth seemed to whisper against my deeds, but I did not care even for those sounds. I looked into the eye of a man and saw within it a void. And, as this became so, my mind again desired the image it had dreamt of that day. By darkness, with steps so silent the night did not hear them, I fled to the shore of the lake. There, under my spell, I struck one rock against the other, and, by that light, looked into the darkness of the water. The reflected image opened up inwardly, as I saw beyond my skin and saw even beyond the smallest cell in my heart. By that reflection, all knowledge of all things became revealed to me and, when I pressed still further, knowing that knowledge did not suffice, I worked my way along the longest threads of the mind’s motions. At each step I beheld a million symbols, all combinations that could move the will of nature, and, threading past the thoughts of delight, I reached those of truest despair in which my mind studied the intricate perspectives of a prism refracting the dark light of the abyss.

From those visions, who would return to set foot upon the basest earth and bear contact with even the paragon of animals? As I retraced my path through the veins of the body, my knowledge and will conspired to clot each one of them, calm even my heart to the calm of death. And in that vision—had I knowledge even of this?—I considered what must happen:

When my withered corpse was found on the shore, some foolish man would discover those rocks and with it a lesser secret. And, allowing the flame to crawl upon his hands, he would find instead of the blue a red snake would slither up the flesh. He would cry out with any meaningless phrase his voice could snatch, but none of them would tame the blaze. And so beside my body there would be a miserable pile of ash. And so I leave behind a flame that destroys and words as hollow as the heart.