by D. J. Butler
Eden was a garden.
It was also a mountaintop.
And it was a palace.
It smelled of…something vaguely citrus, Sarah thought. A cleansing, crisp smell, like pine sap and oranges mixed together, with an undercurrent of cinnamon. And smelling it, she knew she had smelled it before.
When her staff had flowered, the blossoms had had the same odor, only fainter.
And thinking back, hadn’t the tree that grew from her father’s acorn on the Serpent Mound also had the same scent?
A ring of trees circled a meadow. The meadow was thick with jeweled flowers and the boughs of the trees hung low to the grass with juicy fruits, red, blue, white, and purple. Above the grass of the meadow flew bees and winged serpents; among the trees Sarah saw lions and antelopes. Beyond the trees lay rocky mountain crags, and one of them was familiar—it was a forested bluff, and at its peak a serpent-shaped mound, and at the head of the serpent, an oak tree glowing with a blue light.
Beyond the mountains lay a sky that burned so brilliantly azure that its brightness hurt Sarah’s eyes to look at, and yet it was planted thick with stars.
In the center of the meadow stood a low, flat boulder. Runnels cut through its surface, and the runnels flowed with dark red fluid.
Beside the boulder stood a Woman. She was pale beyond the color white, but also blue, the faint blue of distant stars. She was beautiful beyond mortal reckoning, and Sarah found that the closer she looked at the woman, the less she could see. Was She fair, or was Her skin so dark it was almost black? Was Her hair golden and straight, or tightly curled and the color of mahogany? Were Her arms long or short? Were Her nails painted? Was She wearing a long red gown, or an apron of leaves, or an animal hide, or a dress of stardust, or nothing at all? Or was She in fact wrapped in the body of a living serpent?
Or was She a serpent?
Or a dove, or a gazelle? Or a tree?
Notwithstanding the shifting, unseeable appearance of the woman, Sarah knew Her. She was the presence Sarah had felt lying within the barrow of the Serpent Mound, at the junction of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, the center of the great watershed basin of the entire continent.
At her feet squirmed lizards of pure fire.
“Thou hast come alone,” the Woman said.
It wasn’t a rebuke, but an observation. Still, Sarah knew she shouldn’t have come by herself. “I should have brought witnesses.”
“There are witnesses at the door. Invite thou them in.”
“They aren’t dressed,” Sarah said.
“I shall dress them. As I have dressed thee.”
Sarah looked down and found that she, too, wore a dress like a skein of spider’s web sown with stars.
“How shall I think of Thee?” she asked the divine woman.
“I am the Woman,” was the answer. “The Virgin and the Bride. The Daughter and the Queen. The Earth beneath your feet, the Moon with shifting face, and the Sun with Healing in Her Wings. I am the Serpent. I am Wisdom. I am the Hidden One, the Eternal. I am the Tree in the Garden, and the Tree that Rises into the Sky. I am the Mother of All Living.”
Sarah felt very, very small. “The Mother of All Living…Eve. You’re Eve? But isn’t Eve different from Wisdom? Wasn’t Wisdom the first of Adam’s wives, and Eve the second?”
The Mother of All Living smiled. It was a kind smile, and within it were terror, chaos, and the unerring flow of all things, and as she smiled, so smiled the lions, the antelopes, the winged serpents, the bees, and the flaming reptiles. “Go thou, and bring thy witnesses.”
* * *
Calvin stood with the four Firstborn, on the fringes of the mound, just outside the ragged ring of stones. Behind them he heard the steady breathing of Alzbieta Torias’s bearers.
Cal saw blue streaks beginning to color the eastern sky and he worried Sarah might not have succeeded in time, but he doubted the Cahokians noticed; they stood at the foot of the small rectangular mound and stared.
Calvin didn’t stare. He could barely bring himself to look.
Besides, he told himself, there was nothing to see. Sarah stood alone on the top of the low mound and stared at nothing, her lips moving but making no sound. Her face glowed, but that was likely just the light of the morning, or maybe it was because of some magic Sarah herself was doing. No point in staring at that, and Lord hates a man as makes a big deal outta nothin’.
