The General's Bride

by M F Sullivan

  “I know.” The old man’s tone was as miserable as she felt. “I know. I wish I could help you the way you were told that I could. But you know how these legends go. They turn into lies very easily, through nothing but simple misunderstanding. I can’t give you anything. The Lady can. But She can only give you one thing, and only one thing is the right thing.”

  Bitterly, Dominia asked the question she had asked at least once in that Void, but in her head a thousand times. “If the magician is so powerful, why can’t he do it? You can talk to me all you want about closed systems, and my Father denied him a body, and whatever: if it’s possible for the Lady to do it, why isn’t it possible for some magician?”

  “Because the Lady can hardly do it, Herself. You said it: once the world is set into motion and a cycle has started, it’s a closed system. Like a human being born into the human race, made up of hundreds of atoms replacing themselves over time and brought to the body from places far away: that seems like something new is being created, but it’s just an emergence of life within existing units of matter in the system. You can’t add to the total number of these units, which means interferences with the physical body are mostly entropic in form. It takes willful intercession from another force, antibiotics or a surgeon or whatever, to add some needed element back into the game, and it is neither good nor possible that such operations should be frequently engaged; even that isn’t adding something that doesn’t exist. But in the material sense of what can actually happen, something has to be traded for healing. For the human body, that might be money, or vitality, or time. On this world, the transference of the Lady from one body to another is a lateral transference of energy; during this transfer, other energies can be traded up or down, if you’d like to think of it in basic three-dimensional terms.

  “The distortion during the moments where the Lady’s true appearance is exposed makes it possible to bend the rules of entropy the way they’re bent in the Ergosphere, because the Higgs field is being exposed in the same way: and the more people who are around to observe the distortion, the more powerful it is, and the more drastic the vertical transformation that can be made. Miracles are easier to observe when they happen in private, but they are much, much more powerful when they are accomplished in the presence of multiple people at once—infinitely more powerful when such an event occurs before a temple of fervent worshipers. What you trade up doesn’t have to match what you’re trading down, in that instance. If you have enough additional energy from a mass of witnesses, you could trade lead for gold, a diamond for a woman, or a dog for a man. But you can’t have multiple miracles at once. Not this way.”

  As he spoke, they had reentered the temple and made their way through its halls, but the General had not even realized it. A sickness claimed her. Lazarus watched from the corner of his eye and turned at a juncture that revealed a pair of crimson doors decorated by that infamous lotus, here emblazoned gold. “It is true Valentinian is potentially powerful enough to restore your wife from death. To find her spirit in the dark—for, had she a soul to keep her from getting lost, she never would have killed herself.” So unnecessary an addendum that Dominia’s throat tightened in hot displeasure and her batting eye welled up. “But the information about her existence is still available; her spirit exists yet. From that spirit, her body might again be derived by operation of the Higgs field, but it could only be derived in the place and time and way you wish it during the distortion caused by the Lady’s possession of Miki.”

  “But I could have her back forever because of that rift.”

  “Yes,” answered Lazarus, tiredly.

  Those lips, soft, gentle, already so close: close as the honey of her hair, the feathery touch of her fingers. The General’s mouth tightened. “Is there anyone else who can help her? Any other way?”

  “In this world, this life? No. But there are potentials for future disruptions. And then, there’s you.”

  “How can I bring her back?” asked Dominia, wretched. One of the women guarding the double doors slipped within to announce their presence. “How can I help her?”

  “With patience.” Lazarus folded his hands politely before him, his expression apologetic for his unhelpful response. “Trust me, please. Don’t ever trust your Father. Don’t try to bring Cassandra back on your own just yet. And don’t forget about Valentinian.”

