Onslaught

CHAPTER NINE: IMAGE MAGIC

The delusions of night cleared away, and the sun rose upon Ixidor in his undreamed land. Doubt had proven false. The mirage had proven true.

Ixidor dived. It was deep enough here. The sandy shore gave way to tan contours in clay, and they in turn to green depths. Water enveloped him-cool, clean, bracing. It washed away dirt and salt scales. The water was life. Ixidor opened his mouth and drank as he swam. Water poured through and around him. Life filled him.

He had almost missed it. Three days of tortures in the desert, mirage after mirage, rainstorms that turned to sandstorms, dunes that turned to graves-all of it had taught him to distrust hope. A man who distrusts hope is a dead man. When he had found his paradise, he had nearly been unable to recognize it. He had to drink sand before he knew.

Ixidor rose. A cry of joy began in his throat and burst up through struggling bubbles toward the surface. His shout erupted from the water just as he did. Amid leaping waves, Ixidor roared the defiant cry of survival. He had wrestled death and pinned it.

Ixidor's feet dug into the clay. Small curls of mud streamed away from his toes as he climbed the bank. His hair rained water down around his shoulders, and he laughed in the midst of it. He sat on the bank. The river tugged insistently at his feet as if it were eager to bear him to the dark cave where the waters were swallowed.

Drips ran like tears down his face. Ixidor had not truly defeated death. It had defeated him.

Nivea was gone.

Rolling over into the shadow of a palm, Ixidor cried until he slept.

The waters tugged at him. The dark cave growled like a hungry stomach.

Nivea haunted his dreams. She had brought him here to live. He had brought her to the pits to die.

Bleakly, Ixidor woke. The sun had reached midday, driving away palm shadows, and burning him. His feet were numb and cold. His heart was too. It would have been unbearable except that hunger eclipsed all else.

Ixidor sat up and peered into the blue-green stream. There should have been fish darting through its verdant waters. He saw none. He had not seen any as he swam either. How could there be fish? The spring rose from killing sand only to descend into a voracious cave.

What of animals? The oasis should have swarmed with creatures. Ixidor stood and stalked among the curving boles of the palms. He followed the sandy shores, looking for footprints, droppings, any sign that other creatures had come to this spot. Only his own tracks marked the sand. He saw not so much as a bird flitting among the trees or a line of ants rising up a palm. More telling still was the profound silence. Only the murmur of water, wind, and his own breath disturbed the quiet.

Surely the palms would hold something-dates, coconuts, fruits… He walked among them, his head craned back. There were at least three separate species of palm but no fruit on any of them.

Ixidor seated himself beside the stream. He would die in paradise after all. It was another mirage, promising life but offering death. Waters flowed, deep and cool, away to the yawning cave mouth. Ixidor had been a fool to hope. All the while that he jeered death, it only tightened its grip.

Absently, Ixidor dragged his fingers through the clay. It curled up in little rolls that looked almost like prawns. Ixidor stared at them. His stomach rumbled. In trembling fingers, he lifted a single curl of mud. The outside of the clump was smooth and round while the inside was jagged like the jutting legs of a crayfish. Ixidor lifted the thing to his mouth and bit. Sand crunched, clay clung to his tongue, and mud dissolved and spread. Ixidor spat the clod from his mouth. Angrily, he backhanded the other curls of mud.

They struck the stream and sank. The clods left ribbons of mud as they spun slowly through the water. Halfway down, currents grabbed the clay and flung it in circles. Ixidor watched, fascinated. There was something familiar about that churning motion. Ixidor crouched on his knees above the stream and stared down. The clods were swimming. They weren't just hunks of clay, but actual prawns. They had transformed.

Ixidor glanced back at the mud curl he had spat out. It was undoubtedly clay. It had never been alive. He stared into the flood again. The other clods had become living things.

It all was beginning to make sense-the sand that became water, the shadows that became trees, the clay that became crayfish… a new power.

Nivea's death had given it birth. Ixidor's desperation had nursed it. He had been buried alive, but someone had dug him out. He had been lost in desolation, but someone had led him to water. Nivea had become his muse, inspiring him to create.

Image magic. Instead of making images into illusions, he was making them into realities.

Ixidor stooped at the stream bank and dipped his hands into the water. The crayfish shied from his touch. He swiped down to catch them. They darted and spun away. He was their creator, true, but he would also be their killer, and they evaded him.

Ixidor dived into the water. He rushed down among them, hair streaming and hands lashing. He caught one of the creatures in a tight fist. Not even waiting to surface, he rammed the thing into his mouth and bit. It was not clay anymore but a creature-flesh, fins, scales, head. It crunched between his teeth. The last of its life fled as he swallowed. It was real. The thing tumbled uneasily in his stomach, the first food it had held in three days. Ixidor reached out to snatch another of the creatures, but they were gone. They had escaped downstream.

There would be easier prey. Stroking to the bank, Ixidor climbed. He sat, water streaming down the clay. The blood of the prawn lingered on his tongue, but it was time for better fare.

