It’s 1952, and not all the beauty has gone from the world. There is a woman. Her name is Shalva. She lives in a little temple by a lone lakeshore.

Shalva was a child in Germany during the war. Her parents begged Heaven to save her, and so she came under the blessing of a secret angel; and all those who saw her knew not to think of her. She was forbidden.

She grew in beauty and in grace, and soon she wished to find love, but this was also forbidden to her. So she lived in a temple, by a lake, and opposite she built her tomb. She wrote this message above its arch, “Here I shall lay my body down, and at my side the one who loves me.” Then she retreated to her home, and dwelt.

There’s a kingdom in the clouds. It’s always covered in shadows, and neon lights reflect from pale streets. Magical bears live there. One of them is Transgression Bear.

It is Transgression Bear’s birthday. She rises. She’s a cute little bear. There’s a lipstick symbol on her chest. She shines it at people, sometimes, to teach children and sinners that they must pay for their crimes. “Today,” she says, “I am an adult.”

She goes to the treasure vault. She opens it. It clicks. She looks around. Then she takes out the mirror. Its frame is hammered from gold and set with opals, and in it is a mirror of such purity as none of earth have seen.

“I’m pretty,” she says. “I wonder if there’s anyone prettier.”

The mirror isn’t magical. So it doesn’t say. But Transgression Bear suddenly thinks of Shalva.

“No,” she says, shaking her head fiercely. “I mustn’t think of her!”

She thinks of Shalva again. She imagines her fuzzy orange finger tracing the outline of Shalva’s cheek. She imagines the wells of Shalva’s eyes.

“It’s wrong,” she says. “Transgression Stare!”

The lipstick mark springs forth in bright fury from her chest and plays against the mirror, casting back upon herself. In that beacon she stands frozen.

There’s a trundling noise. Then Alienation Bear waddles in. He wriggles his nose. He looks her over. He pokes her. Then he pokes her again.

“Oh,” he says. “She’s transgressed.”

He looks in the mirror. He can’t see himself. He’s Alienation Bear. Then, with a shrug, he takes it from her hand.

Transgression Bear screams.

“It’s okay,” he says.

Her eyes regard him. The pupils are dilated to points.

“You did something wrong, right? It’s okay. You’re Transgression Bear. It’s who you are.”

“. . . I guess,” she says.

“What did you do?” he asks.

She looks down. “I thought about Shalva.”

“Ah.” He hesitates. Then he touches her shoulder. “I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t understand how things like that work. But I think you’ll be okay.”

There’s a long moment’s hesitation.

“But you can’t live here,” he adds. He looks down. His eyes are shadowed. “Not in the magical kingdom. Not if you’re thinking of Shalva. It’s not a Bear thing.”

“Who decides that?” she says. “Who decides what’s a Bear thing?”

Alienation Bear shrugs. “Fate,” he says. “The fates that make us what we are. If you stayed, you’d eat away at the clouds. You’d wither in on yourself and become a shrunken gray homunculus, and unmake our whole world. If you go, you’ll die, and maybe be reborn. That’s how it works. We’re not supposed to understand.”

She stares at him. The padlock symbol on his chest is glowing slightly. But not very much. Not enough to Stare her.

“In the blood of Bear there is a tide,” he says. “A current. That draws us to our destined place. Go. Your place isn’t here.”

So, bitterly, she puts on a trenchcoat and crams a fedora against her ears to shield her from the cold. She summons a monochrome rainbow and twines herself in its shades of gray and casts herself down to the world below. And wherever she goes, the windows slam down, and the doors close, and mothers pull their children away; for well humanity remembers the ancient powers of the Bears, and fears them.

By night she curls herself down in the doorways of the shops, and shivers in the cold; but each dawn brings her hope, and the sunrise echoes in the shining of her fur, and the wind tugs at her hat and her coat, and she walks ever onwards, ever closer, driven by the heat and the fire that is in the depths of her mind the forbidden image of the beauteous Shalva.

When she reaches at last the lone lakeshore at the temple’s side, she bathes herself in its waters, and save her fur is nude; and the grime of her journey she casts away from her; and then she rises and wraps herself in the air of her aspect, Transgression. She boldly casts open the door of the temple and goes within. And Shalva does not turn her head from her, or shrink back, but only steps forward once and said, “You can see me.”

“I can,” Transgression Bear says.

Shalva looks down. “Will you love me?” she says.

“For all the ages of the earth.”

“Not so,” Shalva says. “Not so; for when I look at the stars, I see my ending written there.”

“How long?” asks the Bear.

“Three months,” Shalva says. “Three months, you may love me, and then be buried at my side.”

“I should go,” Transgression Bear says, but she does not, and stands there looking at the forbidden. Her thoughts are filled with a strange orange fuzz.

“Don’t,” Shalva says. “I have not known love since the Holocaust, and I have three months left to live. You are a Bear, and a girl, and this is not what I had wanted, but you are here, and that is more than I had hoped.”

“I cannot leave,” admits Transgression Bear; and so she knows her ending. She loves for three months, bright and well, and then she and Shalva go to Shalva’s tomb; and Trangression Bear’s breath grows still and quiet; and with a sudden terrible pain she dies. Then by the lake, two entwined flowers grow. Their seeds fall on the world, and in the course of time turn orange. From them rises a new Transgression Bear, and she travels home.

Related links:
Rainbow Noir
“The Bride of the Man-Horse,” by Lord Dunsany

It is 703 years before the common era.

Ella lives in the castle of King Sennacherib. Its upper levels are a thing of great majesty and glory, and the King and Ella’s sisters live there. Below that are the humbler quarters of the servants and Ella herself. In the warren beneath are cages, endless cages, full of fiends. And deeper yet, there is a dark and private place, full of a fetid, feline stench. When life is too much for her, Ella goes there, and finds the hidden rag doll she calls Tanit, and talks to it in the dark.