  XI

  Gratia Plena

  As the daughter of the Hierophant, and an (arguable) only child throughout most of her life, Dominia had been exposed to much grandeur. Yet, as those towering doors yawned apart to reveal the Lady’s throne room, she felt her Father, never shy in demonstrations of wealth, would blush to see such ostentatious architecture. Almost. In fact, its gilded glory deliberately recalled that of the hotel lobby, which had been a garish masterpiece of marble and gold. This, somehow, was far more marvelous, and farther stretching, the path of crimson carpet that unfurled its length marking, after the halfway point, the width of a bridge crossing the low pool inset before the throne. The throne itself sat atop a platform, which, accessible only from the flight of stairs marked by the carpet and the theatrical curtain behind the massive seat, had the effect of stranding its sovereign on a beautiful island. Upon this glamorous throne sat a woman. Though shriveled by the profundity of her age and struggling to breathe, let alone sit up, she was nonetheless as bejeweled as her temple and richly dressed in fine, thin linens that clutched the wheezing bones of her ribs.

  This, after all, was Trisha: the body of Trisha. Like trying to connect Valentinian to Basil (who sat, tail wagging, at the Lady’s shriveled side) or the nymph to earthly Gethsemane, the buxom redhead’s appearance refused to conform to that of the dying avatar. Indeed, to avoid looking too closely and having her visit with the porter ruined by images of cobwebs upon a patchy scalp, Dominia bowed as soon as she and Lazarus stopped at the foot of the stairs.

  The Lady’s voice was a choir of voices that contained most prominently that of Trisha, vibrant despite her body’s age, and crisp despite its immobile lips. Our prodigal daughter returns home.

  Trying to discern the source of the voice only derived the strange notion it emerged from her own central nervous system; she tried not to question it too deeply after that. “I wasn’t aware I had been Your daughter before,” she said, trying to be polite, then relenting in a wan smile at the Lady’s laughter.

  All children stolen by your Father were Our children, first.

  As the General lifted her gaze to better admire her surroundings, she instead found her eye drawn irrevocably toward the Lady. It seemed some black hole vibrated in that seat, stealing all light, absorbing all information. In reality, this was a tiny woman. How could such a body contain so much power? How could this body, upon which Dominia could hardly bear to look, be in any way linked to the creation or destruction of reality?

  You cannot stand to look upon Us because this body is old and wretched: and you, like all mortals, fear death. Perhaps more than most.

  Embarrassed to have her mind read in front of the room (as she glanced away, she noticed Gethsemane standing stock straight before the nearest pillar, and found that each pillar now had a Bearer stationed before it), the martyr began to apologize, but the Lady’s voices rose. Some look into life and see only death. Man must see in three dimensions, because if he saw in the fourth, he would see nothing but his fate, which otherwise he can but intuit. Yet most do not see either life or death. They do not see at all. You understand that, don’t you?

  Dominia assessed those priestesses waiting like the garden statues, faces unveiled and vestments different. These new clothes resembled the uniforms of those female martyrs who took Holy Orders and joined the Church, but with a higher white collar, and no sign of a hood. This lack of a hood allowed for another second of searing eye contact with Gethsemane, which inspired the General to say to the Lady, “Some of us do not see death or life because we are not of this world, I think—not because we are not conscious.”

 
; Just slightly, the body upon the ill-size throne smiled. Who is truly of this world? We have taken many forms. We have had many homes. We have borne many names and been born a hundred thousand times. Yet, We are not of this world.

  “Clearly.”

  You are not, either. Not anymore.

  She hesitated. “Not entirely.”

  Do you think you were ever of this world, if you are able to become not of it?

  “I suppose not.”

  None are truly of this world. Death exists only in the fears of mortals who lie awake in the dark of night and wonder if that darkness bears similarity to a future which is, in truth, incomprehensible. Do you dream Cassandra sleeps, to be roused by the life-giving kiss of her gallant trobairitz?

  A white sag of sadness raced through Dominia’s body: not to hear her wife’s name or think of her death, but to think of her without a soul by which to navigate that after-space. “I cannot imagine how it is that she exists at all, now that she’s dead.”

  She exists. She has trapped herself in an eternity of suffering. The reality was not delivered unkindly, but there was no kindness in reality. By taking her own life, she has committed herself to repeating the experience forever, and shunned the possibility of redemption. But that does not mean that she cannot be redeemed. Come to Us.