But also, he was wounded. He had killed a man—his first—and he had done it for Sarah. And rather than thanking him, she and the other Firstborn had been treating him like a big sinner ever since.
He ached, inside and out.
His grandfather had sent him to take care of Sarah, and Iron Andy had said Cal must be ready to kill a man. Well, he’d gone and done it. Did that mean he’d done right? Was he now the hell of a fellow his grandpa wanted him to be?
He had learned the signs and tokens of Freemasonry, and he continued to use them, though they had done him no good.
He had cared for Sarah, protected her, risked for her, even killed for her. She knew how he felt about her…and yet she pushed him away.
Cal took a deep breath and sighed.
Sarah turned to face her friends and walked down to the edge of the mound. Her face still glowed. She stopped just inside the furrow the Heron King’s plow had made around the mound.
“I need witnesses,” she said.
Cal stepped forward, but Sarah held up a hand.
“Calvin Calhoun,” she said. “It can’t be you.”
“The hell it can’t,” he said. “I got eyes as good as any man I e’er knew, and I’m honest as the day is long. You want me to witness somethin’, I’ll walk to Paris and spit in the eye of Nebuchadnezzar hisself to tell folks about it.”
“True.” Her eyes were sad. “And you’ve spilled blood on the Serpent Throne, Calvin. You’re unclean, and you can’t approach.”
She might as well have struck him in the solar plexus with a rifle butt. Cal gasped for air, and his vision lost focus.
Yedera put a steadying hand on Calvin’s shoulder. “I’ll stay with you, Calhoun.”
Cal barely heard the Daughter of Podebradas.
“I’ll witness,” Alzbieta Torias said.
“And I,” Maltres Korinn added. “If I’m deemed worthy.”
“And I,” said Sherem.
“Come.” Sarah held out her hand and Alzbieta took it. She in turn took Maltres by the hand, and he dropped his staff of office in the snow and gripped Sherem’s wrist. Sarah pulled and they followed her within the plowed rectangle—
and as each stepped over the furrow, his or her face began to glow.
The three stared about them in wonder, as if they were having some mighty vision Cal couldn’t see. Then they turned together, and all four of them faced away from Calvin, toward the east and the sun that was about to rise.
Sarah knelt.
The other three knelt behind her, and then all four touched their foreheads to the grass and snow.
“Dammit, I did everythin’ right, Sarah,” he said. “I did it all right.”
“There is strength,” Yedera said softly, “in being the one who stands part.”
Calvin shook his head. “God damn it. God damn all of it.”
He began to cry.
* * *
Kneeling in the presence of his Goddess, Maltres Korinn knew he was no longer mortal. He would become mortal again soon, and that knowledge pierced him like a spear, but for the moment, he was divine.
He was clothed in stars and he was one of the stars, one of the Sons of God.
He knelt in worship on the cosmic mountain, and below him cliffs fell away to distances unimaginable. Somewhere below, so far away he could not conceive of the distance, lay the mundane earth and all its concerns.
“Ye are come here to bear witness,” She said, gazing over the head of Sarah, who knelt before her. She spoke to him and also to the Polite adept Sherem and the priestess Alzbieta, but the goddess looked deeply
into Maltres Korinn’s eyes, and into his eyes alone.
“Yes,” he answered. He heard his fellow-witnesses accept at the same moment, a trio of acknowledgements in unison.
“My children have no need of a witness,” the Goddess said. “Those who now dream, and those who are awake, shall all know at the rising of the sun what is about to take place here, now, everywhere, and forever. Ye are called rather to witness to the rest of the world. Are ye willing to stand always, and to bear a true witness?”
“Yes,” said all three.
“Thou, Maltres Korinn?”
“Yes,” he committed. He felt the obligation settle upon him like a heavy cloak, like a suit of mail. Should be confess his faithlessness, his doubts, his willingness to risk going against the goddess’s Beloved?
But no.
She already knew.
“Thou, Alzbieta Torias?”
“Yes.”
“Thou, Sherem, disciple of Pole?”
“Yes.”
The goddess seemed satisfied. She turned her many faces—tree, dove, gazelle, serpent, woman, all at once, looking in all directions simultaneously and also focusing together with the intensity of a hurricano—down to look at Sarah.
