448 - Self Convicted Sinner

Uncle Gan made sure that Min didn’t coil up into a little ball in the back of a Marble Palace closet for Jitzmitthra. My brother is really twisted into a little ball about winning the throne.  I’m not scared of him and me getting fourteen-eighted, because I just know he and Kallijas are going to win.  I just know it.

For our costumes Uncle Gan rented somebody’s express chair and he and Minis wore licenses and whistles and their faib skates and loincloths and that was all, just like real chair-bearers.

For me, Min pulled me into a closet and loaded me up with some really heavy, really flashy clothes... added a pillow to make me look fat... and put lots of jewels on me so I could pretend to be a fat, spoiled little Spark of the Sun’s Ray in his chair.  I kept Jiaklem with me though, and Kyriala’s Socks was willing to sleep in one of my sleeves after I fed him some treats.

And we went tearing through the street with Gan in front and Min behind, whistles blasting and me pouting and telling them to go faster, faster until we came to one of Minis’s favourite places to eat.  I ordered them inside with me and made them sit on the floor.

The guy serving us was dressed like some kind of exotic eastern fellow with gold beads strung on his moustache.  The old guy behind the bar looked startled but Min winked at him and he just sat down and started laughing.

Then he came over and started doing all kinds of silly things like going down in the Heir’s prostration to me and calling me Spark of the Sun’s Ray and Reflection of the Effulgent Light and fawning all over me and Min was finally laughing, finally relaxed. Gan poked him until he poked back and then whispered to me that I should order a Tat 153 and I didn’t understand why everybody was laughing at that.

I really liked the beef rolls and the finger dumplings they had and I ate too much.  I let Gan and Min skate slower all around the city after that.  I like Jitz in the city.  Everybody’s doing so many silly things.  Singing, dancing, throwing candy and flowers. 

I hang on the edge of the chair and throw ‘gold’ chains to people... they’re really mostly copper so they’re for show but Min said put one in every ten as real silver and one in every hundred as real gold.  That way people would be really surprised.  I have a couple hundred.  Min and Gan are both going slow.  They aren’t real chair bearers so I’m pretty heavy with all this stuff on.

I like seeing all the adults acting like kids.  The big guy with an Aitzas paunch and hair tied up real tight under a sweat cloth as if he were an okas bricklayer.  The okas girl, with skin paint and pretend armour and a spear with wrinkled bits of meat on it wiggling over her head, like a Hyerne wildwoman.  She looked like she was having fun.

All these people doing shocking, wild, crazy things.  I wrap my arms around my pillow middle and watch, suddenly glad I’m sitting safe between Min and Gan.  It’s almost scary. And this year people are going to do sex things too.

Nuni and I are going to watch from a balcony from the Marble Palace because kids weren’t really supposed to go out on the sexy day.  When we’re a little older I’ll bet we will anyway, but it only comes once every four years.

I drew another picture for Minis’s birthday.  He likes them a lot more than anything I could buy.  I don’t know why, because they aren’t that good.

“Bearers!”  I shouted because Minis said I should shout.  “Back to the Marble Palace!”

“Oh yes, Spark of the Sun’s Ray,” Minis said.  I could hear the grin in his voice.  He really needed to maybe go swim now.  If he stayed in the Baths all Jitz Grandfather said he’d turn into a raisin, not an Imperator.

The Imperator was dressed like a Fang lion... real enough to be scary and I didn’t go near him.  Min said he’d introduce me to him, after the election got counted.  After he won, I thought to myself but didn’t say.  The Imperator  was maybe the only guy not taking Jitzmitthra as a holiday, busy with Empire stuff and went inside early.  And the Imperatrix was dressed as a fat Aitzas man I didn’t know. 

Grandfather was wearing black robes today and looked really creepy because he was smiling a lot.  Minis’s mama was wearing white and colours today... and dressed like a dancing lady... showing lots of skin.  Her hair... all loose... went all the way onto the floor and she had to keep it up, looped over her arm.  But she didn’t go out of the Mahid part of the Marble Palace even if she did have a costume.  I guess she was still being a bit Mahid.  She’s supposed to not go out until she swears, Min says, so we had to go visit with her, in her rooms.

I liked Tawaen’s costume -- an old Chevenga -- pretending to be a really old man waving his cane at people.  Nuni was wearing a gryphon costume and kept getting his wings caught on things and his sister was a fishwife, waving a dead fish out of her basket, trying to sell it.

