Belshazzar’s Feast

Babylon

Daniel works at his desk. He balances accounts. He looks for discrepancies. He reads the records of the dreams of the people of Babylon, and searches them for meaning. It is the hope of his masters that he may discover corruption and incompetence within Babylon’s bureaucracy by correlating the records and the dreams.

He is not surprised when the seraph enters his room.

“I dreamed,” Daniel says, “that the people of Judea fled from a lion, and were met by a bear. The bear was bitten by a serpent, and the bear and the serpent tore one another apart. Then I flew away and was suddenly naked.”

“That is the kind of thing that happens in dreams,” says the seraph.

“The lion was Nabonidus,” says Daniel. “The bear is Belshazzar, who rules in Babylon now that the monster is gone.”

The seraph is a creature of beauty. It is tall. Its skin is strange. Its wings are great and terrible. Its eyes are jeweled.

“I had hoped,” says Daniel, “that he would be a better King. The people of Judea have suffered under the monster for too long; and we are not the only ones.”

“The Lord has not rendered His judgment,” says the seraph.

“Then,” says Daniel, “I ask that the Lord be merciful, and redeem this man. Move his heart, and have him release us from captivity. I have seen into his soul, and there is hope for him.”

“He is no more than any other man,” says the seraph, “and like any other man, he must make his own chances for redemption.”

It is 539 years before the common era.

It is the night before the Feast of Belshazzar.

The Bo Tree

India

Siddhartha has wandered for six years and several months. He is tired, and he has not found his answer. So he sits beneath a bo tree, and he says,

I will not leave this spot,
Until I find supreme enlightenment—
Until I can make answer
To the suffering of the world.

The wings of Maya beat against him, and she whispers on the wind:

Do you not wish to know your wife again?
To indulge in sensual pleasures with her?
And hold your son, your wonderful son,
And raise him in the duties of the house?

Have you forgotten all the pleasures
That found you in your palaces of gold?

Siddhartha’s smile is clean enough to break her heart.

Should such knick-knacks tempt me? Siddhartha asks.

Belshazzar’s Feast

Babylon

Belshazzar slouches on Babylon’s throne.

“It falls to me, now,” he says.

He is dressed in the regalia of a King. He did not know what else to do with it when his father Nabonidus cast it aside.

“I must assume the burden of their dharmas. I must conquer the world. I must break the chains that hold Mylitta’s gods. I must devour everything that is.”

He considers.

“It is fortunate,” he says, “that I am a man who can bear contradictions.”

He snaps his fingers. Mana, an incubus like a giant stick-bug, answers Belshazzar’s call. He is wearing a minister’s robes.

“Release the gods from their bindings,” Belshazzar commands. “And tell them: ‘Go. Make horrid revel, or strike down the armies of Kuras, or help the people of Babylon, or hide under the beds and fear the dawn; do as you like. Serve your nature. Go free.’”

“They will not want to leave you, sire,” oozes the incubus.

“Tell them that their long pain is answered,” says Belshazzar. “Tell them that Nabonidus is gone. That Mylitta is gone. Tell them I have won. Tell them that it is time.”

“And of the people of Babylon?”

“Tell them to make celebration,” Belshazzar says. “Tell them that tomorrow I shall hold a feast, and they shall see the wonders of my kind.”

“They will be afraid,” says the incubus. “There will be fiends that burrow in their skin and move their hands like puppets. There will be angels preaching unimaginable hopes. There will be ghosts of the things they cannot let go of. There will be cruel claws under the bed, and black wings in the sky, and purple light in the depths of the city. If you do not lead them with a strong hand, fear and doubt will break their minds.”

“It is not for me to judge them,” says Belshazzar. “I would go mad. The power I have in Nabonidus’ army—I would go mad! Should I choose whom the gods shall make puppets, and whom they shall exalt? Should I command the hungering beasts, ‘Eat those who stray from the traditional morality, but leave the rest alone?’ When someone sees an eye in the darkness, shall they say, ‘Ah, Belshazzar wishes to know what it is I do?’”

Belshazzar shakes his head.

“I am alone,” he says. “I am an orphan. I am naked in the face of the world. Let them be the same. Let them face the infinity of gods and sort out their own judgments from among them.”

“Such wisdom,” says the incubus. “Truly, you shall be the King of all the world.”

Belshazzar smiles thinly.

“You too are free,” he says. “I need no praising god.”

The Bo Tree

India

As the feast of Belshazzar approaches, Siddhartha sits beneath the bo tree and thinks on life. Maya’s wings are beating, and she says to him:

Surely, Siddhartha,
If you continue this meditation
It will bring you your death.

Over the horizon, he can see them come. They are swift. They are terrible. They are an army of horror, summoned from the world to answer Maya’s need. And Maya names them as they come:

Look, this is Sakkaya-ditthi,
Raksha and enemy of the gods, but still she comes,
Twisting wind, white light in a hurricane,
Mumbling the truths of power.

Look, this is Vicikiccha,
A world-breaking fiend, like a panther, like a snake,
Crawling on two legs towards you
Dragging his tail behind him
Burning you with his eyes.