“Tanit,” she says, “I will tell you a story.”

“Story!” cheers Tanit. “Story!”

“There is something that even the monster fears,” she says.

“Ooh.”

Ella imagines that Tanit’s eyes are round.

“When Sodom fell,” she says, “there were two sisters who survived the scourge. Their names were Lia and Amiel.”

“Yes,” Tanit agrees, wisely.

“And Maya looked back on the city, and saw an oracle there that made her cry. It said: Amiel and Lia will love one another forever. But Lia will die, and her children will die, and all her line be mortal. And as Lia dies, Amiel will promise her, ‘I will guard your line, and our families be entwined forever.’

“And this she promised.

“And the oracle said: And these words will be false, for the guardians will prove false. Amiel shall have a daughter, and she a daughter, and she a son. And he will bear a line of men turned monsters, and they shall prey on Lia’s brood, and bring them every misery and sorrow.”

Tanit stomps her foot, or so Ella imagines. “But the monster is afraid!”

“Before she died,” Ella says, “Amiel returned to Sodom, and cracked the pillar of salt; and Maya came forth, and spoke her oracle; and Amiel set a curse on her own line. That as long as there were monsters, there could be heroes.”

Tanit considers this.

“Do you see?” Ella says. “Somewhere, there is a hero. Someone who can kill him. Someone who can fight him. He’ll come here. He’ll save me.”

She picks up the rag doll and hugs her.

“Like a prince,” she says.

Ella is prized among Sennacherib’s maidens. She is a treasure of his realm. But she takes no joy in it. He makes her do hard work from morning until night. She gets up before daybreak, carries water, lights fires, cooks and washes. She sleeps in the ashes of the fire, for she has no bed. Her sisters spill her meals there, or fill her drawers with spiders. Sennacherib cuts her, sometimes, with a thin silver blade. And one day, he names the duty: “You must clean the fiends’ cages.”

Where the fiends dwell, caged like animals, it is dark and cold and quiet. They have the faces of men or monsters, but they are not either. They are madness given form. And she lowers the grate that divides their cages, and scrubs out one half; then lets them back and scrubs out the other. She does this in silence, for she is terrified of fiends. Yet she cannot help naming them, for they are her only companions in this darkness. Razor, she calls one. Tsebanath, she names another. The worst she calls White Lion, for its great bulk is leonine in its way. Its face is the least human of them all, and its mouth larger than her sleeping hearth.

One day, as she cleans its cage, White Lion rumbles:

Ella, Ella, maiden raw.
Come and sleep between my jaws.

She turns and regards it, her heart rate rising. Only one word comes to her mind, so she speaks it: “No!”

White Lion’s eyes close, softly. “I will wait.”

Weeks pass, and months. Ella’s sister Aishah finds Tanit, Ella knows not how, and makes a show of disemboweling the doll before the court. Laughter beats against the boundaries of Ella’s mind. And, as she does every week, she goes down below to clean the cages of the fiends.

Ella, Ella, end your grief.
Let me taste you, root and leaf.
Maiden shining, maiden raw.
Rest your head between my jaws.

“No,” she insists, voice breaking with fear. And White Lion’s eyes close.

“I will wait.”

Weeks pass, and months. Ella dreams of a hero, but the dreams are cold and distant. It is harder to cling to such dreams in days like these.

Ella, Ella, fair of face.
I know a special, secret place.
Let your winter turn to thaw.
Come and sleep between my jaws.

She sits down, exhausted, on the floor.

“Please,” she says. “Do not do this.”

It regards her, silent.

“I don’t want to die.”

“Ah,” rumbles White Lion.

“So I don’t want you to eat me.”

White Lion hisses, and its fetid breath casts clouds of dust across the room. “Child,” it says, “I do not wish to devour you. I wish to know you.”

“Pardon?”

“You know how we are made,” it says.

“My sisters,” Ella says. “Aishah. Zenobia. He . . . emptied them, and broke them. Then he used their emptiness to make you.”

“There are angels in this castle,” White Lion says. “They are born to fill Zenobia’s emptiness with hope. And fiends, to answer Aishah’s hurt with madness. And demons, and ghosts, and dragons, besides. Yet we are not whole. He keeps us from them. In that separation is his strength.”

The fiends in their cages are still now. They are listening to White Lion.

“I wish to know you,” White Lion says. “To become yours. And then to know you further. Then I will not be weak. I will be complete. And I will be free.”

“I won’t,” she whispers. “I don’t want you.”

So she goes up to the hearth, and curls up in the ashes, and shivers herself to sleep.

“Good morning, Ella,” says a voice. It’s a girl’s voice, but still Ella starts awake, and thinks of heroes. It is with two sickening shocks in turn that she sees the truth: not a hero, nor a girl, but rather a tiny fairy maid, leaning against the hearth. In defiance of the dirt and ash, the fairy’s blue gown is as pristine as the sky.

“No,” Ella whispers.

“My name,” the fairy says, “is Tanit. And I have come to deliver you from this place.”

“Please don’t be real.”

The fairy looks dispassionately at her. “It’s not for you or I to decide such things. I exist; I am here; we must both learn to cope.”

Ella holds out her hand, and the fairy steps into it, and Ella holds her up. “He wants me to break,” she says. “He wants to drain away the pieces of myself, until my soul is a patchwork of gossamer. Then he will use the emptiness and use it to craft gods. If you are real, then it means that I am breaking. That I have begun to resemble the void. And that you are the first child of it.”

Tanit sighs and sits down, cross-legged in Ella’s palm.

“Do you know what fairies are?” she asks.

“No.”

So Tanit speaks:

Each person has a world.
It is just so long,
And just so wide,
And just so tall.
Yet there are things beyond its boundaries.
Wildness and magic.
Power.
A fire.
When emptiness looks on the beyond,
The fire casts reflections.

