179 - Almighty Mothers Five Demand

A day? Only a day? I’m on my feet with both fists in the air, seals flashing as I shake them. *You were to be here to help me!  What You are giving me is moving images and PLATITUDES!*

I’m falling surrounded by digging tools.  Silver picks and shovels, trowels and pry bars.  I see a trenching spade in gold but it is much too far beyond my reach.  I’m falling, grabbing at things as they fall upwards, past me. I manage to grab a silver spoon, even as I am landing on a heap of… words.

“Mella!” Risae’s voice thunders over my head. “Move Yourself. I will no longer tolerate laziness in My service! MELLLLLLAAAAAAA!”

I slide down the words tumbling, rolling.  I don’t have time for this.  I land with a thump at the bottom of this enormous pile of information and I can see it is cascading in from above, like a hail-storm. Broken pieces of sentences. Partial images. I am reminded of my dream, with Mikas bound by printer’s tape and paper, forced to sit under an unending disorganized stream of information.

I sit, on the floor, and look at the single spoon in my hand.  Mella is under that mess somewhere. I can hope that She found the information Risae needs. I’m so tired. I can barely lift the spoon and begin shifting single letters scattered in front of me.  My despairs grows as I sift through ‘a’s’ and ‘k’s’ and punctuation marks.

*The links are all broken, boy.* I hear the voice but don’t see the God or Goddess. My spoon is wearing down, even as I dig.  It is only silver. The Gods said I cannot do this by myself. *Gods. Goddesses. Help. Arko. Help me. Help me Arko.  With your golden cloths you waved me to the God.  With your black cloths you cloak me in blessed darkness after the merciless Eyes of the Ten.  I burn under the Gold.  Help me, Arko.  Give me blessed strength and then merciful shade from the unblinking Eye that might yet strike me blind.*

**

The Temple animals refused to leave Minis this third day, no matter how the priests and dekinae called or cajoled, risked lifting them off the statue only to have the birds flutter up, around and then land to shade him with their wings once again.

Doof and three of Muunas’s eagles flew over him where he lay, soaring, wings spread to shade him. Bella joined Dimae’s hounds, the ferrets and rats and mice and even the Temple cleaner’s donkeys joined the growing throng of creatures.

Narilla watched a brace of white mice scoot through an acolyte’s fingers for the fourth time running, land on the marble with tiny huffs of air and scuttle straight for Muunas’s hand. The Temple was full of people, full of animals.

“Priestess.” The Marble Palace stable master bowed behind her.  “I am finding it difficult to keep the horses in their stalls.  Their Masters and Mistresses are calling them.”

A commotion broke out at the Temple stairs and a white ox, trailing broken pieces of harness, trotted up the stairs and into the Temple, straight to Imbas’s statue.

“Thank you, stable master.  Let them come.  The Temple calls them.  It might be chaos but the Temple calls.”

He bowed and Narilla nodded across the floor at the High priest who had once been her bouncer.  “Radas.”

He nodded.  She turned to the Dowager Imperatrix and, driven by an odd impulse, tapped her on the shoulder in a peculiar pattern.  Inensa whirled, hands coming up defensively.

“This has to stop if we are going to help Your son, Dowager,” Narilla said, resolutely. “The Almight Mothers Five require you to bring your poison gardens into the Temple.”

She froze.  “All of it?”

“Everything that can be moved.”

Inensa curtsied as the glass instrument hit a high note far above what any human throat could manage. “Immediately, Fenjitza.”

178 - You Only Have One More Day

Minis was dreaming.  He knew he was dreaming. It was his old nightmare of being caught in his father’s body, in his father’s sensibilities.  I am not that. I do not make sexual toys of my enemies. I do not relish the taste of blood. Screaming makes me want to rush to the one in pain and help them.