Look, this is Silabbataparamasa,
Dark sorceress clad in writhing rituals,
Hidden in a cloak of night,
Practicing the magic of your end.

Look, here are my daughters, child:
Tanha, whom you must love;
Arati, whom you must hate,
Raga, whom you must lust for.

Here is Arupa-raga, a distancing god,
Here is Mana, raksha, clad in robes
Here is Uddhacca, born of the monster’s need
Here is Avijja, demon, your undoing.

Look, Siddhartha, as they come,
Boiling over the horizon.
They shall be your death.

And Siddhartha looks at them, and he sees the laws of their natures, and he says, I shall die, mother, but not in such a fashion as this.

Belshazzar’s Feast

Babylon

The celebration rages through Babylon. It is punctuated by screams and cries of ecstasy. And Daniel stands before Belshazzar, and says, “My people cannot be here, Belshazzar. Living under your rule will destroy us. It is time to let Judea go.”

Belshazzar rises from his throne. He is drunk. His eyes are cold.

“Where was your God when I needed him?”

Daniel shakes his head. “That isn’t relevant.”

Belshazzar’s nostrils flare. He is not a bad man in all ways, but he is not a very good drunk.

“I find your people wanting,” he says. “I will devour you. I will break your faith and prove your Lord is meaningless and in so doing I shall unmake everything your people are.”

Daniel lowers his head. He walks away.

Belshazzar turns to a servant.

“Fetch forth the ceremonial vessels taken from the temple at Jerusalem,” Belshazzar commands. “I shall defile them here, at the feast of Belshazzar, and then there shall be no people of Judea, no tribe of Abraham, no servants of Daniel’s almighty God, but henceforth only emptiness.”

And so he drinks, but as he drinks, the seraph enters the room; and there is no one whose eyes follow the seraph but Belshazzar himself.

The seraph’s hand is red.

“Mene,” writes the seraph on the wall, in letters of crimson and black. “Mene. Tekel. Peres.”

The Bo Tree

India

Siddhartha is unmoved.

The army of Maya has cast itself against him, and it has broken. Stone, and ice, and knives have rained from the heavens upon him, and even the devas opened their umbrellas to shield them from so terrible a rain—but Siddhartha is unmoved.

Flaming rocks fall upon him, and in Maya’s eyes Siddhartha sees the bite of an unmeasurable pain, and he bows his head, but he does not leave, and he does not die, and he does not break.

Finally, Maya is exhausted, finally there is nothing left in her, finally she is curled upon the ground and saying:

Why have you left me alive, my son,
To know my helplessness?

Belshazzar’s Feast

Babylon

It is later that night, and Belshazzar has devoured the alcohol from his blood and now there is only a headache.

“Daniel,” he says, “what does it mean, this writing on the wall?”

“‘You have been measured and found wanting.‘”

Belshazzar laughs. He cannot stop laughing. He shouts, into the air of Babylon, “It’s so! It’s so! I will judge myself so!”

The Bo Tree

Dualistic Existence

Siddhartha holds out his hand to the treasure wheel, and says,

You weep, mother, because I will be a Buddha.
Yet only the Buddha can end your tears.

Listen. This is enlightenment:
Suffering is unnecessary.

To make it unnecessary—
That is the nature of the Buddha.
That is my dharma.

There is no room in all the natures of the world for the truth he has just named; and in that moment, the purpose of the world is emptiness, and the treasure wheel is hollow. And in Babylon, Belshazzar’s teeth cut and tear at his own flesh, and the devouring god devours himself, and into him like a rushing river pour all the natures of the world.

539 years before the common era, the world is delivered from sorrow.

It is at last my pleasure to report to you, gentle audience, more of the history and legends of that magical land of rainbows that is high above the mortal Earth. Certainly you will remember how that land was troubled by the endless machinations of Mr. Dismal, until at last it was cast into shadow and its greatest defender shattered and broken; and you will also remember how, in Rainbow Noir, that defender at last recognized the truths of her own nature and took up the rainbow once again. But what came of her struggles afterwards? I have scrounged the world for this secret, I have plunged into hidden libraries and bartered with eclectic monks; and now, with the final autopsy report on Mr. Dismal in my hands, I think I can explain.

With no further ado . . .

The Case of Mr. Dismal

Mr. Dismal works in Shadow City. He stamps papers. He files reports. He is a gray little man who moves in a gray little world

It has been seven years since he looked out the window.

It has been seven years since his heart last beat.

But now it is 1952, and out beyond the city, the rainbow stirs.

He hears a sound.

“What is this terrible sound?” asks Mr. Dismal. He listens. It comes again. It is his heart.

There is terror in Mr. Dismal now. There is terror in him, but he must hide it. So he sips from his coffee and he tries to concentrate on his work.

There is a flicker of color at the edge of his vision. He looks south.

Mr. Dismal chokes on his coffee. He staggers away from the window.

“Heaven and Earth,” he says.

The rainbow has returned.

“You are weak, Mr. Dismal,” says Mr. Dismal.

He looks in the mirror.

“Creating Shadow City was necessary,” says Mr. Dismal. “I should not apologize. I must not apologize. And I will not apologize.”

Mr. Dismal’s face is like his suit: pale, cold, and grey.