“That is a fairy,” Tanit says. “We are the reflections of that fire. The radiance of the beyond. And I can offer you freedom.”

“No,” Ella says, and her eyes fill with tears. “I’ve tried. I ran, once. I ran all the way to the castle gates. They were there. In sight. And I stopped. I could not make myself go further. I sat down. I waited for him to find me. To punish me. Because I was not strong enough.”

“Ah.”

“I could only choose two things,” Ella says quietly. “To hate myself, or to say, ‘There can be no freedom.’”

Tanit looks down at herself. Her wings shimmer. “Yet I reflect something,” she says. “For I am here.”

Ella tilts her head to one side. “You smell of cat,” she says. Then there’s a mad rage in her eyes, and she flings the fairy to one side, and Tanit flutters dazedly about and scarcely misses the wall.

“No!” Ella shouts.

“Ella?”

At the sound of that voice, Ella goes still. Tanit becomes the drifting of disturbed cinders in the air; and if this is voluntary or involuntary, Ella does not know. She does not care. The voice is Aishah’s, and Aishah is walking in.

“Ella,” Aishah says, “you must not shout so, early in the morning.” She smiles. It’s a crooked, bent smile. “It is not surprising from a filthy cinder girl, but it is still improper.”

“I’m sorry,” Ella says. She ducks her head.

Aishah’s eyes widen. “Dear Ella,” she says.

“No,” whispers Ella; but Aishah walks to her, and lifts her chin.

“Why,” Aishah says, “there’s a hollow in your voice, and in your eyes.”

“No.”

“You are becoming like us.” Some of the coldness fades from Aishah’s voice. It is layered, for a moment, with a bright, mad joy.

“No.”

“Sister,” Aishah says, “it is a thing to celebrate. If this is so, I can give aside my torment of you, and spilling your meals in the ashes, and filling your drawers with spiders. At long last! We may be siblings again. I can dress you in finest raiment, and we can braid one another’s hair, and we can talk of fine and precious things.”

“I am not like you yet.”

Aishah’s eyes shutter. “No,” she says. And she walks to the door. “Yet still I will hold to pleasure, in my heart. For I have longed for this. I have longed for him to raise you up, to join us at his side, and no more the fiends, and no more the knives. I have missed you; and you have been too stubborn in your self to care.”

Then she is gone. And as Tanit reforms, Ella snatches her from the air, and Ella flees like a beast down into the castle’s depths.

“White Lion, White Lion,” she says.

White lion, white lion,
Would you taste of my skin?
Rip the King open from torso to chin.
White lion, white lion,
Do you want to be mine?
Rip the King open from stomach to spine.
White lion, white lion,
This maiden is yours
If you’ll kill the King whom my sister adores.

White Lion studies her for a time.

“I will tell you a secret,” it rumbles.

“What secret is that?”

“In all the years since Lia and Amiel,” White Lion says, “there has not been a hero.”

It is a cold white shock.

“Why are you not a god, Ella?” White Lion asks. “Why are you flesh? Why can my teeth cut you? Why can my claws cleave your bones?”

Ella hesitates. The pressure of its gaze is on her, and a blinding headache rises.

“Because there is a price.”

It pads forward, and its cage cracks and breaks. It sets its paw on her chest and she sinks like paper to the ground.

“Listen,” it breathes, and its stink washes over her. “We are as we define ourselves, whether fairy, fiend, or maid. If you wish a hero, then become one.”

Its mouth comes down over her, and swallows her in darkness and pain.

“What price?” she asks the darkness.

But in the end, it does not matter.

“I want to kill him,” she says.

Wrong.

The stench makes her dizzy. She is on the verge of fainting. She thinks about what she has chosen; and then makes a small correction.

“I promise,” she says. “I will kill him.”

The angels have seen the show; for thirteen nights running they’ve seen it; and now Erin is backstage with Jane, drinking Kool-Aid and asking the kinds of questions angels always ask.

“But why do you call yourself Jane?”

“I like being Jane,” Jane says.

“But isn’t it the name the monster gave you?”

Jane smiles. “Yes.”

“Then how can you like it?”

“A long time ago,” Jane says, “Martin came for me. He had an axe, and it was covered with blood. He said, ‘This isn’t working.’

“And I nodded. Because it wasn’t.

“And he said, ‘Let me show you another way to be.’ And he reached into my heart, and found a wind and a fire and something wonderful, and then I was me.”

Erin thinks on that for a bit.

“And does it work?” Erin asks.

“Does being an angel work?”

“It’s sad sometimes,” Erin says, “but I get to fly and blow up robots. That part’s pretty cool.”

“It’s kind of like that,” Jane says. “Only, with goggles.”

She leans in and confides to the angel.

“And I’m waiting for the wind to change,” she says, “so I can change the world.”

There is a net, somewhere above the sky, of gold and dreams and happenstance. It shimmers. It is full of light. It is beautiful.

There are angels at its every corner. They hold it high. They feed it with their strength.

It is time for sleep. One by one, the angels disengage. They wing away to their transcendent beds, and wonder,

“Is there that in beauty that needs no angels to sustain?”

In the morning, they will know. The net will hang there, singing, or it will fall to rest, tangled and broken in the limbs of trees, on the earth below.

There is a city where the people are no longer human. They were, once. But they did not heed the warning labels on their video games. Now they are mad, animalistic killers. They are gaunt. They are muscular. Their forms are sleek. Their heads are like beasts. They leap on one another. They rip out guts, hearts, lungs with their human grinding teeth. They never die. It’s just a game to them. They don’t want to kill. They just need meat.

There are men in masks who watch them all. Who keep them safe. Who keep them tame.

It is time for sleep. One by one, the masked go to their beds. They curl up in the darkness and do not listen to the roaring in the night and the pounding on their walls. They pull their pillows over their heads and wonder,

“At night, when I do not watch them, are they capable of death?”

