by Jared Ravens
"Yes, but in addition to other voices. We should publish something from Genesee. I still have contact with him. I can get him to publish his own story, about Fairfax and where he came from. Rather than staying out of it or taking one side, we play both of them. When the dust settles they will both be relying on us to spread their ideas. We need them to need us, regardless comes out ahead on this.”
There was silence. The bald man coughed.
"This is a long game, I suppose..” Divic. "If this is what you are suggesting?”
“If we hide, she’s going to be angry, and she’s not going to stop sending these messengers until we do what she says. It might seem safe, but it's not.”
“If we publish Genesee’s book,” Divic continued, “She’ll be angry at us.”
“No one will read Genesee’s,” Bern said. “It will get lost in the pile.”
“You’re making a lot of assumptions. This is our heads…”
"Its my head,” Bern replied. "Mostly mine. He knows me. But I know him, and I can try and talk to him. I won’t put you in danger. I mean, I’ll try not to. But we have to send this out, at least a small run. People have to read this. It has to be published, as is.”
The housekeeper had meat cooking over the fire when Bern got home, the pungent smell activating his hunger. The smell snapped him out of his daze and walked to the small, walled in back yard where Shayne was kneeling down in the tiny garden. She stood up, where hair dropping over her shoulders as she pulled the kerchief off her head. Despite dusted her hands on her soiled work clothes as Bern sat down on a brick step near her.
“How did it go?” She asked him.
He shook his head.
“You know, it went. Any new mail today?”
“Nothing important,” she replied.
“You said it was a man that delivered it yesterday?”
“A younger man. He ran away right after.”
Bern breathed in, his lips tight against each other.
“I’ve never heard of Celia doing anything like that. She’s never controlled anyone like that. Not men.”
“A new found power,” Shayne said, sitting beside him. She smelled of dirt and soft powder. He leaned in closer to her. Just touching her shoulders made him feel comforted. “You’re doubting yourself.”
“I’m putting us in danger,” he replied. “I can deal with myself. But putting my workers in danger… Putting you in danger…”
Shayne sighed and grasped his hand.
“In temple lessons, we used to have to repeat sayings. One of the phrases was ‘faith in Celia, always’. The girls would have to repeat that, over and over. ‘Faith in Celia, always’. We thought it was trued. But when I was older, after I had experiences, me and some of the school girls would band together. We all had our doubts. But they made us say it, over and over. And then we came with our own phrase that was truer. ‘Bet on Celia, always’.”
“Bet on her?” Bern repeated.
“Bet that she’ll come out on top, like she always has.”
“I don’t think she feels that way. It seems like she feels marginalized.”
“She has less power now that there are others to share it with. Now that there is so much more that needs tending. But how badly do you think she’ll fight to get that power back?”
Bern nodded.
“Do you think that she can end all existence like she claimed? Did you learn anything like that at the temple?”
“You want her to prove that is true?” Shayne asked. “I she just might.”
Bern smiled.
“Bet on Celia.”
The Beast
Adapted From Celia’s Testament of an Alternate History of Creation
As Received by Anonymous
Fairfax begins with Waring. He was the result of Waring’s misbehavior, and Waring was a result of mismanagement from the very top. Goetz and his representative Genesee created him, and Waring created the circumstances that made Fairfax inevitable. I don’t want to cast blame but we must all recognize and understand the chain of events that comes from poor decisions.
Now that you know the truth of how all came to be perceived as it is, you can now know how we entered into to this present day problem.
Waring took to his tasks quite naturally. We built machinery to manage the recycling of souls and he mastered them. He had companions - strange, pale beings that spent all their lives underground. This was how Waring liked it. And we kept him as pleased as we could. His part in the system was vital.
Two we could not keep happy were Harper and Martel. They quarreled constantly. My son, generally quiet and non-confrontational, was often in open conflict with my usually reserved sister. Their relationship no longer a secret, their fights spilled out into the our corridors and hallways. I warned Martel that she was being unfair to Harper but she would not listen; her natural, matronly role was stirred with emotion when she laid eyes on the one she was determined to love. Drama became the fuel of their relationship.
I did not set out to break their relationship. But I knew my son was unhappy, and his jobs in the lakes and sea were suffering. Waves were untimely and water levels erratic. He would spend whole nights on the balcony, staring pensively into the night. Think of all of those women down there, I thought, available for a man such as he.
"Are you happy, my son?" I asked.
"I am happy enough," he said.
"I know better. I know my sister. You must not let her be this mean to you. You must fight back. Or...."
"Or what?"
I wanted to tell him to leave her, but I said instead:
"Or she will own you. And no one may have that."
"She is all I love and yet she lashes out at me so," he sighed. " I cannot please her."
"Then please another," I told him. "For a time."
"Mother! We are together and that can’t be ruined!”
He had already sowed his seed with many, for he was the father of Ogden and Staley, so I knew he could be a philanderer. This is the natural way with men. I do not take offense to this trait. My sister, however, did not understand men as I did. If Harper was not allowed to be free then their relationship would not last. I was doing them a favor with my advice.