“Behold ye, witnesses,” She cried, in a voice like thunder and the crying of the dove, “and bear this message to all the earth. Let every king and counselor know, let the meek of the earth hear and rejoice. Let every prisoner hope, let every tyrant fear, let all the wounded know relief. This is my Beloved Daughter, in whom I am well-pleased.”
She reached forward with both hands—or with six hands? or seven?—and placed them on Sarah’s head.
“My Beloved,” She said. “Thou art thou, and thou art I. I shall make my covenant with thee. For now, I give thee strength sufficient to all thy tasks, and cunning equal to every snare that shall beset thee. However short thy life may be, it shall be satisfying and glorious. Heal thou thy family, and consecrate our kingdom to bring it through the storm. Amen.”
“Amen,” Maltres whispered, and as he whispered it he heard the same word from a thousand other tongues, a million tongues, the tongues of angels that speak with fire. Looking up, he saw a choir of flashing stars, and as the echo of their Amen died, they began instead to sing, a long melody of unbearably sweet, lilting notes, that bore a single repeated phrase into the cosmos, over and over again.
Sarah Elytharias Penn, Beloved of the Goddess.
* * *
Calvin Calhoun heard a voice from heaven like many waters, saying:
This is my Beloved Daughter, in whom I am well-pleased.
“Sarah,” he said softly, his cheeks still wet.
“Don’t grieve for Sarah,” Yedera urged him. “She’s chosen. She’s well.”
The sky broke into song.
* * *
Chikaak’s high-pitched yap sounded over the grunts, yells, and howls of Sarah’s beastkind warriors.
The sun cracked over the eastern horizon. Bill noticed it in a bright yellow band that crossed Cathy Filmer’s brow.
“Why, Miss Howard,” he said, “you are wearing a crown, and it becomes you.”
“Bill,” she said pointedly, “there are more pressing matters at hand than flirtation.”
“Hell’s Bells,” he grunted, turning to look back at his warriors and their fight. “You have the right of it. Only without powder and shot, I’m a useless old horse, fit for the knacker’s yard.”
To his surprise, the assault was falling back. It was the third such attack the Imperials and Cahokians had mounted from the floor below, and this one had begun with a charge of spearmen, and then been followed by skirmishers with firearms.
Bill recognized some of the spearmen. He was sad to see the ones he knew trampled and torn by his beastkind warriors, but he must do his duty.
But in the very moment when the sun rose, the stairwell roiled into a pit of confusion. It came from the Firstborn. They hesitated, as one man, as if they were all allergic to the sun and its sudden rise threw them out of their discipline. They hesitated, and on the faces Bill recognized, he saw remorse and fear.
After a moment’s hesitation, the Firstborn began falling back to the floor below.
Shouting. Argument.
“What was the story the Lady Torias told?” Cathy asked.
Bill tried to remember. “About kingdoms sinking under water?”
“No, about Kyres and the moment when everyone knew he would be king.”
“They just woke up and knew one day.”
Cathy nodded fiercely. “They knew one morning. One day, with the dawn, they knew he was to be king.”
Bill nodded. “I do not know the mechanism of it. I had known Kyres as prince, and then one day he became king, and I assumed that the event followed the ordinary scheme of such things. Perhaps all the Cahokians dreamed the same dream.”
Bill’s beastkind, having driven their foes before them, fell back into position, awaiting the next attack rather than breaking formation to chase the enemy. Excellent discipline.
“It’s happened, Bill,” she said. “Whatever it was Sarah had to do. The Presentation, or whatever she did instead. It’s happened. It happened with the dawn. The crown isn’t mine, don’t you see? It’s Sarah’s. The crown belongs to Sarah, and those Cahokian spearmen all know it. That’s why they are falling back, out of surprise, confusion, loyalty, and fear.”
“I see.”
“Only what do we do about it?” she asked.
“That, my lady, is easy.” Bill raised the Heron King’s horn to his lips and blew the notes that signaled attack.
* * *
Eden was suddenly gone, and Sarah found herself kneeling in snow. The crown on her head and the iron sphere in her hands were both freezing cold to the touch, and she was exhausted.