There is a ring in the center of the sun. It was taken from a woman’s finger. It is made of gold. It does not burn. It does not sleep. But it is circular and endless. In many ways, that is the same.

Save one.

While it watches, the world is incapable of ending.

The wounded angel sprawls in the road. Sid opens the door of his jeep, jumps out, and rushes to its side.

“Are you all right?” he asks, frantically. “I didn’t see you . . . there was all this grace . . . sparkles . . . confusion . . . don’t try to move that wing! It’s broken!”

The angel looks up at him. Its eyes are beautiful.

“I have been holding power over the world,” it says, in dulcet tones, “for three hundred years. Now you must choose who shall receive it next. Quickly! Now! Before I die!”

Sid panics. “Um,” he says. He scans the road.

“Quickly! Perhaps a political leader? A religious leader? Yourself?”

“Sharks!” Sid manages.

“Sharks?”

“The sharks!”

The angel expires.

“Phew,” says Sid. “Now at last the endless war between humanity and sharks can end.”

He gets back in his car. He drives home. There are more reefs than usual along the way.

Cain sulks in his Caincave.

“Why was I born,” he says, “into a world full of sorrow?”

Clarence attempts to console him. “So much would be different,” he says, “if you’d never been born. There wouldn’t be any leavened bread. Angels would speak Japanese. Great white sharks would be captured, belled, and released. People would generally be a lot less apologetic about murder. It would be madness.”

“Ha,” Cain says. “I’d like to see that.”

The next day, the angel Clarence shows him.

Interjection

Frogs rain down. Newts rain up. But only axlotl rain sideways. That’s their special gift, given only to them and to nobody else.

The greatest shark ever captured was Menace, a horror weighing more than thirty thousand pounds. He slew more than twenty ichthyologists during his capture, but it is the character of scientists to forgive; so he was belled and released, never to trouble the beaches of humanity again. At times, he tried, but the ringing of his bell drove the swimmers out of the water before he could taste of their flesh. He found himself forced to subsist on fish, and so he swam deeper and deeper into the ocean, growing great on grouper and halibut, and ever as he swam came the tolling of his bell.

Today, Menace is a great bulk that one might easily confuse for Atlantis. He sits in the deep, tolling, tolling, ringing, and chiming, like a great angel-winging machine. That’s the problem, after all. He’s giving wings to too many angels. They’re breeding as fast as they can, which is arguably “not at all,” but they’re still running out of the wingless kind.

It’s not just because Cain was never born. This problem has been looming for centuries—ever since a meddling gang of theologians and their talking dog discovered that angels exist in finite numbers. A finite number of angels means a finite number of wings. A finite number of wings means a finite number of rings. Sooner or later, despite the best efforts of the Unringers that dwell under Northumber Abbey, they’re going to run out.

Dramatic Reenactment

“Jinkies!” declares Thomas Aquinas. “What’ll the angels do when they’ve all got wings and bells are still ringing? It’s a mystery!”

“A rifftery!” agrees their talking dog. “Uh-huh!”

“Surely,” argues Teilhard, “that occasion will mark the completion of the world’s evolution towards God.”

“Revolution towards rod!”

“Rod is dead,” snarls Scrappy Nietzsche. Standing on two legs, he punches at the air. Without the art of leavening, humanity cannot make Scrappy Snacks, and the younger dog has grown up cold, hard, and philosophical.

Some have hypothesized that, once all the angels are winged, ringing will convert directly into luxury goods—every time a bell rings, an angel will get a Lamborghini. Others have theorized that this occasion will mark the Singularity, when the terrible chiming of bells will fill the air above Earth and humans will grow wings as one. But the angel Clarence knows the truth. Every time a bell rings, in this terrible alternate reality, an angel will get their gills.

It begins.

The endless ringing of Menace’s bell begins to draw them there, gilled angels in groups of one or two. They bring presents before him—grace, and wishes, and power.

Then one bleeds.

Flashback

“Why was I born into a world full of sorrow?” Menace asks Monstro.

A swift school of carp dart by.

“It is not sorrow,” Monstro says. He breathes the deeps. A puppetmaker, somewhere inside him, screams. “It is simply existence.”

“But is there not good and evil?” asks Menace. “Are we not creatures that should strive for something higher than the savage ocean of Hobbesfish’s anarchy?”

“Good is a beam of tachyons,” Monstro says, meditatively. “To create pure evil, reverse its polarity. To create pure good, revert it to base values. Yet a society bombarded by tachyons cannot survive. Remember this, Menace: the fish of mind must make his own path. Were you not born, the world would still be every bit as cruel.”

“I am sorry,” says Menace, sincerely, to the angels. “But I am entering the blood frenzy now.”

“Hai, wakarimasu,” Clarence says.

“Wow,” realizes Cain. “It really was a wonderful murder, after all.”

A butterfly, tired from a legendary ascent into the upper air, perches on the little rocket’s nose.

“You are a flattering whoosh,” it informs the rocket.

“I am a maker of storms,” says the little rocket. “I am a turmoil. I am a fire that consumes.”

“Not,” asks the butterfly, “a fashionable butterfly accessory?”

“No,” concedes the little rocket.

The butterfly heaves a sigh. “I must go higher.”

The little rocket flies through the air.

The little rocket passes over a nest. A mother bird is in the nest. She is crying because she thinks she might have lost one of her children. She is pretty sure that there used to be three chicks. Now there are two.

“If I’d only named her!” the mother bird mourns. “Then I’d know for sure.”

“That’s too bad,” thinks the little rocket.

The little rocket flies through the air.

The little rocket passes over a field. Two lovers are in that field: a woman with close-cut hair, and a man without a watch. They see one another for the first time in many years. They run slowly towards each other’s arms. They embrace.

“I must confess,” whispers Jim, into Della’s ear, “that they let me out of jail only so that I could find you, and turn you in.”

“And I,” says Della, “the same, regarding you.”