*You are too Haian, boy.*

*No. I refuse to be you. I refuse to enjoy myself the way you did.  Besides, you’re dead and honourably buried. How are you here talking to me?*

*Being presented in the Temple put part of me in here. I am become as a God. But it’s boring. Muunas and Aras and Mikas… even the two dirt Gods have more control than I do.*

*Good. You were a bad Imperator and a bad man.*

*I did what I wanted. When I wanted. I was feared, my little skin tag.  Stop trying to fix this broken God Mechanism and let Ergas absorb you. There are no more emotions to drive you, once that happens.  I am here. I dream. Dream with me. Dream with all of us.*

*Eww. Even dead and dispassionate you are vile. But what do you mean, all of you?*

I am falling into Muunas’s Eyes and there is a hall of Crystal Thrones, each with a different man… a different person… on it. I am sitting on my own Crystal Throne.There is even an image of Shefenkas waving. The blond woman… his sister… beside him, on her own throne, is a faded outline, a pale ghost. A place holder, with only the faintest connection with the Temple.

In fact the various Imperators and… yes… Imperatrixes… are varying degrees of transparent. Some are faint, some are as solid as if they were bodily present.  Kallijas is next to me. He never did the Ten Tens as my regent, but he is more real than some of the Imperators. He leans over and gives me what I called ‘his encouraging look’.

Then someone else leans out of the crowd. I know him. His eyes are full of sadness. *Descendant. You call on my memory all the time, lad. These are copies of the humans who have done the Ten Tens. Or any sketchy ritual, wearing the seals.  The Ten Tens ensures we are ‘taken up’ by the Temple.* It is Illesias the Great, leaning forward, gazing at me intently.

*If you continue this ordeal, you will be taken up completely, lad.  You will die and your Heir will be Imperator, with your Imperatrix as regent.*

*But the Temple is broken, Ancestor.* I bow respectfully. *There is a solution without me sacrificing myself, isn’t there?* I suddenly realize why Imperators cultivate the ‘paunch’. It gives them more energy here.  More time inside the Temple’s mind. I am hopeful that one of these men has an answer for me.

*One person alone does not have the strength to sort through this mess, my distant son.* He waves at Chevenga, who smiles. *He was one of those who taught you that. Look there for your answer for you. In fact you have most of it in place already. Argos is fighting to fix itself with your assistance. Risae sent Mella to find your solution in the foundations of our civilization. She Herself is being amended, even as we speak. Brutal Goddess that She is, She is finding out that fixing Herself doesn’t involve more cutting, rather more healing.*

*Then I will endure.  It is reassuring to know that You are all here.  Even him.* I point at my father, a pale and transparent blob, sitting on the throne, playing with his fingers, waving them before his face like a little baby.

*You have enough strength for one more day before you dissolve completely and come here, Minis Kurkas Joras Amitzas Aan. Figure it out before then.*

177 - I Must Continue

Minis sat up, slowly. It was rim sunset. He sat in a puddle of warm water and, terrified of Risae, hadn’t even noticed okas pouring it on him during the day.  His arms and legs and head felt light, as if they would all float away if he should move too quickly.

His skin was brown as a labourer while his hair was almost white. He sat and stared at his hands and his feet as if they weren’t his own. “Minis. Come down.”  It was Akminchaer standing at Muunas’s feet, just at the edge of the God’s carven hair.

“I need to check you,” he said.  “You might be being sustained by the Temple, but this cannot go on.”

“I’m all right, Akminchaer,” Minis said as he stepped down from the statue of the God.  Lain smiled at him and trundled away with his water cart and donkey.  That man was very brave to keep coming right up on to the God’s statue.  Did that house-donkey just wink at me? No. That’s silly. He held out his wrists for the Haian and the choir began singing “O’r The Crystal Battlements.”

“Let me put drops in your eyes and you need to eat.  You are getting thinner as I watch, as though you are burning away under the sun.  The energy for what you are doing must come from somewhere!”

Matthas loomed up behind the shorter Haian.  “He is correct,” he said in the Temple’s voice. Then he turned and walked away to stand before Imbas.  He passed Minis’s family as they came into the Temple, Kyriala holding one of the babies herself, Gan holding the other.  Farasha was laughing at something Gan said and Kyriala’s eyes were straight on him; intent. Are you all right?