Minis went to talk to the Imperator about that guy who is accusing him of being an evil boy and came back looking upset but got calmed down after talking to Grandfather and to Uncle Gan.  I don’t like that guy.  He might have cause to not like my brother but he doesn’t have to be so mean about it.  After all, Min was just a kid, Nuni explained it to me.  Just around second threshold and he did something bad because his dad, my dad, our dead dad, wanted him to be evil.  

Not his fault.  I remember a lot of our dad’s crazy stuff and I’m glad Minis was there or I'd probably be a weirder kid. I remember my donkey.  I don’t want to think about that any more.  I’d rather play with the Imperial kids and be with Min and Gan and everybody.  It’s not a sad time so I won’t think of that right now.

We went back out to the Square mostly, mixing with the crowds.  A lot of real foreigners were there, just kind of watching... some people were drawing the costumes... a lot of music was happening too.

It was hard to dance in the heavy clothes and the jewellery so I went to take it off and we spent a lot of time at a circle of musicians from Farasha’s people and I danced and danced and danced. Somebody gave Min a little harp and he was silly and pretended it was a Great Harp, playing strings that weren’t there and looking confused when his fingers ran off into the air.  People started giggling and he kept groping for strings that weren’t there.  He even got up once and looked under the little harp as if the missing strings might be hiding under his seat.

Then he did play a dancing tune for the fishwife sitting next to him and Farasha, who wasn’t in costume but dressed in her best, the really bright embroidered stuff, grabbed my hands and showed me how to dance with her.

I was sort of sleepy by the time we went inside and I took off the rest of the fancy stuff and got clean and we all had sandwiches and cold meat cut off roasts and things that had been made yesterday.  I fell asleep just after then... it was late... and somebody carried me to bed with the other kids ‘cause that’s where I woke up next morning; inna big, big bed with moons painted on the ceiling and so big there were steps up to it.

It was Minis’s bed, I remembered.  But the picture I painted for him a long time ago wasn’t pinned up to the headboard anymore.  It was fun with all of us in it, though, and we ended up giggling and making fart noises with our hands.  Kima is better at it than me so I stick my tongue out at her alot.

Tawaen is old enough to sleep like a second thresholder and growled at us all to go away, putting a pillow over his head, so we went into the Lesser Baths. Today I’m gonna see if my big toy ride is still in the Marble Palace... and my old swing, and if they are, I’ll show everybody.

**

I am in the Imperial Chapel.  Chevenga ordered me to come here.  I remember the uncanny door with the metal flames on it in every metal on earth, swinging away from me.

I’m terrified.

I don’t remember what happened last time.  Am I dreaming? Am I awake?  I don’t know.  The polished wood under my feet seems real.  I swallow hard.  I... why am I here?  I am accused of sin.  I am self-convicted of sin.

Something snatches me up and holds me, dangling.  I am suspended in a writhing nest of hair. It is wrapped firmly around my wrists and ankles, binding them, yet holding me spread as far as I can stretch.  A coil of hair loops around my neck and around my waist and... I want to pass out... around my penis.

It is living. It is warm.  It holds me up without strangling me, wide swaths of hair, muscular as a snake. I am shaken. Once, twice. A massive thunder all around me.  I realize it is a voice but I cannot make it out, it is too big.  Another shake.  The voice drops to something I can hear rather than something that shivers my bones.  “My stubborn one.  Do you truly think We are limited in our caring?  We have the capability to care for the individual as much as the whole of creation.  At the same time."

“We are Gods.” I can do nothing but relax into the net of hair.  It holds me close.  It holds me together.  “We care as much for the least hair on your head.  It is not a matter of limits with Us.”

I am weeping, howling like a child, like a little baby, feeling ashamed but is not everyone an infant before Gods? I am being rocked.  I feel so small. I am being rocked.  “Gods... Goddesses... I don’t know what to do.”

“Wait.  And do not fear. Let us in, so We may speak to you.  Fear blocks the greater voices.”

I do not know if I am truly in the Imperial chapel, or dreaming.  It doesn’t matter.  I am wrapped snugly in warm silver hair and rocked until I fall into a deeper sleep.

I wake, naked on the floor of the Imperial Chapel, face first before the altar. I turn my hands up to accept the God’s blessings and go downstairs, half asleep, staggering to the bed.