Where was the Heronplow?
She cast about with her gaze and found it, resting in the seam by which it had stitched the mundane world to the world of Eden. She struggled to rise and couldn’t—
but Maltres Korinn and Sherem seized her, each by an arm, and raised her up.
Alzbieta Torias descended the gentle slope and returned with the Heronplow in both hands. She held it reverently, gazing on it as an object of wonder.
“Is this, then, part of the regalia of your kingdom?” she asked.
“It ain’t my kingdom yet,” Sarah said. The goddess had described her as the Beloved, but Sarah didn’t really know what that meant. Hadn’t her father been the Beloved, too?
Did being the Beloved mean you automatically became queen? The story of Elhanan who was renamed David and later became king suggested that was the ordinary sequence. Could Sarah be the Beloved and someone else still be queen?
And what was the covenant the goddess had referred to?
Sarah’s own lapse into Appalachee reminded her of Cal, and she looked around for him…
He was gone.
“Dammit,” she muttered.
The Daughter of Podebradas stood patiently in the snow where Calvin had been. The look on her face suggested she felt whatever pain had driven Calvin away.
“Beloved?” Alzbieta asked.
“Ain’t that…I mean, isn’t that a priestly title?”
“Of course,” Maltres Korinn said. “You’re the Beloved, or the Beloved Daughter. The goddess herself told me so, and I swore to bear witness.”
Sarah sighed. “I guess you’ll tell me all about that. First, though, I need help getting to that gate over there.”
The Treewall was only a long stone’s throw away, but Sarah’s legs felt like they had the solidity of warm butter. Leaning on Sherem and the regent, Sarah hobbled painstakingly toward the gate over frozen ground.
Lacking any other instruction, the palanquin bearers followed. Yedera came last, scimitar held high, guarding the rear.
“Beloved,” Maltres said, “I must surrender my office, and throw myself upon your mercy—”
“Maltres Korinn,” she snapped, “shut up!” She
didn’t raise her head as she spoke, staring at the snow-streaked grass in the morning light. “There’ll be time for all the groveling and the hand-wringing later. Right now, I need my strength.”
He fell silent. Together with the Polite, he virtually carried her to the gate. Alzbieta Torias walked beside them, leaving her sedan-bearers behind, looking at each other in puzzlement.
Above them, standing on the wooden branch-ramparts, leather-caped Imperial artillery watched beyond the walls. From within the city, on the western side, Sarah heard the cry of distress of her people, and the roar of the animals assaulting them.
She wasn’t sure why she thought this would work, except that…the Treewall looked long-dead, and the Heronplow had long been in the possession of the Heron King. If it had once been in the possession of the Kings and Queens of Cahokia, might they not have used it as Sarah now intended to use it?
Moreover, if the rule of Peter Plowshare could render the beastkind docile and peaceable, might some of that magic be lodged inside his plow? Could Sarah turn Cahokia into a place of peace, using the plow?
Also, the goddess had told Sarah to consecrate the kingdom. Wasn’t that what Sarah had done with the Sunrise Mound? And hadn’t she consecrated it with the Heronplow? Turned it, possibly, in a holier place, as Alzbieta said the Cahokians had been unable to do for a long term?
But she felt sick already, and unable to stand.
“Give me the plow,” she said to Alzbieta.
Alzbieta looked at her feet. “If the Beloved will tell me where to place the plow—”
“Into my damn hands, like I said!” Sarah barked. Then, seeing the humiliated expression on Alzbieta’s face, she softened. “I must seem weakened. I am weakened. But I can do this. I can do it, because I must.”
“The Beloved looks quite vigorous,” Maltres Korinn said.
“Strong,” Sherem added.
“Liars.”
“You look like you’ve lost half your size, Sarah,” Alzbieta said.
“There it is.” Sarah grinned and took the Heronplow from Alzbieta’s hands. The weight nearly toppled her. “Leave it to family to tell the hard truth. Now, if I’ve lost half my beauty as well, I don’t know what I’ll do.”
She didn’t want to say that with Calvin’s disappearance, she felt she’d lost half her heart.