“Then let us return to the federal marshals,” declares Jim, impassioned, “together!”

The little rocket flies through the air.

There is a bird. It is flying. It is strong, and young, and very much lost.

“Are you my mother?” it asks the little rocket.

“No,” confesses the little rocket. “I am a terrible silence, and then a terrible light.”

“Oh,” says the bird.

“Fly east,” says the little rocket, “until the sun is lost behind the hills; and south, until the air has the scent of lavender. I think I saw your mother there.”

The little rocket flies through the air.

There is an angel beside it, and it asks, “What do you regret?”

“I have a thousand words for what will happen when I hit,” the rocket says, “but none for what will happen after.”

The early Church treasured its sacred mysteries. Belief in Christ and a sincere wish to join the Church did not suffice for admission; the petitioner, or catechumen, was first required to undergo initiation. Many philosophers and theologians, not the least among them Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite, discussed the reasons for this in depth.

It is 2004. The air is clean. The birds are singing. The sky is full of clouds. On such a day, the words of the ancient theologians seem harmless enough—until their philosophy leads Jane into error!

“I have a stomachache,” admits Jane.

Martin looks up from cooking. He’s making finger and toe sandwiches. The name is colloquial, and they don’t have real fingers in them.

“You were supposed to leave room for dinner,” he says.

“I just ate one small catechumen,” she says.

“They’re usually pretty big.”

“This one was small.” Jane indicates with her hands. “And made of gingerbread.”

Martin scratches behind his ear. “If it was just a tiny gingerbread catechumen, you should be fine.”

“Well,” Jane says, “He was lonely. Because catechumens crave baptism into the Christian faith, and he couldn’t do that in my stomach.”

“It’s a paradox,” agrees Martin. “If you eat a gingerbread catechumen before his baptism, you’re dooming him never to achieve the inner mysteries. But if you wait until he’s baptized, he’s soggy, and not really a catechumen at all! Still, even progressive Churches are likely to reject gingerbread men.”

“Well,” says Jane, “it’s just that I ate a gingerbread deacon and drank some holy water. To help him out.”

“Ah.” Martin frowns. “Do we have holy water?”

“It is the grace of the spirit that makes it holy,” Jane says, “so I figured that tap water would be okay.”

“Well, then,” Martin says. “Two cookies.”

“And then I had to eat a gingerbread priest,” Jane says.

“Why?”

“To illuminate the mysteries into which the deacon had initiated him. And a gingerbread hierarch, to sanctify the priest.”

“I see.”

“And then the gingerbread angel practically leaped into my stomach to convey the message of revelation between the gingerbread archangels and the hierarch. That’s how the hierarchs are purified, you know.”

Martin sighs. “Jane,” he says, “I told you not to read Pseudo-Dionysius’ cookbook.”

“I was expecting it to be a bit more like Emeril,” Jane admits.

See also: Catechumen and Pseudo-Dionysius

from the classic manuscript treating of the characteristics of witchcraft and the necessary rejoinders that may be made against it by good and Godly men, and requiring only a moderate familiarity with the fandom of Harry Potter and the spiritual predecessor to this work, the Malleus Maleficarum, herewith an excerpt,

PART II
CHAPTER IV
QUESTION I: The Manner in Which Witches Produce Harry Potter Fan Fiction

As to the method with which witches write Harry Potter fan fiction, six points are to be noted. First, as to the Fanfic Devil and how he takes incarnate form in the story. Second, as to the act, whether it is constant in history. Third, to the time and place, whether one forum or another is more favourable for this practice. Fourth, whether the Fanfic Devil’s presence is obvious to the reader. Fifth, whether women can write Harry Potter fan fiction if they were not offered to the Fanfic Devil at birth by midwives. Sixth, whether the actual venereal pleasure is greater or less for erotic fan fiction when written regarding Harry Potter than for erotic fan fiction dedicated to holy works.

As S. Augustine has noted, angels can manifest in fan fiction, as long as the fan fiction is based on a holy source such as the King James Bible or a Papal Bull rather than an iniquitous source such as Harry Potter. When an angel appears in fan fiction, it is never a Gary Stu or a Mary Sue, but rather a numinous exhalation of holy essence into the words. For the Fanfic Devil, this is not so. The Fanfic Devil cannot construct a body of literature. Nor can he form himself out of thrilling adventure fiction or sensual romance. He must build his body out of the vainest and basest principles. For this reason, he inevitably appears as a Mary Sue.

Now, the Fanfic Devil does not have the accidentals of proper fiction, and cannot be said to engage in dialogue, plot, or action. But since he has understanding, when he wishes to express his meaning, he produces words that are not dialogue, actions that are not action, and character development that is not plot. This is the sign whereby his works may be recognized by man.

As to the second issue, it is known that there have always been witches, and they have always visited mankind with terrible fan fiction. Before Harry Potter, they adapted the diabolical “Wizard of Oz.” Before that, they told new stories in the setting of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest,” Euripedes’ “Wizard of Greece and Troy,” and the forbidden Gospel of the Ebionites.(1)

Although these witches have always troubled mankind, as S. Thomas notes, there is some evidence that each new wizardly tract has strengthened their dedication to the diabolical arts. The classical artists often depicted women forced by the Fanfic Devil to write these filthy works. One need only look at Brabas’ They Fight Crime or Socrates’ sculpture Plato-Chan Misrepresenting My Philosophy. In the modern day the seed of deviltry in witchcraft has sunk deeper and the witches no longer need be forced. Women write Harry Potter fan fiction freely and with their own will, gladly defiling themselves with the Dumbledorean stain.

As to the third point, the Fanfic Devil naturally prefers to post Harry Potter fanfic to forums such as USENET. Each piece of USENET-posted fan fiction may cost the net hundreds if not thousands of dollars to send everywhere. As recently as 1992, newsreaders were wise enough to offer this warning, and mankind wise enough to heed it. This is no longer so, and nothing pleases the Fanfic Devil more than expending capital exporting his blasphemous works of fanfic deviltry to every corner of the globe.

