Reflection's Edge

The Tale of the Scorpion Prince

by JoSelle Vanderhooft

The desert has a way of holding you.

The sands are treacherous, each a little weight bound to my ankles with cords of stratus clouds and cactus needles. They cling to me each night when I lie down and each morning when I rise and stretch my hands north, south, east, west. I name each direction as I touch it, unfurling my great wings to stir the grains at my feet. They are at once empty and full. Like the stars, they are numberless and they follow me wherever I go. I carry the desert across this earth in the sandstorm of my feet. I am saffron, changing, sun-baked and I am always alone. That is what he decreed when he left me here, the god with his gold calf torch and a liver pocked with cirrhosis.

Long ago, when I crawled with others like me, ragged and unsure of foot through the darkness, he descended from the moon. The stories all said he waved the flame around like a child with his first sparkler, smiling and magnanimous as he picked up the mortal's burden. People tell stories like that when they're afraid. That's why myth makes the smallest things so big. Actually, it was only a finger bone candle with a flame no bigger than a star. The others took one look and saw color - in the rocks, the sky, the eyes of men and women standing behind their shoulders. The colors scared them and they ran. But I did not. I was fascinated by this stranger, the linen flowing over his translucent nakedness, his corn silk hair and moonstone eyes. I came closer. He didn't move. I stood on my toes. My lips parted like a bride's.

His candle they'd so easily rejected he now used to light the cave where we made love. With the sand still warm and moist between my thighs he showed me secrets, the daubing of russet against walls dancing in shadows, the formulas that made the universe, and languages. Dear gods, so many tongues. So many ways to kiss.

Zeus eventually discovered it was missing. Not much, just a matchstick in his great cauldron. While we slept the sleep of morning glory vines, his feet shattered the iron and bronze ages against the floor. He tore my lover from my arms with the skill of a butcher removing a healthy liver with a rusty knife.

"I'll deal with you later," he sneered, caressing my nipples with his lightning mouth. He did. And I refused.

The gods get difficult when they don't win. They strew the ground with swans and spiders. But I was more unlucky. Zeus laughed as he boxed me in with rivers, seas and lakes. I would sleep alone in the gold heart of my dunes. But for the spell of my excommunication - Kalahari. Sahara. Sumeria. Babylon. - I would be nameless.

I have been alone so long I have forgotten what he looked like, my oracle-mouthed lover with sandpaper hands. But when I came across the sleeping young man, I remembered everything I'd shoved beneath my swirling flesh. He was so young, barely twenty and asleep. They'd bound him to the rocks with thongs - a sacrifice to my winds. There was a gash against his side like a lightning rod. And he was naked and dark, like my dunes before the sunrise. I needed him more than air, to wrap him deep beneath my changing arms and let him drink my still waters. So I unbound him and let him lie in the small, peat oasis beneath a palm tree. When he awoke his eyes were very blue, and I was there. He was shy at first, still tired and afraid. But I held him when he slept and with the turning of the sun, he lay before me, supple as a young fig tree.

You have to understand; I was alone, and he was curious and warm against my chest. I fed him dates and pears and taught him words -- the names of stars, the pictures dancing through the shadows of a cave, the candle fire.

I was alone. You have to understand how alone I was.

What happens to this boy?

When I saw him again, my first lover, my gold-eyed god, he had changed. One day long ago my sands moved to a mountain top haloed by vultures. Then I thought I was looking at an exhumation. Time and rocks had kissed age spots and bed sores hard down the Doric column of his back. Through the tatter of his limbs he looked at me as if seeing a stranger. His lips parted, a rook tore out a small intestine. And my first love spit into my eyes.

So you understand why I couldn't let my foundling leave.

He tried so many times. He missed his father's house. The goats needed to be milked. And there was a korus of a boy with candle wicks hands and lips like musk.

I am the desert, and I hold the things I touch. I gave him eight arms so I could grasp, but he grew claws and pinched. I gave him a tail so I could chase him, but he stung at me and leaped into the night.

Now, as I walk the earth he scrabbles through my skin, deep in my artesian veins. He has no name or history. At night I feel him stinging for release. I lie back and let him sting. And sting. And sting.

I enjoy it.

Once we were men; now we are the princes of sand and scorpions.

The desert has a way of holding you. One day, you don't remember how you got there, who you are, or what you have become.

I think I had a name once. Now, my feet are dust and my thighs are stone. My cave walls dance with lightning. I wear a crown of scorpions. I wear him. I wear them both. And I remember.

JoSelle Vanderhooft graduated from the University of Utah in 2004 and has been roaming around the United States ever since. Her first poetry collection 10,000 Several Doors will be released in July 2005 from Cat's Eye Publishing, and she is currently editing an anthology of lesbian-themed fairytales for Torquere Press. Additional poetic works can be found online at the Full Moon Review (fullmoonlm.bravehost.com), in upcoming issues of Star*LineMagazine and in the forthcoming magazine Jabberwocky.



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