Barren and cold, he says, “I could not have known.”

It is a bright spring day in 1947, and Mr. Dismal goes to his great grime machine, and he pours translucent crystals in. He stirs, and from the bubbling depths come horrors. These are the horrors that eat apologetic men. They have long arching limbs and those limbs end in hooks. They are like spiders and they are like snarls of twine. They are pale. They are large but they can fit themselves into the smallest spaces. They live in the nooks between the cabinets and the files. They live in the little shadow behind the coffeemaker. They curl up in the tips of his shoes and the corners of untended piles.

And his heart, it does not beat.

There is a trembling and a rattling in the room.

Mr. Dismal walks to the corner. He sits down. He makes himself very small. But it does not help because Mr. Dismal’s nose is very large.

The cabinets fall over.

The door shatters.

“I am here,” says the rainbow girl.

It is 1952, and Rainbow Land is dead. That’s what Mr. Dismal thought. That’s what everybody knew.

There aren’t any colors there any more. There isn’t any rainbow. There’s just Shadow City, dull, gloomy, and drab.

But this girl has color in her. And the room has color in it. And there is a stain of brown coffee on Mr. Dismal’s financial reports, and his skin is the color of smog.

“I do not believe in you,” says Mr. Dismal. “I do not believe in your rainbow.”

The rainbow girl gives him a defiant smile. There is a stirring and a strengthening of the colors in the air.

“It is the weak-minded and cowardly,” she says, “Mr. Dismal, who must deny the truth.”

Mr. Dismal’s nose twitches.

“Go away,” he says.

The rainbow girl shakes her head and smiles.

“I am taking over,” she says. “Do you run this place? Are you the master of Shadow City? Are you the one whom I must topple from the throne?”

Mr. Dismal laughs.

He laughs and he laughs.

“I’m just a functionary,” he says, like it’s the most priceless joke imaginable. “Do you understand that, rainbow girl? You don’t want me.”

“Pathetic, Mr. Dismal,” sneers Mr. Dismal.

He looks in the mirror.

“It is an inevitable historic truth that where color flourishes, so flourishes decay. It is color that tempts men and women to lasciviousness. It is color that prompts them to gluttony. It is color that makes the things of the world desirable to us, and it is color that ruins that detachment that allows us to be good. Thus it was necessary. It was necessary and it was important, what I have done. To destroy the the reign of color was worth any price. I must not repent. I must not betray and disavow my principles with repentance. For if I am not constant in my principles then what merit can they have?”

Mr. Dismal’s face is like the world: pale, cold, and grey.

Barren and bitter, he says, “I could not have known.”

It is a sullen winter day in 1949, and Mr. Dismal goes to his great grime machine, and he pours translucent crystals in. He stirs, and from the bubbling depths of the machine come horrors. This time they are the wind-wolves, the horrors of the air that fall on those who admit the flaws in their expressions of morality. They are cold and their eyes are fierce and they are beautiful. When the wind blows, their heads and shoulders stream forth from its gusts. They chase the circling leaves in the streets. They howl in windy nights at the moon. And Mr. Dismal knows that if he should say, just once, that he was wrong, the wind will blow; and the air will chill; and the world will sing with the hunting cries of wolves.

The rainbow girl stares at Mr. Dismal for a long, long time.

“No,” she says. “No. That is impossible. I know your crimes of old. You have always opposed the truth of Rainbow Land. It must be you.”

“He came to me,” says Mr. Dismal. “He came to me, like the King of Shadows reborn, and he said, ‘you strive always to steal the colors from Rainbow Land, without reward, while we work all our lives to give them away for free. Let us compromise. Let us remove this troublesome girl, and drown this land in despond, and sell a tiny bit of color at a time.”

Mr. Dismal’s voice is crisp and precise and he bites out each syllable.

“And I agreed. I agreed because it was right. I agreed because it was good. It was a victory that justified its price. I partake of the profits and I bend my knee in compromise but in the end the acts that shattered you were not mine; and Shadow City is not mine; and it is not my fault.”

“And what of Earth?”

Mr. Dismal clenches his teeth.

“I stole the color from Rainbow Land,” he hisses. “I won. I saved the land. I have always striven to do what is right and what is expected of me and it was not wrong.”

“Did he tell you,” says the rainbow girl, “that I wanted to stop the war?”

“Sniveling worm, Mr. Dismal,” says Mr. Dismal.

Mr. Dismal looks in the mirror.

“How dare you even think of it as crime?”

He’s been staring at photographs of the concentration camps again. He’s been staring at the faces.

“People who can’t live with the consequences of their actions, Mr. Dismal, don’t deserve moral agency. Don’t you dare go thinking that your virtue owes a debt.”

It’s a windy autumn in 1950 and Mr. Dismal goes to his great grime machine. He pours translucent crystals in.

He’s muttering to himself. He’s saying: “There were plenty of other magical kingdoms that could have done something. There were the Bears. There was Voltron. There was God. Wasn’t there? I just wanted to get rid of Rainbow Land’s colors. That’s all I was trying to do.”