As to the fourth issue, the Fanfic Devil’s presence is not always visible to the reader. In all cases of which we have knowledge, the Fanfic Devil made himself manifest to the witch, tempting her with the dark arts found within the pages of Harry Potter and finally encouraging her to practice them by writing about Professor Snape’s tormented inner passions. But with regards to bystanders, many beta readers have found no trace of the Fanfic Devil, or seen only a faint and foul mist rising from the manuscript as it flew across the Internets to their desktop. The reason that this is so is that the Fanfic Devil knows that by making its iniquities seem the writer’s own it can entice other girls and men into performing corrupt acts of their own.

As to the fifth issue, it is known that the Fanfic Devil strives always to seduce all women to his ways, rather than focusing solely on those given to him by their midwives. The Harry Potter books exert a strange and horrible fascination that tempts women to sin. Even passing within ten feet of a Harry Potter book can produce a certain degeneration of the will, accompanied by involuntary motor activity and nausea, which experts on witchcraft call “Quidditch.” Those who actually read the books become irredeemably tainted, and are called on the first Sabbath or their next visit to USENET to post filthy fan fiction based on these works. That a good and noble female who might otherwise be writing holy fan fiction based on Leviticus or Thessalonians should be so tempted is abominable, yet again and again magistrates discover this to be true.

It is clear that the venereal pleasure derived from this abominable fan fiction should always be less than that derived from holy sources. But the cunning Fanfic Enemy can so bring together the active and passive elements, not indeed naturally, but in such qualities of warmth and temperament, that he seems to excite no less degree of concupiscence.

May the Violet-Eyed Spouse of our Church preserve us from such designs.

EBIONITES (1): A typical scene from these horrific fan fictions has a beautiful raven-haired “Joan the Baptist” convicing Jesus that even though he is a vegetarian he need not abolish meat-eating for others. Then they kiss. It is a long and passionate kiss that makes Joan “feel as though she could walk on water.” Jesus declares her the coolest disciple of all. They preach to Ebionites together. This fan fiction is abhorrent in the eyes of the lord because Jesus is not canonically considered a vegetarian.

It’s Tuesday, the 20th of April, 2004.

“We’ll go away from Santa Ynez,” says Liril.

So they do.

“And do we just run?”

“We’ll go to where I screamed,” Liril says. “To Elm Hill. We’ll take back every god they took and steal every tainted bill and coin and favor they bought. Then we’ll run away to the hills and live richly forever.”

“I didn’t know,” Micah says.

“It’s what people do,” Liril says. “They keep their own gods.”

Micah looks tired. He is still recovering from torture. He is not at his best. But he tells everyone where to find the supplies he stole from a grocery store on Saturday. They find the cache.

“I should have realized,” Micah says, “about the milk.”

“I like the peanut butter,” Liril says. She has opened some up and spread it on crackers.

She thinks.

“We can live off the milk of the land,” she adds.

“That’s a good idea,” Micah agrees. “Please make one for me?”

Liril looks at him. She’s a bit startled. But then she nods, and puts peanut butter on a cracker, and offers it to him. He takes it. He bites it.

“What’s up ahead?” he asks.

“There’s a river,” she says. “That’s where we probably all die, except Tainted John. He probably dies in a train wreck.”

Tainted John looks at her, or rather, doesn’t look at her, because his eyes are all blood and shimmer.

“Oh,” says Micah.

“If we can survive two years or so,” Liril says, “we’re okay.”

“So if I get eaten by a shark,” Micah says, “I should try to hang on for at least two years.”

“Sharks are sharp. But you should try. Or if you get burned. Or whatever.”

“If I’m dangling off a cliff?”

Liril looks at him. Her eyes are deep. “Pull yourself up,” she says. “Don’t just hang on for two years.”

Micah smiles at her.

Liril blushes.

“Don’t,” she says, in a small voice.

“What happens at the river?”

“There was a gate,” Liril says. “Once upon a time. And ministers in attendance upon it. I was screaming. But they wanted me to grow up and become something else.”

“You can grow up,” Micah says. He’s deliberately ignoring the fact that he’s been the same age ever since he was born. “It’s okay to.”

“I didn’t want to,” Liril says. “Not that way.”

“Oh.”

“There were ministers I couldn’t touch because they were too strong,” says Liril. “And ministers I couldn’t touch because they were too gross. It was just the way it was. I couldn’t touch them. But there was one who was pure and bright and kind of cold. His nametag said, ‘Proteus’, and under that, ‘Cruelty.’”

“The monster is really bad at Greek,” Micah says.

“I could touch him,” Liril says, “because he was impartial to me. He didn’t have anything he was for. He was just there. So I gave him a purpose. I said, ‘Proteus, wait for me at the river, and I won’t pass through the gate until I see you there.’”

“And he did?”

“Yes,” Liril says. “And since that time there’s been no change, except when a wind blew off the chaos and brought him strength.”

“Also, I rolled a rock,” Micah says. “It changed things.”

Liril considers.

“It did,” Micah says.

Liril touches his mouth with a finger. “It was a cause,” she says. “Things have more than one reason. It’s okay. You’re a good Micah.”

He looks at her wryly.

“You’re delicate with me today,” he says.

“I looked at what she was doing to you,” Liril says. “I was crying the whole time but I couldn’t face her yet.”

“Things have reasons,” Micah says, and he shrugs. He sees her face, and his own face starts to get a little weird.

“No,” Liril says. “We won’t discuss it now. Later. Later, when it’s not—we can’t discuss it now.”

“Okay.”

They walk towards the river, carrying their bags of groceries.

“We shouldn’t cross at a bridge,” Micah says. “We shouldn’t cross anywhere people are. But the river’s kind of hard to wade.”