Kneeling, Ixidor murmured, "Nivea." He closed his eyes.

She hovered there, gleaming and beautiful, within his mind. She seemed an angel, with white pinions glowing fiercely.

Opening his eyes, Ixidor dug his hands into the clay bank. Two great scoops of mud came up in his grip. He pressed the hunks together and began to shape the mass. Fingers traced lines into the clay. He narrowed one end and twisted it into a conic shape. The other end flattened to a tapered edge. A small avian head took form. Mud smoothed into a downy body, and wings tucked up tightly. At first, it was only the approximation of a bird. Ixidor added scales to the feet, an idiosyncratic tuft behind the head, and deep slanting nostrils. To be real, it had to be individual. Creators moved from general forms to specific actualities.

Every medium struggles against the artist, but this clay began to struggle in earnest. No sooner was it a specific bird than it had a will. Will made mud into feather, skin, muscle, and bone. The bird-the gull, for Ixidor had grown up beside the water-squawked loudly. Hollow bones flapped and bent like a fan struggling to open.

Ixidor dug his fingers in. This was to be his meal.

The creation had other ideas. It fought free. Downy feathers whirled in the air and pasted themselves to Ixidor's hands. The gull's wings stroked once, twice. It leaped into the palm-cluttered sky and rose to a high roost. In utter rejection of its maker, it shat a great white stream onto the undergrowth below. The bird laughed raucously.

Covered in feathers, Ixidor glared after it. His eyes were mad with hunger but also with discovery. He had made a bird, a rebellious bird whose insides apparently included a gastrointestinal tract. The prawns had been one thing-cold blooded and irabecilic. This bird was a higher life form. It lived and wanted to go on living, just like Ixidor himself.

Gleeful, Ixidor stood and applauded the raucous gull. Feathers flew in a gray flurry.

"Go on, you glorious horrible meal!" he shouted. "Go on and live! Far be it from me to create a creature who wants to live and then make it die." The gladness went out of his face. His own creator had done the same to him.

Ixidor turned and dived back into the water. It would cleanse him of feathers and mud. As he swam, he thought. His next creation would be different. He would not make something in slavish imitation of nature, for no beast wished to die. He would make something simple and new, perfectly suited to be a meal.

With one strong stroke of his hands, Ixidor rose to the surface of the stream. He swam to the bank, surprised how far the current had carried him toward the dark cave. Working his way back upstream, Ixidor reached a likely spot with smooth, tan clay. He scooped up a batch of it and set to work.

The creature would be delectable, yes, but also practical. It would provide meat for immediate consumption, organs for stewing, and even its own crude pot for cooking them. Ixidor's hands worked quickly, forming the smooth sweep of the thing's back. If he was careful, he could get three meals from the creature, and thus not have to kill as often. Of course, it wouldn't matter that much: This turtle would want to be eaten.

He finished it-a deep shell holding plenty of muscle and organ meat, a small head with only a pliable and toothless mouth, stubby little legs devoid of claws, and best of all, no shell across the creature's belly. Ixidor could eat the first bits raw and then build a fire to stew the rest.

He set the creature down and completed the last polygons across its shell. With these final lines, the thing went from artificiality to reality. The turtle trembled to life. It lifted its too-small head beneath the massive, pot-shaped shell. Querulous eyes stared at its creator. Then, struggling on stumpy legs, it advanced toward Ixidor. It climbed slowly up his foot until it reached an awkward angle and toppled on its back. There, it waited, head tucked submissively on its pink belly.

Ixidor wouldn't even need a knife. The skin was as tender as wet paper. He need only dig in with hungry fingers. The turtle even wanted him to; it existed only to be his meal. Ixidor ran his hand across the creature's belly. A snagged nail drew a dotted line along it. Blood welled up from the seam. The turtle trembled, as if steeling itself for the inevitable.

Ixidor spread his hand atop the turtle's stomach. The skin there hardened to a tough shell. He tweaked each leg until it was larger, more capable of bearing the weight. A touch on the mouth gave the beast teeth with which to feed. Last of all, Ixidor brushed its head, giving it a will to live.

The turtle flailed, flipped over, and rushed into the stream. It left a turbid cloud of sand in its wake.

It was bad to kill a creature that wanted to live but worse to create a creature that wanted to die. Perhaps natural forms were safer. In them the complex dynamic of predator and prey were long established.

The creator was hungry. He knelt by the riverside, and his hands dug deep into the clay. He had made one turtle, and another would be easy. It took quick shape. Its shell was flat on top like a cooking pot, but its belly was guarded. The turtle had real legs with real claws and great snapping jaws. Put simply, it had a chance. If it eluded its creator, it could live a long, long while. Ixidor stooped over it, adding knobs of flesh beneath one knee.

The snapper whirled. Its mud-flesh became true, and its impressive jaws spread and clamped. It caught Ixidor's right hand and bit.