He nodded at her and happily took the baby she carried. “Inensa.” He said, her misty blue eyes were wide and her mouth fell open in a baby gurgle, waving a hand up at his face.

Gan laughed. “Are you sure?  It could be Dau.”

Minis looked up at them, heart swelling with happiness.  Even though he felt tired enough as though he’d been lifting stone all day, it felt right.  This had needed doing.

The pews were half full, people coming and going.  “I’m not really hungry,” Minis said, but his stomach growled even as he spoke and he had to smile.

The Zak woman was sitting before Mikas’s statue, and her son stood looking up into Dimae’s fiercely serene face.  “Minis,” Radas came up with the food taster holding a tray of spoons, each one holding a single mouthful.  He nodded at Minis, who nodded back.

“Thank you Barabbas.” He picked up the first spoon, still disinclined to eat. But the moment he tasted the pepper spiced whipped cream over chicken he was suddenly ravenous.  “Yes, Fenjitzas?”

The man sat down on the step with Minis.  “Whatever you are doing seems to be working. Though there isn’t much to see other than you lying on Muunas’s hand.”

“It’s…” Minis paused.  “Very strange.  I’m seeing all sorts of strange things.” He shrugged and accepted another spoon, avoided the waving fist of the baby and put it in his mouth.  “I needed to do this, and I didn’t know that I did.”

Radas nodded.  “I don’t know if you can continue, Minis.  You’re looking almost transparent and your Haian is concerned.”

Minis looked down at the babies on his and Gan’s laps and smiled. “I promise that I will not evaporate into the Temple… at least not now.”

The crowd in the pews sported black kerchiefs on their sleeves, at their gloves’ wrists or in their pockets, showing they approved him stopping this variant of Ordeal. Here and there a gold kerchief gleamed.

“I have to continue,” he said, and gave up the babies to their nurses.  He rose and kissed Gan, and Farasha, and Kyriala right there in the Temple.  “I don’t know how I’m going to manage.  But I must continue.”

He stepped out of their loving hands, gloved and ungloved, and climbed back up to lay himself in Muunas’s hand once more.

It was dry as if the stone had absorbed the fluid and as he lay down in the dim light before the Temple lights were lit, he gazed up at the serene faces of Muunas and Selinae, over him, their hair seeming to move in the upper reaches near the ceiling. “Help us, oh Gods,” he whispered, and smiled, seeing Doof and a pair of white and gold eagles circle above. Already the mouse who had decided he was gong to defend Minis skittered from Selinae’s hand and dropped to the stone coils of marble and then down to curl his tail around Minis’s ear.

He could hear the babies burbling to each other below, the scritch of the sacred animals’s claws on stone as they came to be his blanket. Gan’s voice whispering a Yeoli saying he’d learned to sing from Sukala. Farasha drumming on her favourite dembek, Kyriala’s firm, clear soprano as she joined the choir, singing.

How shall I have the strength to find the solution for us? “I approach You with gratitude,” he said.  “Not with fear.”

176 - Clever, Erudite, Intelligent and Conversant

I am melting under Her gaze. I can feel my skin sloughing off, burning off. There’s no sound except the muffled howling of swaddled homunculi, stacked into boxes by rats, locking the lids down tight and loaded onto shelves.

I swallow and hold up the wine amphorae.  “Sweet white wine, I think.  The Exalted’s Divine Husband said that You liked it.  He put it in my hands –“ I cut myself off. I’m babbling with fear. The boxes on the shelves are bulging, the lids banging against the locks.

Risae straightens abruptly enough that I sit down. My legs won’t hold me up. I’d have gone to my knees but I couldn’t even do that and end up sitting, like a toddler.  She sniffs and I blink. Risae’s labyritry is restored. Every hair is perfect. Every crease sharp as knives. I can.. still smell the broken room. Feces. Blood.  My hands are shaking. “Mother of Knives,” I say. “I am so small a thing. You needn’t hide anything.  Even in wildest chaos there is beauty, harmony. Like getting drunk.”