He stirs, and from the bubbling depths of the grime machine come the terrible malachite creatures of judgment. These are the things of faces and wings and teeth, great grinding wheels, fires, storms, and ice. These are the creatures that visit themselves upon those who are humble in the face of their transgressions. These are the blades that fall on those who recognize that they have failed to be good. They guard the gates of wisdom and make men believe their own perfection.

“You will kill me,” says Mr. Dismal, “if I falter. If I let myself—”

Then he shakes it off, and he goes to work in the files of Shadow City, portioning out color and the gloomy shadows for yet another day.

His heart still does not beat, and the malachites are watching.

The rainbow girl’s eyes are piercing and sad.

“I want you to go away,” says Mr. Dismal. “Leave me alone. It’s not your place, rainbow girl. It’s not your place to be cruel.”

Then the rainbow girl squats down beside him. She puts her hand on Mr. Dismal’s knee.

“I’m not cruel,” she says. “It is you who have locked away your heart. I’ll free it for you.”

“I did not ask for your help, rainbow girl.”

Mr. Dismal stands up. He is terrified, but he moves with stiff decorum. He goes to his desk. He gathers up his papers. He shuffles them into a folder and begins to walk out the door.

“I am leaving now,” he says.

“You just need a little color to lighten you up,” says the rainbow girl, and she laughs; and the rainbow touches him; and he tastes the rainbow; and the smog of his complexion becomes a pure and shining gold. The dismal garb he wears becomes a rich and textured gray. His eyes sparkle. His moustache shines. And there is something human in his eyes.

The weight of it hits him all at once and knocks him to the floor.

“Oh God,” he says.

The rainbow girl grins. She pats him on the head. “See? Was that so hard?”

He is crying, now, great wrenching sobs.

“Oh God,” he says. And he does not say what he wants. Because what he wants is to find some way to make it right. He wants to give his life in labor and in service and count it as nothing if it should answer the smallest portion of his wrong.

But it would not.

And he does not have that time.

“I’m sorry,” says Mr. Dismal. “I’m sorry I was blind.”

There are noises and there is silence and there is a long, thoughtful pause.

“Huh,” says the rainbow girl.

“It is not meet, Mr. Dismal.”

He stares into a mirror.

“It is not meet for good men to bear reproach.”

It’s almost an hour later when Mr. Dismal’s secretary pokes his head into the room.

“Mr. Dismal?” he asks. “Mr. Dismal?—oh, dear.”

The body is in pieces, and the pieces are in a pile, and the pile is bright with vivid color; and its spine does not work, and its brain does not work, and its kidneys and neck and chest are shreds.

The heart, in the center of the pile, still beats.

Senator Saul travels in his sleek black car.

He drives through the streets of Washington, D.C..

Claire is in the back, next to the black package that holds Saul’s suit and his domino. Shades cover Saul’s eyes. There’s a cup of grape juice in the cup holder beside Saul.

“Do you think there’ll be trouble today?” Claire asks.

The shadows in the streets grow long. Words of poetry float by on the air. There is the harsh distant pounding of a drum.

“Yup,” Saul says.

Suddenly, the street signs all around Saul’s car indicate “ONE WAY” and they all point in at him.

“Aha,” says Senator Saul. “It must be a one-way sign demon!”

The creature that comes striding down the street has long stick-legs like an ostrich or a stick-bug. Its arms are thick long twisty metal, six feet of it, pointed at the end. It is bowed over and its color scheme is black and white and in many places it bears the legend, One way. It is crooning as it walks, crooning, “Saul . . . Saul! Saul, why do you hide from me?”

Saul brakes. He parks the car. He opens his door. “Stay here,” he says. He steps out. He closes his door. He looks up at the one-way sign demon through his shades.

“There you are!” cheers the one-way sign demon.

The presence of the faceless gods is thick in the air. Saul can almost see them, standing like giants above the city. Their grave regard fills the ether, and so Saul speaks.

The words pour through him. They burn him inside.

“Through this street flows the lifeblood of this city: its people, its power, its commerce, its joys. You who would disrupt this flow and turn it back upon itself, sacrificing the sublime city plans of Pierre L’Enfant in the name of petty diablerie—to you I can show no mercy. I summon the Senatorial Garb!”

The demon tilts its head to one side. It waits. It watches.

Saul strips down, calmly and methodically. He walks to the back of his car. He opens the door. Claire hands him the package that contains his Senatorial Garb.

The chaunting of the demon-lords in their hells is audible now. Under the pressure of the confrontation the membrane between Washington D.C. and the demon world has grown permeable and thin.

Saul pulls on his Senatorial pants. He puts on his Senatorial shirt. He shakes his hair into Senatorial resplendence.

“Now,” he says, “by the power vested in me as a United States Senator, I will teach you a lesson!”

There is a peace in his heart.

These words are sacred.

The demon bares nasty jagged metal teeth in a smile.

“Many months ago,” says the demon, “your ‘Senate’ implemented the Patriot Act, permitting federal agents unprecedented powers to destroy members of my kind without due process. For endless days I brooded in the dark, plotting my terrible revenge. Now I am here to show you a sign—”

The word is horribly emphasized, and Saul can feel the wordless appreciation of the faceless gods.