  Sadness mixed with gentle horror as, degree by painful degree, the body lifted its right arm. Blinking away her eye’s mist, Dominia glanced to Lazarus, cleared her throat, and reluctantly strode to kneel before the ruby-encrusted arm of the throne. There, her nose filled with the woman’s breath, reeking to martyr faculties of damp dust and rotten age. In her struggle to be polite by finding some place to put her gaze, her focus fell to the mounds of jewels draped upon the avatar’s visible sternum. From these, Dominia recognized in a half second that most beautiful and perfect of diamonds hanging amid her inferior siblings. As though they dared compare!

  You worked so hard to avoid seeing Us that you did not even notice your bride among Our jewels. Take her back: you came all this way for her, after all.

  With itching fingertips and anxiety caused by Gethsemane’s warning that most could not even touch the Lady, Dominia felt only a heartbeat of concern before she once more caressed the cool surface of that diamond: the compacted ashes, hand-delivered by the Hierophant several weeks after the funeral. Nothing had mattered after her initial receipt of that diamond, and nothing would ever matter again. As she slipped the necklace over the Lady’s head, the old woman’s lips softened into a smile.

  It was that thought that made all this possible, wasn’t it? That nothing would ever matter to you again, not in this world.

  Desperate to steer away from the subject, or regain some ground, Dominia held Cassandra to her heart and reveled in the relieving cocktail of dopamine and oxytocin. “Why don’t You speak? Your body, I mean. I’ve heard Your voice will destroy the world, but will it? Why?”

  Because Our body has been gifted Our true voice, which speaks only true words: and true words are truer than reality. Mortal bodies who hear them are not equipped to comprehend them here, and may go mad, or perish, depending upon the word spoken. True words can only be safely spoken in the Ergosphere, or in moments where that other place is in contact with this one. True words are the objects they symbolize; therefore, speaking these true words will bring their objects into being. Shall We speak for you the true word, the universal word meant when earthly men speak of “madness,” so you can understand?

  “No.” The General’s words were thin as she slipped the diamond over her own head. “That’s fine.”

  Relief! That slight weight. Her wife bounced upon her heart and at passing speculation on the true word for “diamond,” a revelation came upon her. She turned her widened eye toward Basil, whose tail wagged in giddy confirmation as she spoke. “True words—that’s how you make fire! Or the playing cards! You’re not making anything—you’re speaking! Oh my God. Or—uh—” She laughed, feeling she’d committed some faux pas. “Sorry.”

  The Lady, not poised to take offense, chuckled in Dominia’s heart. Very good, General. Perhaps you will be ready for the whole truth, yet.

  “I’m ready to know anything you’ll deign to tell me.”

  Yet you would not hear Us speak true madness, would you? While the General faltered, the Lady’s legion carried on. You are not prepared for all truth. Mortals so fear the truth that they would rather wander in the dark. We see you wish to protest: but you do not realize you have died many times, been lost in the dark many times, upon your death. Many times, you have died without a soul. Worse, you have often died with a corrupted soul. In the past, you have brought your wife’s abomination into Our Earth and let it roam free, or opted to resume your place at your Father’s side. Or you have forgotten it is by the grace of the magician you are here at all.

  “And will Cassandra have the opportunity to be here?”

  She had one. She wasted it.

  “That’s bullshit.” The General was shocked at herself but couldn’t stop. “What about all the people who have ever died? People who didn’t know anything and didn’t have the opportunity to know anything? The illiterate, the isolated, the atheist? You’re telling me all those people are condemned to wander around, not knowing anymore who or what they are, or where, or why? Is that just?”

  Would We could craft it all another way, agreed the patient goddess, a kind of merriment stirring in Her body’s milky eyes to the resentment of the General. Would a goodly Redeemer sweep those souls together and set them right. But We are hardly more than one of the many columns in Our chamber—the lowly support of a palace made of Our same substance, though far grander in scale. We took no part in its building. We are simply here as its support.

