118

I set myself on fire. That was the mistake. I looked into the flames and saw what I thought was a golden crossbow. I think it was the flames that had me thinking not straight. They were very hot. Then I thought the crossbow asked for heads. That's when I knew I had a problem: a speaking crossbow. The next day, the flames still burning because I burn quite a long time when I get going, there was a blood red boat, or at least I thought there was. I wasn't thinking straight. I think it was the flames that had me thinking not straight. They were very hot. The boat broke but a broken boat is nothing but below the belt broken boat alliteration. The third day I was still burning bright below the broken boat and buckled belt of alliteration but I think it was the flames that had me thinking not straight. They were very hot. I thought a heifer. It was no ordinary heifer but by this time with the flames burning and me not thinking straight nothing I was going to think of was going to be ordinary. I thought there was a plough but by now I was past identifying anything, never mind agricultural implements I'd only ever seen in picture books. For three days I was on fire, the winds fanning the fire, myself, the flames not letting me think straight as if I had ever thought straight at all ever in my life, until something rose out of the burning but I wasn't thinking at all by now, neither straight nor crooked, not thinking at all, but still there was something there, although even if you set me on fire all over again I wouldn't be able to tell you what it was, or give it a name, because I wouldn't be thinking straight, if at all. Anyway, that was my day. It wasn't very good.

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122

On a day as good as any other, "Oh let it go," he said to himself, for from the beginning he knew the maiden who was offered as his reward would vanish, for maidens always do, flying into themselves, they think, but always into others. He could still see her mother bargaining with him in that golden cave where time was sleeping, a daughter for a crossbow, a boat of blood, a plough, oh such a swindler, and the girl, well, not so fair to look upon nor did she look upon him as so, but rather as if he were one of those loathesome creatures that fluxed at the edge of the sea, and it did not bother him, anymore than that time he gave a stranger his coat and money and heard the stranger, moments later, laughing at his successful ruse. The truth was only that burning that consumed him, not the crossbow, the boat of blood, the plough, the heifer, but always that becoming he could not name, so full of breath, it seemed his freedom, so far out of the sea's hearing, that song that order sang.