by Jared Ravens
“What are you going to do?” He asked finally.
“I can make you all understand me,” I said. “Or I can cut all of you into pieces.”
There was a long pause.
“Neither of those is going to happen, dear. Goetz is going to keep making us. It’s in its nature. And you can’t keep killing them or explaining yourself to them. Isn’t it better to listen to Goetz?”
He had me listening until this final sentence. I turned slowly to him, trying to think how to make my words clear.
“My dear,” I replied. “You don’t know anything about me. You don’t listen to me. You never have. So let me just say that Goetz is dangerous. It will have you as its slave where I would have you as a prince. Think about my offer, for I know of only one other way to deal with you and your friends.”
I walked away, exhausted from talking to him. I had made up my mind about what to do, but I was going to give him the night to think about it before I unleashed the carnage.
I went to sleep that night hearing his voice in my head, his ignorant assumptions about Goetz echoing in my thoughts. I was woken up to the sound of a thousand men running over our gates. I was too slow to move. They covered me, crawling over my body like insects. I threw them off and heard them yell as they flew into trees. I dug my spear into a dozen of them, delighting in the cracking sound of a body being impaled. I looked up and saw the blackness of a figure above me. I tried to grow taller but he grabbed me and held me by my throat, shaking me like a rag as the men ran below me, killing any of my women that resisted. I let my tears drop onto the bloody ground as Curson loosened his grip and told me to submit. With the air he allowed me to breathe I told the women to relent, to throw down their spears for their own safety.
I had truly failed women on that day. I had led them to think I was their protector and lulled them into a sense of complacency. Then I had failed to convince or eliminate Spaulding. Many of my favorites died that day, my feet slogging over their blood as I was led by a chain crafted by Curson. His talents were well measured, as the cuff around my neck was indeed unbreakable. Around us were cheering men, to my back a gloating Spaulding. I did not fault one of them. I lay willingly against a rock at the base of Sigma. I closed my eyes, exhausted.
When the war party's hollers had toned down I looked out into the darkness of the night and saw a large body walking towards me from the fires. Fearing it was Curson to torture me I tried to stand up. Instead it was a large man of gray skin and striking features that approached me. He held his hand out, warning me not to move.
"It will hurt more," he said.
"I don't want it to feel good," I said bitterly.
"That will be taken care of in time," he replied.
He sat next to me and I looked at him out of the side of my eye, only in time realizing who it was.
"Harper," I said. "You look..."
"Different."
"You have much fewer arms."
"I was told to change."
I nodded approvingly before sighing. Not wanting to ever see him in his monstrous form again I explained to him:
"You look much better this way. And we can understand what you are saying."
"It's strange to hear that from you."
"Why is that?"
"Because you are the one that defines an unwillingness to change."
I turned my head to him and looked at him. The thing that I was ready to eliminate from the land on first sight had shut me up in only a few sentences.
"You came here on orders," I said.
"I came here because I am your son."
This was true enough but I had not thought about it.
"I think it would be a half son," I said thoughtfully. He ignored this.
“I wanted to see if there was a way to head off any conflict. The lengths you and Goetz will go to prove yourselves right are tremendous and bloody. It seems you are fighting over such petty things.”
"It's not a little thing. He will not let me be, and he will not stop creating men. They are destroying the order of things.”
"Men like me?"
"You were a trap," I said. "I was tricked into making you."
He sat silent for a long time. I realized that, in my anger, I had spoken harshly.
"You don't have many friends," he finally said. "You should not be so dismissive of the ones you have."
I can say now that these words affected me deeply, though at the time I was defiant. I had no connection to any of these beings. Though Goetz wished me to think of them as brothers and sons, I hadn't wanted any of them. I can say I would have extinguished them if I could, though I would have made it painless if possible. Harper made it seem as my desire for privacy in my own private world was a fault. I had not asked to be made, but now that I was, I wanted to be the being I was, without conditions.
But, of course, none of the others had been asked to be created, either.
It was then I began to hatch an alternate plan.
Goetz was reluctant to see me during this time, and, I must say, I was not disappointed in this. I kept expecting it to appear and plead some foolish ideal to me but to my relief it kept its smokey body away. Instead, it had come up with its own sneaky plan, one that I saw though from the moment it appeared.
Her name was Martel.
It is, of course, a 'she', shorter than me but prone to wearing long red dresses to show off a plump figure. She appeared to me in one of these very costumes the first time I met her. He had a round, pleasing face, though she was for the most part somewhat plain. Her aura was comforting and intentional.
She was quite pleasant, speaking of the trail she had followed in order to appear before me. Of course, this was the path that Goetz told her that she had come from, since she would could have no understanding of where she actually originated from. She was made, she told me, to bring softness into the world. Goetz had been kind to her, she remarked. But I understood her alternative purpose. She was a woman, made by my parent, and thus it was Goetz’s way of saying: 'See, I may make other women as well!'.