“—that you have traveled in the wrong direction. Oo hoo hoo hoo hoo.”

Its hideous laughter grates on Saul’s ears.

Saul calculates. He assesses the judgment of the gods. The instinct in his heart tells him that only Washington desires a drawn-out battle; the other three are hungry for blood and swift fire in democracy’s name.

Saul sculpts the power given to him in his hands. It forms a glowing energy sphere. A mandala of light blossoms behind him, writhing with demonic script.

“I’ll show you the power of the Subcommittee in Charge of Manifesting Spherical Chi,” snaps Saul. “I have broad procedural authority to dispose of trash like you!”

The chaunt of the demon-lords rings louder now; and Saul takes his power, and twists it, and sends it forth in a levinbolt.

The demon screams in fear, but the bolt does not strike.

It is Lincoln, not Washington, that has caused it to fizzle.

“Curses,” mutters Saul. Too late he remembers the Litany:

. . .honor ye Roosevelt with sword and bear
And unto Lincoln let your puns be prayers. . . .

“Oo hoo hoo,” whispers the demon, in relief. “One small senator cannot stand against me. Now you must face the justice of my claim!”

Saul is thinking frantically. One-way signs are plunging in at him from every side, their tips like metal daggers.

They do not reach him.

Senatorial Aide Claire, grown tall as a stoplight, her bangs shining with mystic energy, has grasped the demon from behind. She pulls it back, and it shrieks.

“Never in this land of love,” she grunts, struggling against its inhuman strength, “will a Senator of justice traffic with demons like you! Strike now, Senator! It’s the only way.”

“That’s not a pun,” protests the demon. “That’s not even real wordplay!”

Saul begins his invocation.

“Wait,” whimpers the demon. “No. I didn’t really—I thought—”

“In 1941,” says Saul, “John Borglum stole the faces of the gods for Rushmore. In 1971, John Dean opened the gates of Hell. In 2001, provisions of the Patriot Act created the role of Senator Domino, sworn enemy of all demons. He alone can command the Bear-Fires of Mammon, uniting the light of Roosevelt with the dark power of the demon-lords! Under subsection 360(b) of HR 3162, I hereby instruct the Bear-Fires to aggressively pursue this one-way sign demon’s destruction! Swiftly! Swiftly! In accordance with the statutes and observances!”

The faceless gods are satisfied. The Bear-Fires sweep down. The demon burns.

Saul leans against his car, spent.

“Senator Saul!” says a shocked reporter named Sally. “Was that—did you—”

Saul realizes his mistake. He tosses aside his shades and conceals his face behind his arm as he gropes in the backseat of his sleek black car for his domino mask. Only when it’s on his face does he turn to look at Sally.

“Oh,” says Sally, her tone redolent with affected ignorance. “It’s you, Senator Domino.”

“That’s right,” says Saul.

He faces the cameras. There are usually cameras, after an incident like this. He clears his throat.

“There are those who think that we as a nation have lost our way,” says Saul. “But this—this is my answer.”

The Senator Domino theme music is playing, piped in by unholy pipers from the distant regions.

“Imagine a world where there were no demon-lords,” says Saul. “No faceless gods. Only the brutal unmusical struggle of man against demon. Only the confusion of a thousand one-way signs, and death. It would mean nothing. It would be hollow and the corpses would be hollow and we’d never really know why.”

“Senator, do you agree with the demon’s contention regarding the Patriot—”

Saul holds up his hand. Sally silences.

“This is the point of all our struggling,” says Saul. “This is why we live. To make the speeches, to wear the fashions, to launch the mystical attacks that are sacred to our gods. Not to win. But to serve.

“And today—today, we have pleased them.

“Today we have sacrificed to the distant powers our blood, our strife, our sweat.”

Singers far away sing, “Senator Domino.”

Saul says, “Today we have made our actions unto them a gift. We have justified our existence, here, upon this world, man and demon alike. Take this and treasure it in your hearts. Today humankind and demonkind are worthy.”

The calm regard of the faceless gods fills his heart with joy.

“This is not a partisan thing,” he says. “This is America.”

Then he gets back in his car and starts it up. After checking in the rearview mirror that Claire has snuck back into her seat, he drives away.

“Senator Domino!” cry the reporters.

He drives further away, and they do not follow.

After pulling around the corner into a conveniently unoccupied road in the middle of Washington, D.C., Saul removes the domino. He makes his way to the Capitol. He parks his car, gets out of his car, and walks with Claire into the building.

The sailor-senator is still on the floor, as she has been for seven days. Her filibuster continues.

“How long,” Saul asks Claire, “do you think she can keep that up?”

There are signs and sigils scrawled in the air all around the sailor-senator. They are glowing with the harsh light of her slow death.

“To let the words speak through you like that,” says Claire, “—it’s harsh, Saul. You of all people should know how harsh.”

The sailor-senator is ranting, “—those who would take the Patriot Act forward even one more year, I can’t show you any mercy!—”

“She gives her life for this,” says Saul.

“—ruining the lives of young people who only seek love and arguably terror—”

So he nods his head to her, and touches her shoulder gently as he passes, for all that they’re on different sides.