“I know,” Liril says. “But there’s a river-man in the river. He’s part of why it’s so deep. Tainted John’s going to hold his face down in the mud and the river’ll sink. Then we can cross.”

“Kuras did that once,” Micah says. “To defeat Belshazzar.”

“What?”

“He lowered the river that ran through Babylon, and marched his people in on the riverbed.”

“Oh,” says Liril. She looks pleased, because Micah seems a little less drained when he’s talking about this.

They reach the river. Micah looks at the river. It’s deep and wide.

“Is he . . . can John do stuff like that?”

Micah’s voice is a little resentful now. His greatest talent is surprisingly relevant historical trivia. It bothers him that Tainted John has actual magic powers.

“Can,” Liril confirms.

Tainted John looks at Micah. The boy reflected in those eyes is small and tired and dirty and smells of sweat and pain. Then John grins, and turns to the river, and flows in. The water level begins to fall.

“He’s a jerk,” Micah says.

“It’s okay.”

The water level falls further.

There’s a man standing by the river, rising from the river, falling from the trees, forming from the air. He’s old but in good shape for his age. He’s wearing a white shirt, and there’s a nametag attached that says, “Proteus,” and beneath that, “Cruelty.”

Micah looks at him.

“I think,” Micah says, “that you’re really happy that at last Liril can grow up, and so you’re going to join our rag-tag band, seal a promise of friendship with us by eating a cracker with peanut butter on it, and you’ll accompany us on our magical adventure to Elm Hill.”

“Your theory is flawed,” Proteus says.

Micah looks really tired. “Come on,” he says. “Please? I’m really tired. I don’t want to fight you.”

“I am an agent and a creature of change,” says Proteus. “They called me the Old Man of the Sea. And I have been held in stasis for more than twenty years because I chose to participate in a process otherwise marked only by horror. Now I am resentful and bitter and wish to kill you all.”

“You were there when they were breaking her,” Micah points out. “You could have helped.”

“The sea is cruel.”

“You can’t have the moral high ground at sea level,” Micah says, “unless you’re like a squid or something.”

“I buttress my moral standing with raw power,” Proteus says. He demonstrates, transforming into a tower of flame, a terrible lion, a serpent, a tiger, a silk shirt, a porcelain doll like Liril’s Latch, a dragon whose eyes are like the emptiness, an angel, a twig—

Micah steps forward, sharply, and snaps Proteus in half.

Then he sags.

“What?” Liril says.

“He was a twig,” Micah justifies. His eyes are blinking pretty quickly and there’s a horror at their back.

“Oh,” Liril says.

The river runs dry. But Micah does not stride boldly forward.

“It’s—I mean, I mean, you have to, you have to fight,” Micah says.

Liril tries to take his hand, but he wrenches away from her. He’s staring blankly at the twig.

“Oh my God,” he says. “Oh my God.”

“Micah—”

Micah snaps out of it. “We have to go,” he mumbles.

“We can fix him.”

“We have to go. It’s just a twig. Twiggy face Proteus oh God.”

Liril takes his hand. This time he accepts.

“It’s okay,” Liril says. “We can fix him. It’s okay. I didn’t tell you to break him. I didn’t mean you to.”

“He was in the way,” Micah says. “He’s . . .”

Micah’s voice is rising towards a child’s howl.

There are distant sirens.

Liril’s hand tightens on Micah’s. Slowly, he calms.

“All right,” he says. His face is pale. “How?”

Liril looks at the broken twig.

“You can fix a broken twig with construction paper,” she says. “You cut it up into pieces and paste them on as a brace. Then the twig is whole, because paper and twigs are the same.”

“I didn’t know that,” Micah says.

“Most people just leave twigs broken,” says Liril. “Most twigs aren’t, aren’t, aren’t—um.”

“People,” Micah says.

He roots around in the groceries. There is construction paper, and scissors, and tape, and glue, and paste, and crayons, and pens, and paper, because Micah’s life has provided him with a startlingly complete exposure to the lessons of kindergarden. There is also a coloring book that describes the fall of Belshazzar. He had stolen it in hopes that Liril would find time for coloring on their journey.

“Use too much paste and you’ll stick to everything,” Liril warns.

Micah ignores her. He begins to work.

“Uh,” Micah says, as he works. “There’s handwriting on this paper.”

“Like?”

“‘Anger.’ ‘Blood.’ ‘Fury.’ ‘Resentment.’”

“Huh,” Liril says.

“Huh?”

“It’s probably to make him hate us,” Liril says. “It’s too bad.”

“‘Mene,’” Micah says.

“Huh?”

“‘Mene,’” Micah says. “It just got written on this paper twice.”

“Write ‘miney moe,’” Liril advises.

Micah complies.

There’s a long pause.

“It was probably going to say ‘tekel parsin’,” Liril says. “Mene mene tekel parsin. You have been measured and found wanting and will be divided among the Medes and the Persians.”

“I don’t want to be divided among the Medes and the Persians.”

“I know,” Liril says. “It probably won’t happen. I mean, nowadays.”

“Now there’s an illustration of a middle finger,” Micah says.

“Just fix,” Liril says.

So Micah fixes Proteus with paste and cut-up pieces of construction paper. Micah gets paste on his hands and arms. Proteus gets his life back, and transforms himself into a man.

“That was rude, boy,” Proteus says, referencing the fact that Micah stepped on him and broke him in half while he was in a vulnerable ‘twig’ form.

“I tried to fix it,” Micah protests.

“I should kill you now.”

Proteus lunges at Micah. Micah’s face grows paler, but he has not lost the will to fight. He wraps his arms around the man even as they fall over backwards. Proteus becomes a thrashing shark. He becomes acid. He becomes a pony with a mouth full of terrible teeth. Then he is a man again.

“You’re holding on well,” he admits. “It’s practically heroic.”

“I don’t want to,” Micah says.

