Photopsia

It was Sunday when the twins drove into town and saw it, the damnable statue, which was so wide as to plug the underpass, and which they likened to their mother, who on the necessity of marriage had become quite immovable. The traffic diverted left and right like a fountain around the statue. Only they stayed. They parked as close as they could, which ended up being a mistake, because then all they could see was a giant foot. Of interest, at least, was the moss between the toes, the way it–like nematomorpha–worked itself into knots.

How had the moss arrived at this sunless place? It must have been their mother, they joked, who wanted her foot festooned.

They walked along the sculpture with their hands out, fingertips grazing the moss. They pushed the stone, as if expecting it to crumble. They stood there, wondering, until the last car disappeared and all they could see was each other, the whites of their eyes like faltering headlights.

It was funny, somehow, to be left in the dark, and they burst out laughing. They were giddy with it, this story of how the moss came to be: Their mother was a primordial goddess and had been locked away in this emptied underpass. Her jailer, a bookish man, often asked her to describe moss, which she had never seen. Was it porous or wet? Was it bitter? She had figments of sheet moss and haircap, of fern and sphagnum, but they were individual concepts and, combined, foreign. If only she could arrive at an answer. Then he would let her go. She thought, perhaps with better circumstances, like if she had idolaters, she could send them out gathering, and she would not have to describe the moss, but could give it to the man straightaway. Refusing to become pathetic, she pulled the earth into various shapes that pleased her eye. A leg was formed. Two. Then the torso. Arms, hands. This she repeated many times over, creating idolaters, although she left their heads mostly empty, for she did not know the use of ears or noses. These idolaters went out–the jailer let them out, who would want anything so monstrous?–and as they exited, kowtowed over and over, producing silver-tongued promises. Outside her domain, many moons came and went but the idolaters did not return. The goddess began telling herself stories, which were the only part of her that was left: that the idolaters had made it as far as the steppes, that they had gone a long way past what was needed, through vast plains and rolling hills, if only to find the rarest moss. When they had their prize in sight, they were set upon by wolves, which they did not hear coming. The wolves relieved them of both arms and legs, and so the idolaters were left, like boulders, upon the ground. The goddess did not want this to be true, but it was, it had to be, and so she wept. And wept. Then she raged, and by dint of will, burst through her prison and swept her great arm across the world, grabbing hold of the forests and everything inside–young shoots, birds’ nests, moss–until they were compressed within her iron fist. When she opened her hand, she saw only what had been broken. What compelled her to do this, the goddess did not know, but she found the jailer and told him her story, then sunk down in despair, the moss forfeited at her feet. He helped her to stand. He asked her a last question: Was it bitter? And when she would not answer, he granted her her freedom, but locking her up again, in that place which she called the emptied place, which was home.

Far away, tires rolled on pavement. The winds, unchanging, bade their time. The walls of the underpass went blue with cold, and the twins could swear the moss grew, pulling itself toward the calf and up past their vision, where they knew it reached, inexorably for the sun.