  “Everybody loves to shuffle off responsibility,” Dominia muttered, more to the diamond whose facets she stroked than anyone in the room. “Whose fault is it, then, that all those people are lost?” She studied the dog, who acted like an actual dog for the first time in their acquaintance, seated at the side of his mistress. “Valentinian’s? God’s?”

  It is the fault of your Father, because that is the order he has chosen to maintain in his world. He has mastered the art of rendering his flock docile while keeping his neighbors too busy fighting among themselves to see how he steals, one by one, their own poor lambs. None of them have hope of surviving death, so long as they believe his is the only way.

  “And it’s somehow my responsibility to fix this?”

  You are the Hierophant’s daughter, and his only liberated child. Therefore, you are the only one in a position to accomplish his death. It is not necessary that you fix his world alone, however. You have already begun to collect many friends.

  The General assessed the deity with a new brand of impudence that arose, perhaps, from the comfort given her by Cassandra’s cold weight. “And one of those friends, you’ll be keeping.”

  It is Miki Soto’s destiny—her dream—to become Our avatar. She has never not been Our body. She had forgotten: recently, she remembered.

  “So she has to stay here forever, alone, in this palace?”

  With a stiff turn of Her head that was supposed to amount to a wry glance, the Lady suggested, We are seldom alone, child.

  “Yes, but—”

  Miki will not exist as you know her much longer. Not in this place. You will see her again, but not here. You already know that.

  As Lazarus laid his hand upon her shoulder, Dominia softly asked, “Miki’s not going to die, is she?”

  Quiet Basil wagged his tail. The bearded mystic answered while drawing the General down the steps, away from the throne. “Her consciousness—her soul—will fly far from here, like the porter’s.”

  “Then she’d might as well be dead.” Misery tightening her throat, Dominia ground her thumb into the sharp edge of the gem and wondered if this trade had been worth delivering Miki to her end—or allowing Miki to deliver herself.

  Without Miki’s sacrifice, as
sured the eavesdropping goddess, the integrity of reality could not be maintained. We are that which must have some presence, or else the world may not exist; yet, were We to reveal all of Our holy self, the world may cease to exist then, also. But the women in whom We live, child, live forever. Miki’s voice shall be lifted among Ours, but her soul will fly freer than it ever has. And she will be given a rich treasure: something she has prayed for every night, imagined every second of her life. She will become a biological woman.

  What other promise could inspire such self-sacrificial religious devotion in a girl so materialistic she had almost cried over abandoning clothes on the train? Good thing they held off allowing her to—uh, absorb any of Lazarus’s genetic material until recently, because if the body of the Ergosphere demonstrated the soul’s personal truth, Miki would have discovered her femininity there and never returned. The whole world would have collapsed while she found her way to the City to party as the person she really was; or maybe she would have tried to find her way, and gotten lost. Far worse, in Dominia’s opinion.

  Yes. It is treacherous to navigate existence unbounded to materiality. Too many directions to go, too much to do, too much for the untrained mind to affect in themselves as well as in others. But that is for another night. This body is most easily exhausted, and how We long for one not quite so delicate! Be glad yours is so resilient. And gladder, still, of Our gift to it.

  “What gift?” Even as she asked, Lazarus withdrew a silver flask from the sleeve of his kimono. Her attention, drawn to this, could not counter the finger he extended to flip the patch from her right eye socket; though she tried too late to jerk from the sudden intrusion, she could do no more than wince as the old man splashed the flask’s contents beneath her eyelid and then, much against her will, past the upper lip whose swelling had abated mere moments before. The Lady’s words muted the General’s sputtering.

  The Observer gives you Our water, which he has brought from the Ergosphere. It is precious: abide its workings. You shall need time for the restoration, and there is little before they arrive. Before, a treacherous snake gave you two false teeth: one to track your movements, and one to listen to your conversations. Now, your Mother returns your real teeth, which you gave up so long ago.