She was my sister, and though she was similar to me, she was not as strong and had few of the abilities that I did. She could not grow to great heights and she could not create the things that I did. I saw these deficiencies immediately, and I knew why they were there: Goetz would not make the same mistake twice.
She was there to comfort me, to speak to me as a lady may speak to another lady. This was quite nice of Goetz even if it was manipulative. As much as I love Martel, I have always been wary of her because of this. And the plan to placate me by using my chosen gender to endear itself to me did not go as Goetz wished. I had ladies to comfort me, and I had created them, and they needed my attention.
"We can be friends," Martel told me, and I believe she meant it. "We can work to make this a world for our kind. We are here to do that."
Awe, yes, the things she believed. New to this world, she was being molded by Goetz. She is much different now, and she understands her role in it. This is because I taught it to her.
"Goetz is our parent but it is not our ruler," I told her bluntly. "you don't have to follow it."
"Its very powerful, and it does have good ideas for us."
The 'powerful' part got to me, because it had obviously diminished Martel's own power because of its fear of me. How to tell her this without hurting her feelings?"
"Oh, Martel, you are so lovely," I said. "But Goetz only needs us because it has no ability to see what we see, to experience what we feel. This is not its world and it can't make it so. You see, my sister, I am the creator of all that you see, not Goetz, and it will never be otherwise. You may go back and tell it this. But if you and Goetz wish to rule this land under me, you are both welcome to contribute your ideas and I will allow them to be considered."
I said this as pleasantly as I could, but it still stung her. The look in her eyes was quite gratifying. She left as elegantly as she could, and I sat there, tied up in perfect harmony
with my pride, fully knowing that everything I had said was completely true.
I know Goetz was upset for I heard its voice screaming when it was told what I said. My only fear was that it would come to me and demand something, and then I would have to experience its awful voice in my head. Nothing could change my view: this was my world or no one's world.
But luckily it never came to me. It never tried to change my mind. I knew what this meant now. I would have to change or be eliminated, and I had neither on my mind.
I still slept for long periods, having little else to do and only spending my waking hours worrying about the fate of my women. So it was during one of these sleeping periods that they came and got me. Spaulding cursed and spat my name and Curson saying little, doing most of the work. They tied me up and held me above their heads and carried me with much difficultly up the mountain called Sigma.
"Spaulding," I said as I was carried, "I want to tell you that what I did was meant as no offense."
He grumbled at this and asked if I felt offended being tied up.
“I understand you must be angry. But my offer still stands. If you and Curson build me a fortress at the top of Sigma, I will listen to you as advisors, and allow you free rein in your chosen disciplines."
"And the other choice is to listen to you beg?" laughed Spaulding.
"No, it's much worse," I told him.
And I feared for the consequences.
Orlando
Bern quit reading The Testament after a few hours. He closed his eyes and Jonathan continued to read it it softly to him, his voice like a trance. He drifted off somewhere around the the part where Celia and Martel met.
He felt the weight of a long day float over him and in the soft light of his head he met Orland, Queen of the Night. She whispered softly in his ear. It was words that he could not remember later, but in that moment they flowed though his mind like cool water. He smiled. Her gold and black wisps of hair flowed up from her head, and her body floated in smoky grays above a purple ocean. He spoke back to her, telling her about his day, which seemed so distant and insignificant. He saw her often in his dreams. He expected a polite smirk from her caramel face but instead she shook her head. He leaned in to hear what she had to say. She was speaking more intently, but the words came out muddled in the logical pathways of his mind. He reached out to her, telling her he could not hear her.
At that moment he heard a bang.
He shot up from his bed, a stack of furs on the floor. He was confounded about his surrounding for a moment. Another bang brought him back to reality. The ground shook.
He stood up, hitting his head on the low ceiling. Orange light flashed in the pane of the window. Dark figures glimmered the front of the flames throwing liquid at the other endow the long caravan-house and jumping as it exploded. A small, hunched over and with an axe chased after them, causing them to run. It was Jonathan. He could hear him yelling profanities at them in between the sound of the explosions.
It was surreal, almost comical, at first glance. But as he pulled himself from his stupor he quickly realized his danger More men were running from the woods with jars of the explosive liquid. Bern rushed to the table with a the papers Jonathan had been reading to him and thrust them into his satchel. He could hear them at the windows yelling, coming closer. Some were heading towards his window, jars in hand.
He scooted to the other side of the home and jumped out the window on the opposite side, falling knee deep in water as flames burst above him. He held his head under water for as long as he could will holding the satchel just above the water line.
Pulling my head up to grab air he guided himself from tree to tree, moving deeper into the disgusting wilderness around him. His clothes and face were covered in moss, his body wet and cold. Behind him he heard the voices asking ‘Where is he? Where is he?’ It was unclear if they were asking about Jonathan or about Bern. He didn’t wait to find out. He kept moving until the flames were out of sight. He sat on a a muddy island in the swamp, surrounded by water, in complete darkness.
