High Places
Coyote seeks his mate
There once was a coyote who came to a city of artists by the sea in order to escape the cold, dark place into which he'd been born and the cold, dark people who lived there. The new land in which he found himself was full of many wondrous things. Green flowers with thick petals that the coyote could nibble the delicious ends off of. Cool drinks that tasted like raspberries and pricked his tongue like their thorns. But all of the wonders of his new home paled in comparison to the lioness, who seemed to the coyote as though she must have spontaneously coalesced out of the ambient spirit of the place.
The first time the coyote truly saw her, he thanked his creator for giving him eyes to see. But she vanished, then, and though he searched high and low, he could not find her. Still, the coyote knew that he must not give up, for if he did so he would surely perish of a broken heart. So he kept searching, never forgetting her face.
Finally the coyote asked the rabbit, and she told him to seek the white raven, who would know where to find the lioness. He followed the rabbit's advice and found the lioness in the shade of trees so tall that the coyote might have climbed them and caught the moon for her. But the lioness didn't want the moon. She wanted the coyote.
To show her love for him, she took him to the crown of a great hill incised from top to bottom with runes of power, and there called down the very stars from the sky. Then she led him through a great tunnel of cold stone and into a vast land beyond, where she revealed and named for him the ruins of her ancestors.
The coyote's heart was so full that he thought it might burst, but one thing troubled him still. She had given him many great gifts, but he did not know what he might bring her in return. When he asked, the lioness told him that there was only one thing that he might give her that would satisfy her, and that one thing was the coyote's very life. This he decided to give to her on the spot, though he did not know what it might mean to do so.
Standing at a crossroads, the coyote opened his chest and carefully removed his beating heart. He quickly passed it off to the lioness, hoping that she would find it sufficient, and watched her examine it as his strength bled away. She smiled, opened herself, and removed her own heart, telling the coyote to use it to fill the void left within him. This he did, and he immediately felt better as he watched her do the same with his own. The coyote and the lioness looked at one another with new eyes, then, as knowledge of the other filled each, and their hearts beat as one.
For the first time, they lay together and shared love and light between them, and it was good. A year and a day passed, and they gave often of themselves to each other.
Still, the coyote always held part of himself back. Though he knew not how, he had been told that if he gave her too much of himself, the two of them would fully become one. He was frightened by the thought that this might happen and that he might lose himself in the process.
But the lioness had always given fully of herself to the coyote, and in time he found that he could not help but want to do the same for her. So they went together to a valley overflowing with astonishing things and she taught him the names of all of its rocks, trees, and birds. Then she showed him a secret place away from the eyes of others and there the two of them joined together. A river of water flowed through the valley, a river of stars flowed through the sky, and a river of life flowed out of the coyote and into his loved one.
He watched as she began to glow with the light that he had kindled within her, watched as she expanded to contain his love. He felt bonds of magic drawing him closer to the lioness than ever before, closer than he'd ever thought possible. He knew that he would stand with her against anything, that he would lay down his life for her a second time without a moment's hesitation. Now he belonged to her fully, and she to him. And the twin rhythms of their hearts were joined by a third, in time with and born of their own.
The lioness knew that soon the light and love that the coyote had given her must coalesce into a jewel within her, a house for the third heartbeat that she could only hear when she wasn't listening for it. The heartbeat that was hers, and his, and neither of theirs. And the lioness was full of joy, though she knew that bearing forth the jewel would be a very great and perhaps even dangerous struggle for her, and one that she must face mostly on her own.
When the time came, she was terrified of being alone, and so she went to the place where the coyote was waiting for her, in the dark and cold country of his birth. But the moment she saw him, the cold and the darkness overwhelmed her, and she thought that she must surely lose the jewel. In tears, the coyote carried her to a sanctuary of warmth and light, and there she bore him the jewel, miraculously unblemished. And their three hearts beat as one.
Together they returned to the city of artists by the sea, and-
And why couldn't the story have ended there?
Every time the lioness saw the coyote, she was reminded of the cold and the darkness seeking to steal away that which was most precious to her. And when he offered to give her his love and his light, she was afraid, and thought that she could never again bear to risk such loss. She removed the coyote's heart from her chest, then put it back in, but only after wrapping it in a bag to make sure that it didn't sink too far into her. And his heartbeat within her was muffled, and the two of them fell out of time.
Only when they looked into the jewel could they remember the sound of the two of them together, but the memory grew more and more faint as time went on. The lioness's heart ceased to beat as strongly within the coyote, and he found that the cold of his homeland was seeping into his bones in the dark of night. He began to swallow liquid flame in a vain attempt to stave it off, but brightly though it flared, it always left even more cold and darkness in its wake. The coyote was forced to swallow more and more of it just to keep from turning into a creature of ice.
Finally the liquid flame began to turn to ashes what the ice had not corrupted into crystal, and the coyote knew that when night next fell he would be transformed forever into a wraith of charcoal and frost, and that the process of his metamorphosis might consume the lioness and the jewel along with him, and he could not bear the thought.
He made his way up to one of the high, windy places of the world, and there looked out over a vast, featureless sea. He might fall into it, he thought, and never be found. And if he did, the lioness and the jewel might at least live on without him.
So he closed his eyes and relaxed his knees and he fell. As the waters of the sea rose up to meet him, he thought he saw the lioness's golden arm reaching out to catch him, thought he felt her heart beat within him one last time, thought he might have heard her calling out his name.
But perhaps it was only the wind.