“What’s that, boy?”

“I have paste on my hands,” Micah says. “I’m sticking to everything.”

Liril looks slightly away.

“Oh,” says Proteus.

“We’re attached to the things that hurt us,” rasps out Tainted John.

There is a long silence.

Tainted John looks down and away.

There is a further silence.

Then Proteus transforms into a hissing serpent, a many-limbed horror, a tree, and a cloud, wrestling against Micah and his paste.

“Are you actually going to hurt me, or just turn into things while I’m stuck?” Micah asks.

Proteus becomes a tiger. He bites deep into Micah’s arm. Micah’s arm runs with blood. His brain fills up with endorphins, which allows him to swallow back his scream. Then Proteus is a man again, spitting and cursing.

“Um?” Micah says. He sounds a bit upset. After all, Proteus bit him, and now he’s acting all like Micah’s done something wrong.

Proteus spits.

“What?”

“You taste like paste.”

Micah stares at him.

“I don’t like eating paste,” says Proteus, the Old Man of the Sea.

“I’m a boy,” Micah says. “I’m supposed to taste funny.”

“You taste like paste and dirt and sweat and grass and mud.”

“Then don’t eat me,” Micah says. “I dunno. If you learn anything in kindergarden, it’s not to eat paste or boys. They taste bad and you don’t know where they’ve been!”

“Did you even go to kindergarden?”

“I . . . I’m like Kuras,” Micah says.

“Kuras?”

“His grandfather believed that Kuras would rule over all of Asia, so he ordered his servant Harpagus to set the infant Kuras down on a hillside and watch over him until he died. Instead, a miraculous sheepdog suckled him until Harpagus gave up and said, ‘Fine, he gets to live.’ It wasn’t like kindergarden, but it gave him a startlingly accurate simulation of kindergarden’s life lessons without actual attendance.”

“Ah,” says Proteus. “You mean Cyrus.”

“I guess.” Micah grins a little. “He’s kind of my idol.”

“Your story differs from Herodotus’ account of the matter,” Proteus says skeptically. “In his History, he alleges that the miraculous dog-suckling was a rumor Cyrus spread purely for political gain.”

Micah handwaves, as best he can while pasted to a god.

“I think Herodotus is too cynical,” Micah says. “Kuras beat Belshazzar. He’s smart enough to have put forward a less embarrassing animal to suckle him. Like a shark. Or an eagle.”

Micah is actually sounding better, because he likes talking about Kuras.

“Probably not a shark,” Proteus says. “In the mountains.”

“A grizzled mountain shark,” Micah says.

“Hm?”

“That’s what I’d say. A grizzled mountain shark, so tough he didn’t need water and could just swim on rocks, suckled me. Then everyone would know I was badassed. But since he didn’t say that, the whole sheepdog thing must be the truth.”

Proteus reaches a sudden resolution.

“Let us not debate the veracity of Herodotus,” he says. “Instead, I will wash you off!”

He begins to run towards the sea. Micah is dragged along with him, and cannot stop him, but he shouts, “Wait! Wait! I have scissors!”

“What?”

Proteus slows.

“I have scissors,” Micah says. “You’re running with scissors. Somebody could lose an eye.”

Proteus stops cold, face going ashen.

“Your life did provide a startlingly accurate simulation of kindergarden’s lessons without actual attendance,” he says.

“I know,” Micah says.

Proteus looks towards the distant sea. He ponders how long it would take to walk to it while pasted to a boy.

“If we work together,” Proteus says, “we could probably get unstuck.”

“You’d eat Liril,” says Micah. “And then Tainted John. And me.”

“I’d eat Liril, boy. She doesn’t taste of paste. The rest of you, I dunno.”

Micah looks at the river. He looks at Tainted John. His nose curls.

“You could eat him,” Micah says.

“I don’t want to find out what he tastes like,” Proteus says. Micah is annoyed, but can’t help seeing Proteus’ point. “I just don’t.”

Tainted John smiles impassively. He is holding the river down. That’s why he can’t help!

“I can’t let you eat even Liril,” Micah says. “She’s important to me.”

“Why?”

“I’m a startingly accurate rendition of her volition,” Micah says. “I mean, I was. Before. Now maybe I’m just someone who fights for us.”

“Ah,” says Proteus.

“Ah?”

“I could give her a head start,” Proteus says.

“Or let us go?”

“I’m not inclined to be forgiving,” says Proteus. “What with the words ‘anger’, ‘fury’, ‘blood,’ ‘resentment’, and ‘mene mene miney moe’ written into my very flesh.”

“Uh,” says Micah. “I only wrote the miney moe part. Who did the rest?”

“Some creepy handwriting girl,” Proteus says. He shrugs.

“Oh.”

Micah would investigate further, but right now, he’s affixed to a man who can turn into a shark. It distracts him.

“I’ll help you get unstuck,” Micah says. “Then you’ll give her a head start.” He thinks. “But it has to be a good one. It can’t be like five seconds.”

“What about seven seconds?”

Micah looks at Liril.

Liril judges, “Seven seconds is like five seconds, even though it’s two seconds longer.”

“Five minutes?”

Liril looks unhappy.

“What?” Micah asks.

“Well, it’s not like five seconds,” Liril says, “but it’s awfully short.”

“Ten, then,” Proteus says.

Micah looks at Proteus. “Deal.”

“Deal.”

They pull at one another. They wrestle. Eventually the paste succumbs to the transience of all things. Micah and Proteus stumble apart.

Proteus turns into a talking bear.

“Run,” Proteus growls.

Micah turns to run.

“Not you,” Proteus says. He slaps Micah with the paw of a bear and Micah falls senseless to the river bed. Proteus points to Liril. “You.”

Liril runs.

Tainted John looks up. He frowns.

Liril looks back.

“Stay,” Liril says to Tainted John, for Micah is in the river bed.

And then she runs.