She snatches the amphora out of my hands and tilts it up. As she drinks the mess comes back into view, but the animals are still cleaning, still hunting down the last of the women… these aren’t angry.  The last few are like mice and skulk and hide, and… yes, they are weeping.  Two tiny little women rush behind a torn box, then one scuttles behind me, while Risae is drinking. She pours and pours and pours wine out of the one small jar. Then she slams it down hard.  “It’s part of me… as I AM. So a drink… hic… is… allowed…” She weaves where she stands, then shakes Her head.  “Stay here.  I am going… going… to get… clean,” and vanishes in a flare of light.

I draw a breath, finally, almost ready to fall over from holding it. The woman behind me clings to my back, trembling, shaking.  “Are you… part of Risae?” I whisper.

I can feel her nod.  “We’re all the human bits,” she whispers back.  “Feelings.  Fears. Imperfections. When we became Risae She started shedding us, trying to destroy us. The prophet said if we put aside our mortal bodies and entered Argos, we would be as Gods. That's true but we are so separated.”

“You entered Ergas, the Temple,” I say. “But why are there so many of you and why are you so at odds?”

“Because we are. We are all the bits that She hates.”

The distant noises from all the boxes on all the shelves are growing fainter.  “Can I help?” I have a terrified clench in my centre as I ask.

“When… if… She allows… would you come and have tea with us?  Introduce us to a nice Haian?  Haians are safe.  Haians don’t scare us.”

“Of course.  I’m going to be very busy but I can certainly have tea with you now and again. (And try to find a Haian psych healer willing to work with a crazy Goddess I think.) My wife and the babies can come too if Risae permits.”

She pops out from behind me and curtsies. She is a plain, heavy woman, with her thin brown hair, but she doesn’t look so bad. She just looks a bit Tor Enchian, or Nellan, perhaps.  “Do you think I’m pretty?”

That’s a dangerous question.  “As a married man I should not flirt with other women other than my wife and alesinae, so you know I cannot honestly answer that question.  You are fascinating. Terrifying. Powerful.”

She thinks that through for a little. “Really?”

“Really.  I should die, if I lie.” Oh, Gods, why did I phrase it that way?  It was the truth though. And still is.

“All right.”

As Risae appears, this time truly pristine, this tiny woman raises her chin and faces Her.  “Ruth!”

“Y…yes?  No. I’m not Ruth!”

“Risae, then.” The short woman facing the Goddess is nearly normal size, though much shorter than I am, and both of us are merely human sized, but the Goddess doesn’t look so terrifying with her hair down.  It reaches the floor and flows all around us.  It is as long and thick as Selinae’s. She nods at the woman, slowly, blinking, still a little drunk.

“Risae… I am the piece of You weeping for being ugly for so many years.  I didn’t need to become You to be beautiful.” She waves a hand at me and I want to duck behind the amphorae. Please leave me out of this.

“I may not be merely pretty, but I am fascinating. He said so, and spoke truth to me.”

“Yes.” The woman is growing taller, more slender, her hair is lightening. She reaches out to Risae who puts out one finger, daring to touch.  Then there is only Risae.  “I we are fascinating. Terrifying. Powerful.  We are beyond fear.” She takes up the second amphora and again pours an entire vineyard of wine out of it.

“You are the Beloved of the most Cunning God. And your daughters in Arko. And your sons,” where this is coming from I don’t know.

The place is clean and sparkling white and I feel Mikas’s breath on my ear. “You need to wake up, boy. Let Me talk to her now.”

“Thank you, oh Clever Ones. Erudite and Conversant Experts.”

“Wake up, Minis!”

175 - A Glass of Wine?

The sun on this second day bit into him like a Zak Great Hound savaging him as he lay.  He clamped his lips together, tightly, lest he start whining. His tongue, in his mouth, felt like a woolen sock. He had no tears left to weep, barely enough moisture for his mouth and for his eyes to move in their sockets, though they felt like they were nested in hot sand.