“You have a long life and many decisions to make, I told him. "Let your emotions guide you. She is my sister and I love her so, but I do not wish you both to be poisoned by bad love."
It was shortly after this that Vivian came to spend time with me. Wild as ever, she insisted on sleeping outdoors during the day. She woke in the evenings, roaming the forests at twilight after a small meal with me. She would return early in the morning, naked, walking confidently across the lawn to lay on the edge of a cliff to rest. Nothing affected her. She was a complete woman, one of absolute confidence, containing a wild energy that pulled and yanked at men. Harper, with his shy ways, was taken at once.
I saw this connection, and while I did not approve of it, I did not condone it. Other people's doings are none of my business. So I let it be and ignored the signals of affection. And when she left I thought: Good riddance for now, my lovely, for maybe when you return this will all be patched up.
Yet Harper was not himself. Soon he left and did not return for many days. He came back chipper, smiling and bright. I knew then what must have happened.
"Do you know of her?" I asked him when I had him cornered in private.
"Know of who?"
"Don't play foolish with me. She is tempting but also bright, and she will play with you. Be honest with me and I will help you."
He sighed and confessed his action. He had followed her to the Alby Woods and found her at the place she said she had told him she would be, and he made love to her under a waterfall of his own creation. And then they continued, in the caves and the woods. He lived an exalted life of pleasure for a few days and she enjoyed him, tenderly massaging his body after their copulations.
Then she was gone. He was left alone and naked, and he pulled himself ba
ck up The Hill, enlivened but wanting more.
“Temporary happiness is not all you have to show for it," I told him. "She is not just wanting you for pleasure."
"Surely not," he said. “And you told me to go and do as I please. Why do you change your opinion now?”
“She is my daughter and Martel knows of her. Do both my offspring have no judgement? You are all able to have your pick of people to enjoy and neither of you bother to go any further than our front step. When Martel finds out she will hunt Vivian down and I will have another mess on my hands again. I will find your lover and I will set her straight, for this cannot happen again.”
I hunted my daughter for three days. She could not hide for long in her condition She was pregnant, thick and happy with her state of being. I could not admonish her in this state. She rubbed her belly as I spoke to her honestly.
"If you have this child Martel will know whose it is. She is already jealous of you, for your beauty and charisma. She knew of Harper's affections and was glad you were gone."
"What concern of it is it to me? I am down here and she stays up there."
"There will always be talk, if these actions are made public there will be fights, and if there is fighting there will be chaos. And do you want to raise a child? See, you will not be able to hunt or adventure, and the child will be left behind. You may still have it, but please let me take its burden from off your body."
She was reluctant, and she drew tears during the entire process. But I convinced her that she was in the wrong. Using the upmost caution I took from her the the child and put in into a willing human. And for a time Vivian was devastated and ran into the woods to hide hiding. The human surrogate was ecstatic with her newfound bundle. I left the whole matter at that. But soon it blew into a problem.
The child in the woman’s stomach was not a human, and he did not deliver as such. He burst out of her stomach one terrible day, her body falling lifeless to the ground, and he emerged crying from the wreckage with large wings his back to announce himself to the world. It was obvious this was a child of the Titans. The rumors began immediately. Before the day was out the talk had reached The Hill, and every male was suspect.
I went directly to Sigma and found the child Marcus being cared for by a group of women. Yet he was not a child; he was small, an imp that was only waist high. And when I tried to take him he spread he spread his wings and laughed, lunging out the window and disappearing into the sky.
He did not go far, falling from the air a few blocks away. A man captured him and I had him tied and brought back to The Hill. He wrestled with the knots all the way up. I told him to calm down but he would not listen, so I had his mouth gagged to keep his constant yammering from driving me mad.
"You need to be calmer," I told him. "Present yourself as mature and hide your wings away. Make yourself discrete and there's a chance no one will show any more interest."
This was an impossible ask. As soon as the ropes came off he was flying through the hallways and terrorizing the human help. He flew to every corner of the palace and dove at every worker. He was hard to dislike and impossible to avoid. He was most certainly not human.
"Whoever did this must be punished!” Martel announced to me. "I can't believe you'd let this be! He killed a woman on his exit, rest her soul, and whomever impregnated her is as much a murderer as Marcus!"
I knew she was suspicious and trying to fish something out of me. My complacency over the situation was being read like a book. I replied that the child could simply be a natural mutation and that I had brought him to The Hill to study him. I noted that not one among us as short as Marcus. The closest was to his height was her. And none of us had wings. Not one of us could have parented such a thing.
But Martel had already decided she knew the answer.
"Vivian is no giant, and she is of wild blood. She loves the animals and that child is beastly."
"Vivian is many things but she is not a man, and she did not impregnate this woman. Please, this is simply a mistake. This is a result of bugs in the system that Goetz created."
This seemed to settle her thoughts, although she was determined to find some son of Vivian's who could have been the father. I breathed a sigh and welcomed the wild one. We corralled his habits by making him a messenger and sometimes transporter of people. But I knew that every time Marcus was in a room, Martel's eyes were not far behind him.