The pain was blinding. He shrieked and yanked. With a sick crackle, his hand came away, missing the ring and little fingers. The carpal bones were shorn halfway up his palm. Blood poured from the severed spot.

Howling, Ixidor leaped after the fleeing turtle. He landed on its back, forcing it to ground, the shell slick with blood. Though the turtle withdrew legs and tail, its head still lashed out, snapping at his heel.

Ixidor struck back. His heel smashed down atop the turtle's head. The creature shook. Ixidor struck again. The brain-pan caved. Ixidor continued to kick, feeling the skull crack. He kicked for revenge. In moments, the turtle stopped moving, but still, Ixidor kept up his attack until nothing but pulp remained beneath his heel.

He climbed off the carcass and limped to the stream. Some jags of bone had stuck in his foot. He dipped it in the water, and his hand beside.

Ixidor felt dizzy but triumphant. The battle played in his head. There was no denying it now: He created realities. Not only did he create them, but he lived with them and suffered the consequence of their being. They could wound him. They could kill him…

They could feed him…

Compressing his wounded hand beneath the opposite armpit, Ixidor stood up. He was covered with blood, mud, and water. Though he had pulled the skull shards out of his ravaged heel, it deeply protested. He limped back toward the carcass, set his toes under one edge, and flipped it over.

The turtle was dead. Ixidor kicked hard, his foot landing flat on the belly plate. The shell split, and blood swelled the seam. Ixidor knelt. He gripped one edge of the cracked shell, braced a foot on the creature's leg, and yanked. The shell did not give. Ixidor set his bleeding hand on the other side of the crack and yanked again. After four vigorous pulls, tissues began to pop. Still, the shell held.

Roaring in frustration, Ixidor stood and stomped on the creature. The carapace caved. He stomped again. A red paste gushed from the edges of the shell. Voracious, Ixidor knelt and ate. The stuff was still warm from the life of the creature. Another stomp produced more of the substance. It was not the way he had planned on eating the turtle, but he was desperate, and had no time, no tools.

Survival was a messy business. Creation too. It was a business of mud, blood, and water, of shattered shells and shards of bone. Ixidor had tapped a primordial power, and was becoming a primordial creator. Even with his own bleeding hand, he greedily scooped up the flesh of the turtle and sucked it from his fingers.

It was not merely messy. It was madness-divine madness.

Capering about the fallen beast, Ixidor began to hum and chant. The words were a mystery even to him. He crouched to snatch up more of the paste and shove it into his mouth. He smeared red lines across his face-war paint from his first kill. Ixidor danced, sang, and ate.

He lay within a shallow well of sand, dug out by his own hands. Beside him rested the turtle shell, empty and clean. Reptilian flesh wormed its way through his intestines. Reptilian blood covered him from nose to knees, and gnawed bones lay nearby, bleaching in the sun.

The sun was forsaking Ixidor and his strange paradise. Palm fronds glowed iridescent green against the darkening sky. Boles draped long shadows across sand and stream, and breezes moved among the leaves without rattling them. It was the time for night birds to begin their weird songs, but Ixidor had not yet made such birds. All was silent. The desert's desolation seeped slowly into the oasis.

Ixidor was tired. His stomach was full and his mind empty. The madness was gone. Only gore and mud remained. He was done creating. Tomorrow he would fashion more beasts. His image magic would impose new things upon the world, but for now, he was done-exhausted.

Lying there in a delirium of fatigue and satiety, he saw her.

White and pure, shimmering in the midst of the darkling oasis, his muse appeared. It was unfair to call her Nivea, for Nivea had never had white wings and glowing robes. It was equally unfair to call her anything else, for the face of that glorious creature was Nivea's. She hovered above the waters, her wings unmoving in flight She stared at him.

Ixidor crawled up from the sandy hole and knelt before her.

He could not have felt more unworthy-crusted in filth and missing two fingers and part of his mind. If she were truly his muse, she would be horrified by what he had made. Crayfish, a raucous gull, and two turtles. Worse than these creatures was their creator.

"Forgive me, beautiful lady. I was hungry, and I ate."

She did not respond, but only floated before him.

Ixidor lifted his face. "Nivea, is it you?" he asked. Sand sifted from his face and made small sounds on the ground. "How I mourn you. You are my heart, absent from my chest. You are my mind, absent from my head. You are my soul absent from my body. Look at me." He spread his arms, revealing a ravaged figure. "You were all that was good in me. I am what remains."

She faded. Black boles showed through her gossamer form.

"I will create nobler things tomorrow. I will create not just beasts but ecologies. I will create marvels worthy of you."

The muse was gone. Only shadows lingered above the stream.

Ixidor bowed his head again to the sand. He clawed the ground with his three-fingered hand.

Weeping, he crawled toward the stream. Like a wounded rat, he slithered into the water. It embraced him. Currents cleansed the day's filth. The waters enlivened him, and he swam and felt new.

The stream hid his bitter tears.