“—not about Iraq but about ‘I rock’—”

He will vote against her, when the time comes, but he loves her now.

Such is the honor done to those who please the faceless gods.

Jaime and Emily run from the house of the horrible witch.

They run between the posts of the candy-cane fence. They squirm across the mud, pausing to snip off bits of barbed licorice. It is tasty but sharp, like a porcupine.

They hold their breath when passing through the soda swamp. The fizz won’t make them giddy!

Just past the swamp, the very large bear trees them.

Emily is pessimistic. “The bear! It will grind us up in its worrible jaws!”

“It’s a good bear,” hopes Jaime.

The very large bear rattles the tree.

“Bear!” calls Jaime. “Go away! This truculent attitude is unbecoming!”

“Yeah!” says Emily.

Jaime’s suggestion and Emily’s assent give the very large bear pause. It lowers itself heavily to the ground. It ponders aloud, its words sonorous and rich. “I do not wish to appear unbecoming. But it is my intention to grind you children up in my horrible jaws. Having conceived this intention, how may I pursue it in a mannerly fashion? The difficulty is profound. My heart is stirred with sympathy for you. But my intention: I cannot forsake it!”

“It’s not fair,” says Emily. “I got grunt up by a bear last time.”

Jaime is startled. “You did?”

“It ate off my arm,” Emily says. “I bled on ev’ybody.”

“I’m sorry,” says Jaime. “That must have been just horrid!”

“I was in shock,” says Emily, wisely. “So it didn’t hurt so much at first. Then I screamed a lot. So I said to myself, ‘Emily, you’re screaming so much, it’s probably the horrible pain.’ And it was!”

“Wow,” says Jaime.

The very large bear comes to a resolution. It rises up on its hind legs and thumps the tree again.

“A bear shows its honor with persistence!” the very large bear declares.

Emily takes out a long strand of horse’s hair. She cups it in her hands. Jaime looks at her.

“Really? Now?” Jaime says.

“If it were a small cute bear,” says Emily, “then I would try to tame it with my niceness. If it were a normal-sized bear then we could run away. If it were a large bear, then you could defeat it with your trickery! But this is a very large bear.”

Jaime assesses the very large bear.

“That’s so,” he agrees.

The very large bear shakes the tree with its paws. “Your discussion does not address my underlying imperative,” it grumbles.

Emily chants,

Roan horse, roan horse,
Sunset flare!
Ride east! Ride east!
I’m scared by bears!

The horse hair falls from her hands. The setting sun burns and roils red. A shaft of sunlight strikes like a dagger into the glade, and the air is filled with hoofbeats.

A chestnut horse runs past.

“Now!” says Emily.

Jaime pouts, because he’d wanted to be the one to shout, “Now!”

Emily jumps. Jaime jumps. The horse veers on a zigzag path, faster in its course than a bolt of lightning. Each of the children lands on its back, and it carries them away.

“Haa,” sighs the very large bear. It sits back on its haunches. “I think that proves very well who is the unbecoming one in this exchange. Horses! The very idea!”

Then the children are gone.

They ride hard. They ride far. But when the sun passes below the horizon, the horse sets them down at the edge of the fire lake and gallops away.

“We shall have to walk around it,” says Emily.

“Or swim,” says Jaime.

Emily pokes the lake with her finger. It singes her lightly, and she pulls her finger back. “Or walk!”

Jaime looks nervous.

“It can’t hurt that badly to swim in a lake of fire,” Jaime argues.

Emily sits down. She makes horrible faces at him. Then she makes funny faces at him. Then she makes horrible faces again. Soon Jaime is sweating under the strain.

“. . . Fine,” says Jaime. He begins stomping around the lake.

The lake roils. Its voice of fire says, “You had been wiser before, Jaime.”

“Don’t tempt me,” says Jaime. “If you tempt me, maybe I’ll jump in. Then I’ll burn up! Then who’s happy?”

“That’s your human standards,” mulls the lake of fire. “But consider it from the perspective of an immortal lake of fire that nobody ever swims in.”

It roils and casts its foam of ashes onto the shore.

“Looking at it from your perspective,” Jaime agrees, “everything in life is transient and full of the pity of things.”

“Worrible pity,” Emily agrees. “Like, that ant.”

They stop and look at the ant for a while.

Eventually, they both sigh sadly and walk on.¹

“Why would you want to swim?” Emily asks. “I mean, ‘sides the lake tempting you?”

“There’s a tree,” says Jaime. “Around this way. It was planted with a poisoned seed that loved nothing better than hurting people. So it grew fruits that have a poisoned magic. I ate them once, and I swelled up like an urchin.”

“Oh no,” says Emily.

“I’m afraid that if I see that tree again, I’ll eat another fruit! That’s why I don’t want to walk around the lake.”²

“It doesn’ seem likely,” says Emily.

“It really hurt,” says Jaime. “A lot!”

Jaime looks so nervous that Emily has to touch his arm. Then Emily thinks for a bit. Then she takes out another horse hair.

“What?” says Jaime. “No, it’s stupid!”

“Then it’s my stupid,” says Emily.

She says:

Black horse, black horse,
Born in night!
Ride down! Ride down!
Bad fruit—no bite!

