The Middle Wife

And while he rested in the great hall to the North, many leagues to the North now, as these things go in this Age, the one upon the throne that could hold no other was taking a break.

Sam and Nick pulled the bone from the brambles, drinking wine from large goblets between efforts, pulling with all might the dirty roots, some several forearm lengths by measure, coming free, but with many painful briars in the bargain.

“Help, now, with speed, Sam. The Moon will find us out soon, I am sure.”

“Why did he leave it? A thing like that must be of some value.”



“O! Great value. Greatest value! Hell, man, I don’t know, but would like to know before tomorrow rolls back the sky. So, haste, please!”

Sam was skewered many times before the plant gave up the bone.

‘There. The clay. Wrap the bone in the clay while it is damp, and bind it with the roots and briars." Sam yelped, as his skin was cut many times. Nick licked his own blood off his fingers.

"Good, good, now help me search the riverbed for polished stones, those that catch the eye, and impress them deep into the form. Save the green stones for me."

"What might you imagine the color for lust to be, Sam?”

“Greed, gold vein in jaundiced eye,

‘Lust, red dot of thistle's prick,

‘Glut, a pink and wriggling sty,

‘Envy, green of poisoned sick,

‘Pride, snail’s stench, and Tyre’s dye,

‘Wrath, orange licks a thirsting stick,

‘Sloth, the feckless noon’s blue sky.”


“Ah, well done. Such a thing is Timelessness, to know a poem so many epochs before its dreamer was ever born. Lots of red, Samael. A lusty wench she shall be. Stain her with blood and wine!”


Sam smeared the bone with the blood of his pricks and with regret poured his glass of wine upon it. Nick did the same.


The bone had earlier been tossed near to the river, and were it not for the briar trap, would be far downstream. They set a thick pack of river mud about it and shaped it female to suit, setting polished stones all over, and Nick placed jade in its eye sockets, highlighting them with the bottle green glass that had been tumbled, sorted, and polished in the rolling pyroclastic ventings of those volcanos to the East, a magic of Chaos and Old Words. Nick sent Sam to gather the black moss that made a home at the head of the Four Rivers, and of this tangle was made her a shining black crown. Her eyes cast green light upon all they spied, and the one called Samael could not bear her gaze as she quickened to form. In no stance or pose did she not take on the form of the coquettish and alluring, mud-caked golem though she was.


“What of the ruah? Where is her pneuma? Her anima? Her numen? How can she live?”


“She lives now, Sam. See her ribs bow? The throb in her neck? Does her gaze not unsettle? Would you like her?”


“Not really. She is… mud and bone and thorn. Her gaze… she casts it beyond me and it burns. Twitching, breathing, mud and bone and thorn. But the breath…?”


“In the rib, the bone, of course.”


“It rises and falls. And cracks. And it pops. It is a sound most unpleasant. I see it. I hear it.”


“We must place her astride the man. Help me, raise her up, gentle, with the old trickery on the horse first, then up the hill.” A horse appeared out of a shadowed copse.


"Take care. Wouldn’t want her cracking up, would we?” and she rose, drupelets of bracken fruit falling from her into black spatters on the ground, and they set her on the horse. At the top of the hill, they took her from the steed eased her onto the man.


“Mud, am I?” She croaked. Her eyes caught Samael’s. He winced, and she shook. Slabs of clay fell off her, revealing a blemishless skin near-white as Nick’s, as all the colors pressed into her were as one below the carapace.

 The clay shattered when it hit the ground, taking on the forms of scorpions, snakes, great spiders and poison frogs, owls, and all manner of plants that spring up in the night, all racing for the twilight shadows, only to turn and watch when well-hidden from a Moon still below the horizon, pinpoint constellations of green light in every dark nook and hole.

“Behold, the children of man, that we should serve and worship,” said Nick.


Sam sneered in disgust. “This is the Crown of Creation?”



“Yup.” Nick cast off his cloak and stood his full height, and was a white light like the Moon, folding and returning to the shape of a man, with great wings extended. His depth receded beyond Sam’s ken, filled as it was with outlines of all things past, and each past form limned in gold-leaf, diamond, ruby, jade, topaz, lapis lazuli, mercury, platinum, silver and morningstar. At the furthest reaches of the back of him was an onyx, that held the eye no matter how he bent. A diadem rested on his head, but vanished in the moment Sam glanced at it.


You like that? The way, far… far black. There, in the back?

“It draws one in.”

“It does that. Of all the perfections showered upon me, this is a favorite. It was a gift. An unpredictability. Free will, if you will. The only thing I ever asked for. Mine. Just for me.”

Samael had to force himself to look away. Already his feet were dragging him forward. Nick closed the portal within him and its pull ceased.

“Follow me. Be quick” said Nick. “They are awake.”

The man roused and spoke. "What is this weight upon me? And who are you?" he said to the woman.

“Behold the rutting mud that the one on the throne proposes we honor and serve,” Nick whispered to Sam.

"We must leave," and they hied to the North upon daemon wings, and the woman took the man, and many a monster she bore that ran off to and out of the gates of the garden.

"You!" said the man. "Why are you upon me?

"I am your wife. I am fecund and will bear you worlds. Just be still.”

"Why are you atop me?”

"I am your wife."


"I was First. You belong beneath me."


"I do not." I am of neither below nor above. If anything, if you were First, you should be under me. ”


He rolled on top of her.


"Better," he said.


"Your weight, I cannot bear it, Man. You crush me. It is a suffering. You bruise me. I am no mattress. I came from your middle!”
She rolled back on top.

The man clutched her back. 

"What is this?" he shouted, his hands full of feathers. "What are you?"

She shoved herself up and stood. Her wings spread. She sprouted thorns, cut him once, and took to the sky. She headed West, and swore to kill all his babies if she could find them. She left the corner Cherubim at the gate and abandoned the garden.

"I am alone," cried the man.


The welkin cracked, and Sam and Nick fell below the throne.

"What have you done," said a voice that filled the Great Hall.

"Righted a wrong," said Nick. "Gave your malformed thing a suitable wife.”

"She has taken his seed first. She is his wife.”

"Yes. You gave us her Life. And we gave it to her.”

“Samael? You too?”

“Let’s cut the Heavenly crap, shall we?,” said Nick. He is Asmodeus, and I am Lucifer!”

The mortar of the Great Hall burned red when he said his name.

Senoi, Sansenoi, and Sammangelof, messengers without reproof were summoned to bid her back. They found her in a shell of green light, cursing her own line and weaving a bee skep. Despite promises and threats from the messengers, she would not return.


She spent the Night and the Day weeping. When the day was late, she flew back into the garden, and found her man. But he had another. They lay by a great tree. A fruit was between them, two bites gone. They were both dead. She snapped up the fruit, and bit. She did not die. Nick's, Satan's, blood was already in her. Good and Evil dwelt coursed through her already. The bone. She was already cursed.

"O you who fly in (the) darkened room,

Be off with you this instant, this instant, Lilith.

Thief, breaker of bones.”

'And Lilith saw her name to be written on the plaques, so she would fear recognition and quickly depart. Inanna Sumerians, Ishtar Akkadians, Mistress of Screech Owls.”

She shrieked.