I thought I was in the clear. But the birth mother, of course, was not gone. Her spirit had gone underground to Waring, and he took a particular interest in her case. I suspect that Martel found her way underground and offered Waring something to gain access to this woman. The dead soul is a particularly blank thing; It is a lifeless recounting of events that walks without purpose, sometimes even forgetting itself. But if you can get it on the right track it will read you its entire history. And so, with Waring’s help, Martel found the truth.
Her rage fueled a demented experiment. Waring desired a pet to keep him company. It was to guard the entrances to the underworld and keep prying eyes out of his business. He had asked for help before but we had denied his request because it seemed much to breed such a creature. Small Martel, useless in a brawl, now needed a vicious creature to fight for her. A deal was struck.
Warring pulled from the lagoons of the underworld the thick foam that formed on the surface. This was the darkest of memories and most angry of thoughts of all that were dead. He compressed it in to a grey ooze and heated it until it turned red.
Waring could cook the ingredients but he could not make it live. He theorized that he needed a portion of my blood, the dark juice of the Mother of Mothers, and only he now had a willing accomplice to assist him. Martel was my nurse, and she had all the excuses she needed to visit me in the late night. She drew blood from my calf one night as I slept and brought it down The Hill. Deep in the underground caverns they spoke spells and mixed my essence into the hateful caldron.
It was alive instantly; The Beast came into being with a foul yell and a body of black, green and yellow. It formed itself into a skeleton, half man and half dog, with a head containing features of both and snout that boor rows of yellow teeth. He opened his burgundy eyes and glowered at the painful existence he had been born into.
His first words were a cry, a name he gave himself.
"Bautomet!" he yelled, and he shook the ground above him.
Waring admonished him to heel to his power but Bautomet smelled his fear and fought him. Martel ran for safety but did not flee the underground; she watched Waring wrestle him and pin the creature to the ground. He pushed his arm around Bautomet’s neck until he choked and lay still.
Waring should have killed him then and none of us would have been the wiser. But Martel needed him. She insisted it be kept alive on a chain. So Waring kept it, training it to guard the entrance by training it to desire living creatures. This smell would be its signal to attack. In time he developed a love of human flesh. Though it made Bautomet sick, he was in love with paint and he enjoyed being nauseous. This suited Warings needs from his pet.
Once he was trained Martel called in her favor, and told Waring to let it out at night to hunt. She held a a scrap of Vivian’s clothing out to him. As Bautomet sniffed it she told it that Vivian was the most delicious meat to eat.
But she did not understand that Bautomet did not desire delicious meat; it wanted to be disgusted. It ran off in a rambunctious trot without any intention of tracking Vivan. It ran straight for Sigma. It drew its claws into building after building, like a wolf snatching the yoke from eggs. People screams were extinguished with the thrust of his jaw. He filed his stomach full of humans, then belched and threw up every bone. Empty, he now did it again.
Before sunrise the army was on him, surrounding him with their halberts. Though they pretended to be brave, they were quaking in their boots at the thought of fighting it. It was nearly three time higher than any of them. It turned in a circle, eyeing the warrior, its yellow pupils dilat
ing at the thrill of being stabbed.
It had killed dozens of soldiers before Curson arrived. Dressed in full battle, he fought it viciously to make it submit. The Beast attacked him with relish, crying and laughing simultaneously as Curson’s sword cut into his ribs. He finally lay on the ground, a panting ball of flesh amid a flattened city and a host of questions.
Waring was taken to task. He blamed Martel for pushing him to make Bautomet so vicious. Martel admonished him for not being able to control his pet and then laid into me for my deceptions. I was caught in the midst of my lies, as justified as I was in making them, and it came time to come clean. I was adamant that no one else should be harmed. All of my actions were because of a need to mitigate conflict, I argued, and we should all seek to avoid any more death. Waring asked if this compassion extended to Bautomet.
Despite his considerable wounds from his fight with Curson, Bautomet would live. But did we want him to? Warring pleaded with me to allow it. I wanted the Beast gone, but I didn't know if it was even possible to actually kill him. Martel took Waring's side, perhaps feeling guilty for her part in bringing this thing to life.
"It is useful," said Curson. "It makes for a good fighter and there is reason to have something like him at the ready."
“You mean he is a horrible thing, but he is our horrible thing,” I replied.
"Curson is right,” Genesee continued. "We know of the Chioholi but who else is there that we do not know of? Perhaps some day we will face invasion and having something such as this on a chain could be of use. And to know this thing exists with provide incentive for our soldiers to stay trained. They would have to deal with it if it escapes."
This did not please me, for keeping chaos on a leash is dangerous. It would only be a matter of time before it damaged again. But enough had died that day that I did not want any more bloodshed. So I nodded my conditional approval for now, feeling guilt over my own actions, however justified, in bring this to my people.
But what was started could not be easily contained. Though the Beast was hidden underground, it was always present, on the minds of women, roaming in the stories of children. It became real and legendary. It was an army unto itself that was growing larger by the day, and we always knew we must be prepared to face it.