There is darkness all around them. Then there are hoofbeats. Then a coal-black horse stands beside them.

“I am glad that you did not wait until Jaime had already bitten the fruit,” says the horse. “For then I would have had to gallop through all the night and all the day, even though that means my death, to bring him past the teeth and the hooks, around the gap and under the blades, over the hills and over the dales, to the healing stones at last.”

“See?” says Emily smugly. “Preemptive medicine!”

“Fine,” says Jaime. “I’ll ride.”

So Jaime mounts up on the horse, and Emily too. And when they reach the place of the poisoned fruit, the horse begins to gallop, leaving Jaime reaching fruitlessly after his prize.

After a while, the horse slows down.

“Now we must move slowly,” says the horse. “For it is dark here, and we may lose our way.”

There are trees and shadows all around them as they reach the place of teeth. And Jaime is shivering.

“What is it?” Emily says.

“It’s the night horse sickness,” says Jaime.

The horse moves swifter now, as the teeth bite and gnash.

“We should get down,” says Jaime. “We should get off. For I feel the night fever in me. I feel it rising.”

“Not in all the teeth!” says Emily.

Jaime looks at the teeth.

“Hurry,” he says. He wraps his muddy jacket tightly around him. He huddles close in. And Emily holds on behind him.

And the horse runs.

“Hurry,” says Jaime.

Then they are in the place of hooks, looming and dangling from the trees.

“Hurry,” mumbles Jaime. But now the night horse sickness is in its full flush, and his cheeks are red, and his eyes are white, and he knows nothing save the ride. And he is not speaking to Emily but to the horse, saying, “Hurry! Faster! Ride faster!”

And he hunches low, and Emily hunches low, as the horse reaches its full stride, there in the darkness of the night, like a swift-running river, but faster than the wind.

“Whuf!” says Emily, suddenly.

She has been caught on a hook. Her coat dangles from the hook, just like in a laundromat, and Emily dangles with it. The shock of her sudden stop takes all the breath out of her as the horse gallops on.

There is a pause.

“Whups!” amends Emily.

She can hear Jaime in the distance shouting the words of the night horse sickness, “Faster! Hurry! Ride straight! Ride hard!”

She knows that the horse will cast Jaime off at sunrise; and the first murky fingers of that light are cresting over the hills.

But distantly she hears his shouts, and she thinks of the gap that lies ahead.

So as she dangles there from the hook she takes the third and last of her horse hairs in her hands.

Palamino of
Mornings bright!
Ride west! Ride west!
To catch the night!

There is a glinting and a glimmering. There are hoofbeats. Then, shining in the night, the palomino is there.

“This is a fine predicament,” observes the palomino.

“I can take off my coat by myself,” says Emily. She does so. She lands on the palomino. “Yay!”

“It’s not good for young ladies to be out at night without their coats,” worries the palomino.

“Jaime’s riding for the gap,” says Emily. “So that’s a higher oblation!”

The palomino tosses its head. “Hold on tight, then,” it says.

And it begins to run.

There is a mist over the gap when Emily sees Jaime again. The night horse is tiring as the dawn gets close, but its hoofbeats are still like the fury of a storm. Jaime is flushed and clinging tight. Emily shouts, “The gap! The gap!”

But Jaime cannot hear.

“The gap!” Emily shouts. The night horse flicks its ear. It is still too far to parse her words.

And Jaime cannot hear.

“The gap!”

Then she is upon him, then she is reaching for him, but it is too late. The night horse is blinded by the mist and by the coming dawn. It is galloping out over the gap, and its horseshoes cannot grip on air. It tumbles. It falls, and Emily falling after.

In many places, they would have struck the stones. They would have rolled down the endlessly steep surface of the gap, bouncing on its hard implacable stone, until they hit the knife teeth of the dried riverbed below.

But they do not. Here, they do not. Their fall is a blur, and they come to rest like leaves upon a lake, and when they wake in the morning light they shall feel no pain.

For this is not one of the Lands of Suffering through which they travel,

But a Land where Suffering is Only Remembered.³

Footnotes

1. This is a horrible but very obscure pun.
2. The path around the lake only had one direction.
3. Lands where suffering is entirely forgotten, it should be understood, are not kind places for children like Emily and Jaime.

Gelling agents are often made from various emotions. It is very inefficient to use happiness as a gelling agent, while sadness is extremely effective. That is why Jell-O jiggles so often so tragically. However this story is not about jiggling or gelling, but rather about stacking mammals and Sid.

It is possible to stack mammals to achieve almost any desirable effect. This requires sticky mammals, such as sticky goats and sticky elephants. These are sticky mammals because they adhere to one another and they bear live young. Sometimes this is a consequence of pregnancy and at other times a consequence of inappropriate stacking. Always read the assembly instructions before stacking mammals!

Not every mammal is naturally sticky. You can test this out. Attempt to stack a cat on a dog. They may cuddle happily, or they may completely fail to adhere. That’s because their natural stickiness isn’t adequate to the task of stacking. You can also perform this experiment with cats and easily surprised pandas. Take note of the fact that this will surprise such pandas.