Far from the voices of the arsonists, he was engulfed in the frightening calls of unknown animals. He sat there, shivering in terror, until the morning light relieved him. The sounds became less the path more clear. He made his body move through the water towards the road. He walked beside the main pathway for a full day, not wanting to show himself out in the open. He had no idea if the robbers had wanted Jonathan for other business or for The Testament or for other business; it seemed certain to Bern that Jonathan ran in foul circles and with circumspect people.
He took no chances. He slept in a ditch the next night, making sure he was a good distance out of sight. His dreams were of dancing figures and balls of flames. He saw a woman moving in strange ways and speaking directly to him. He could hear her very clearly. It was not Orlando.
It was Celia.
Here, the Questions Will End
Adapted From Celia’s Testament of an Alternate History of Creation
As Received by Jon Forth
I was chained to the top of Sigma for longer than I care to remember, waiting for what I imagined was coming. Goetz would still not speak to me, and though I was glad for this, I wondered if I had not miscalculated by not insisting on speaking directly to it. For I was the only one that could stop what it had determined had to happen. Spaulding was very upset at me, and I do not blame him, but this made Curson angry as well. Spaulding would not shut up about it, further antagonizing Curson.
"Curson, I did not mean you any harm, and if I wounded you it was merely in the act of trying to hold you back," I told him, trying to gain his trust. "I must tell you, I did not kidnap you, for I know you are the strongest of them all, and I knew you would be able to defeat me. Your power is admirable even to me."
He huffed and blurted out some words from his red, splotched face but it was difficult to hear because of the thick helmet that now covered his head. His once naked body was now completely clothed in heavy armor; having been stabbed by me multiple times he had perhaps over-learned his lesson. I'm sure this was an embarrassment for him. What would follow he considered his revenge.
By Goetz’s order they had placed me at the top of The Hill, on the stomach of the sleeping giant we know as Sigma. My grandparent heaved heavy sighs of sleep in its rocky form as I lay tied to the boulders, exposed to the blazing light of day. It was not comfortable but it was not overly taxing either. I did not know what their plan was, but I intended to find out. So I made my skin look splotchy and damaged, and I begged for mercy to escape the torture of the heat. They went back to Goetz and returned with this request:
"Apologize to your kin and bequeath yourself to the plan set out by me, Goetz."
I did not even consider this.
"If I were to apologize because you directed it, how could it be authentic? Furthermore, I submit nothing to you, for this is my world and you created me to rule it whether you understand this at all."
And the splotches removed themselves from my face and I was shown to be fine. Next I was nailed to the ground with heavy stakes built by Curson, and men were instructed to come to pick at me, to throw rocks and curse at me for the pain I had caused them by the battles I had raged. They burned me at night and celebrated by the fire, and in the morning I would regenerate again to an exhausted and dilapidated form.
Needless to say this was an excruciating experience, and it continued for days at a time. They would chose an area each day and pick at it like insects, digging into an eye one day or my chest the next. They experimented with what would cause the most pain, and delighted in my screams of anguish. Now, I did not hate men, I simply did not want them to exist. I wanted nothing painful to happen to them. But in that period, under the orders of Goetz, they became hateful little beings, and I saw the evil beings they could become. The docile creatures with some violent attitudes became demons, and nothing satiated them besides blood and flesh. Oh, their screams and faces as they bit and picked into me! And thei
r looks of interest as they scanned my renewed body in the morning, thinking of new horrible acts to perpetrate.
Men may organize themselves into groups and they may take titles and professions that have the veneer of civility. But I have seen them from the beginning fo their lives, and I remember who they truly are.
And so I learned to separate myself from my so called body during this time. Faced with pain or dissociation, I chose the latter, and through concentration I could abandon my body for long periods fo time. I waded into blackness.
Sometimes I let my consciousness stand beside myself. My eyes were dead when I looked into them, and I feared going back. I floated about and felt nothing. In another context it might be freeing. Under the stresses of that time, it felt like a bitter escape from reality.
And thus, after countless days of torture, I was expected, once again, to submit.
"Apologize?" I said, my voice creaking. “Keep extracting your revenge; I submit to no one."
Even Spaulding was shocked by this, and I could see he had sympathy in his eyes. He had gotten what satisfaction he needed from watching me suffer, but Goetz was not done. Spaulding had also gone this far with Goetz’s instructions. He could not stop. Neither could Curson. To admit they were wrong in doing the next thing would mean they would admit the other things were wrong as well.
The damned 'Table of Eternity' was still there, and they tied me to its hot, grey surface. They went off to converse among themselves about what to do with me next. I lay there, exhausted. I felt someone approach me and I looked up to see the eyes of my new sister there, looking much more solemn than before.
"Celia, you must know this is taxing for everyone," she said, as if she had been the one chained to a rock for endless days. "I don't want to tell you to do what Goetz says, for it is humiliating to you. But you can say you submit to his leadership in words only, and live another day."
I smiled. She was wiser than I had first thought.