Free THE NECRONOMICON ~ The Cthulhu Revelations by Kent David Kelly Page A

to honor her in the ways of her people.  I knew precious little of her tribe, only what I had heard from merchants in the night, for she rarely spoke of the mother who had died, the father who had forsaken her.  I myself had no religion, no belief.  I was in exile, not only from the people of Sana’a, but also from my own grieving heart.
    I no longer knew myself.  The gift of the nepenthe is its own curse as well.
    ~
    Having buried her, I drank of the morning waters, and I did grieve.
    I sang my most beautiful song of songs over her grave, and laid there in the shade until exhaustion stole over me.
    In falling prey to slumber, I had a precious memory of Adaya return to me.  How before that moment had I never remembered?  Had the veiling of that past torment been a trick of my own wisdom, a nepenthe born not of spice, but of the heart in all its need?
    The memory was this:
    As a child, first having fled Ghanara, I did see a bleeding woman garbed only in sackcloth and crown of thorn.  The bladesmen of the emporium cried out to the blood-hungering crowd that she was an adulterer.  She was stoned.  In my fascination, the sick and twisted pleasure with which I watched that miserable woman in her suffering, I was not only ashamed of myself, but I was ... what?
    As every stone fell, I experienced pleasure.  In the black shadow of myself, that aspect of my spirit which I strive to deny in all of its desires, in the Beast, I was fulfilled.
    The woman died gazing across the marketplace, looking into my eyes alone.  Only I would meet her gaze.  To the others, she was not a tragic loss, a woman of exquisite beauty even in death.  To those who had killed her, she was a husk, a depleted vessel unworthy of further thought.
    I cried that night, not only for the poor woman and the horror of her killing, but for myself, the damage I had done to my own spirit in taking pleasure in her suffering.
    That was the first night in which Adaya had embraced me.
    ~
    Adaya was my lover in dream alone.
    I was a boy, and she a virgin.
    We never more than touched, but she was and shall be my love forever.
     

 
     
    SCROLL XIV
    Of the Crimson That Is Desire
     
    (This scroll was uniquely titled thus by John Dee.  From the elaborate script of his pen in this passage, it seems that he was deeply moved here by Al-Azrad’s adoration of Adaya.)
    ~
    (This is the scroll-song, translated into English, which Al-Azrad did compose and sing over the grave of his Adaya.  It is perhaps one of the most haunting passages in Al Azif .)
    ~
    Mersiye (Elegy) ~
    The Funereal Song
    For the Maiden of Judaea,
    O Adaya
    ~
    Ever in her memory,
    I am the beloved of the lost.
    We dreamed as one,
    Echoing thrum of jackal heart,
    She was the only,
    She is everything.
    ~
    In death, Adaya,
    Forever you are mine.
    In the Empire
    Of the Blackened Mind,
    Unto the crest of cavern’s fire,
    Yet cradled in nepenthe,
    There my maiden breathes.
    ~
    There, in Dreamlands, she embodies
    Sheer transparency of starlight.
    In Palaces of Nothingness,
    From off the twilight’s sculptures
    Of fire and of shade,
    Gathering my every breath
    From star and blossom into song,
    Measuring the weft of every moonbeam,
    Adaya, O weaver of my dreaming
    Turns my lucent soul within her hands.
    ~
    In lingering in the Empire,
    She draweth down the moon,
    She with spellbound fingers
    Twirls the sacred crescent from the sky.
    ~
    Yet unknowing
    She is lost, awash in laughter,
    There she weighs my spirit’s wane
    In a spindling of her fingerprints.
    She and I, with songbirds
    Glory in the majesty of flight.
    ~
    For she
    Is the beauty of the rarity of rain,
    The desert misting in rains’ flight,
    The crystal lingering of manna on the hapau trees.
    More truly than the flesh she left behind,
    Here she is herself, simplicity,
    Wedded sweetly to her imperfection.
    ~
    And beholding me, so she loves,
    And so she doth remember love and life,
    And so
    She is lost to me.
    ~
    Ever in my memory,
    O Adaya,
    You are