…I have things to take to Mikas,” I say to the Two… hiding Gods.  Why did that pop into my head?  Why on the Earthsphere would Imbas and Oas be hiding? “And Anae gave me things for Risae.”

“No, boy, you don’t want to go there.” Imbas says.  Oas nods solemly and offers me a beer jar. I shake my head, no.

“I don’t have time to sit and drink with You, as much as I want to.  And where is Mella?”

They don’t answer except to show me a double door made of white, glazed glass, bound in silver, with hand-press patches on both panes, saying, in ancient and spikey letters ‘P**H’.  They are trembling in their tracks. “Listen,” Oas says. “You tell Us if you want to go in there.”

Someone is screaming. Someone is howling and the words are distorted enough that I cannot make them out. There are cats yowling; squealing noises and the sounds of smashing glass.  A thunderous CRASH shivers the mat I’m standing on and I’m astonished the glass doors don’t shatter. They seem to bulge. I swallow hard.  “May I borrow a jar of Your beer… or wine to make an offering to Her?”

They look at me and suddenly their two smiles melt into Mikas’s foxy face. “Take two,” he says. “She likes a sweet white wine best.”

I swallow hard again, set my hand on the ancient ‘P’and push the one door open.

As it opens a shower of glass bits blow through the crack and I’m forced to cover my face with my arms. I turn my shoulder to the door and back in with my arms up over my head. Blue lightning crackles and bursts here and there, melting and burning whatever it touches.

Glass flies everywhere like snow in a blizzard a hand reaches out scoops shattered fragments up, re-forming whole beakers and pipettes and jars and they float away to be seized by rats with hands. But the room is swarming with tiny figures of a short, plump woman, with scraggly brown hair scraped back into a bun like Risae’s.  They are all various forms of enraged, some weeping, some disgusted, some red faced and clench fist and they’re all fighting one another.

They are hurling Risae’s glasswear at one another.  One tiny woman picks up a table, the Goddess screams ‘NO!” but it tips and all the restored slides and equipment slide off to smash and bury other tiny women. Two fighters have broken glass slides into swords and are slashing at each other.

Ghosts hover in the blizzard of glass, bellowing ‘You aren’t smart enough! You aren’t pretty enough!! You aren’t tall or thin or blond enough! You fat, stupid cow! You were born to a fat, stupid cow as punishment for your sins! Not like your father, your brother. BUY KWIK NU LASHES NOW…ugly blemishes… vaginal odour… menstruation… female… Hell awaits you, Jezebel! GOOD GIRLS MARRY RICH …I dare correct the Sin of Eve!... First Prophet I give myself to your vision…. I’m the real me! I’m the real me! Go away you awful, evil, ugly woman! I’m Ruth! No, I’m Risae!” The rats are biting them, shaking them.

A wave of kittens with hands surges in and each kitten grabs a little woman, wraps her in a towel. The mice and rats roll the bundles away, the monkeys scoop up nets of them, carry them away, their horrid little ratchet voices muffled. “I’m the pretty one. Selly’s pretty because I made her that way, for You. She was crippled and if not for Me She’d still be one! Love ME!”

Risae rips through the glass blizzard with two stabs of her hands, looming taller and taller till her head brushes the roof. She raises a tuning fork and beats it against a cage door. Every particle of glass in the air plummets to the floor at once. Her hair, pulled out of her bun is full of glass and dirt and flies around her head and I can see the resemblance to all of the tiny, crazy homunculi.

Her usually pristine coat is bloodied and smeared with fluids and she now has scalpels in both hands. Her sleeves are soaked to the elbows with blood and what smells like feces. I stand on the mat at the door, still like a mouse in front of a snake. I swallow and try to work some moisture into my mouth and say the only thing I can think of.

“Great Chirurgeon. Might this lowly one offer the Exalted a glass of wine?”

Forgot to Announce My Day Off!

Today is a Civic Holiday in Canada.  Simcoe Day.  It means another long weekend in the summer.  So I will be posting tomorrow, not today.

I'm coming to the end.  I'm thinking that General Pasen will get a State funeral, but the Haians are just saying he's still in critical condition.