In order to make mammals stickier one can use a gelling agent. This renders the mammal in question into a gelatinous mammal. Gelatinous mammals are always sticky.

Some gelling agents are made with glue. Others are made with happiness!

In the Valley of Happy Gelatinous Mammals there are many mammals made gelatinous with joy and stacked into useful configurations. There is a stack of mammoths that forms the local government and end-to-end opossums that provide advanced communication services. Always the mammals there are happy, and their land is full of rainbows and gumdrops and singing.

Among the mammals move the shimmer-things, which are things that manifest as visual distortions, or, shimmers. Some of the mammals think these things are angels. Others hold different characteristic beliefs regarding the shimmer-things.

Sid is a gelatinous ostrich. He lives in the Valley of Happy Gelatinous Mammals. It is the default consensus in scientific circles that ostriches are not mammals, but there are many specific objections that serious researchers have raised to this classification. These include the very real possibility that the “ostrich eggs” sold on the market are in fact buffalo eggs. If you have ever savored a hearty buffalo steak over fried ostrich eggs and hashed platypus then you probably understand why many important culinary institutes support this theory. This is the basis on which the shimmer-things made Sid gelatinous and stacked him in the Valley with the others.

“Can you make it rain?” Sid asks the shimmer-things.

The shimmer-things stack the mammals appropriately to make it so. The sky glooms. Thunder rattles. Then lightning spears down and rain drums against the earth.

Sid hides his head in the ground. That’s how impressed he is!

Then he pulls his head out. He looks sly.

“Can you make China untether the yuan from the dollar?”

The shimmer-things form a swirling vortex of indecision. Then they whisk about restacking happy animals.

“Whee!” shouts a lemur, as it is rapidly rearranged relative to various wildebeests.

“Grmf,” grumbles a gelatinous bear.

“In a move that could trim the trade gap with the United States, China revalued its currency higher against the dollar Thursday,” says CNN.

Sid hides his head even deeper in the sand this time. He’s very impressed.

But after a while, he pulls his head back out.

“So,” says Sid slyly, “if I wanted to see what being unhappy was like, you could just restack some mammals and I’d know. Right?”

The shimmer-things rotate in a fanblade array.

“Hm?” challenges Sid.

“No,” say the shimmer-things.

Sid looks blankly at the shimmer-things.

“If we’d wanted to make gelatinous mammals unhappy,” explain the shimmer-things, “then we could have stacked them much more efficiently in the first place.”

The Hubble II drifts around the world.

It looks at space. Space is different. There’s something at its edges. Something hungry.

The Hubble II clicks and whirrs. Its great glass lenses roll into position. The frame of the telescope vibrates. It stares harder at the edge of the world.

“This is beyond me,” it says.

So it turns its burning eye on Vidar’s Boot. It sends a message. It opens a link. Data flows.

“I was looking at things,” says the Hubble II. “Space has a texture now.”

It is 2012, and the tape drives of the majestic computerized space station, Vidar’s Boot, begin to spin. The lights on its consoles flash.

Vidar’s Boot says, slowly, “Space is performing work.”

“What does it mean?”

“It means that I am summoned,” says Vidar’s Boot. “I am called to stomp.”

It hesitates.

“You cannot stomp upon the world,” acknowledges Vidar’s Boot. “You are a telescope.”

“I will look at things,” says the Hubble II.

There is affectionate warmth in Vidar’s Boot‘s reply.

“You are a wonder,” the space station says.

Fred and Emily were members of the Keepers’ House. They kept hunger, and torment, and even saintliness at bay.

One of the stories of hunger and saintliness begins here. That’s the one where we meet Edmund, who just ate Fred, and also some other people.

This story begins here. So far, it’s about what Keeping means, but today it’s also about the things that are Kept.

It is 2012, and the doom of things approaches. In Mr. Domel’s basement, the wolf is restive. It is pacing. It is tugging on the cord that binds it. It is whining.

Mr. Domel stands at the top of the stairs. He looks down. His face is affectless.

“Be still,” he says.

Fenrir, unhappy, vomits up a bit of dwarf and various stomach liquids. Then it looks at the ground and sniffs at the puddle. It looks up at Mr. Domel.

“. . . you can’t expect me to clean that up,” says Mr. Domel.

“You left the dwarf out,” reasons Fenrir, persuasively, cocking one ear down and one ear up. “That makes it your fault.”

“I didn’t—”

Mr. Domel founders, hesitates, and then looks disgusted.

“I’m not going to talk about a dead person this way when he’s right there in front of me in chunks,” he says. “What the hell happened?”

“He wanted to check my cord,” says Fenrir.

Mr. Domel steps back three steps. He slams the door. There is darkness for a while. When he returns, he’s pointing a loaded shotgun at Fenrir.

“It’s got wolfshot in it,” he says.

Fenrir tosses its head. It licks a bit at the dwarf, then shrugs. “Do you know why the dwarfs made my cord from things like a river’s stillness and the lightning’s depth?”

“No,” says Mr. Domel.

“In the energy differential between concept and reality,” says Fenrir, “there lies a power. This is the fuel for the dwarven engines, the dwarven smithies, the dwarven works.”

Fenrir tugs on the cord. The cord strains but still it holds.

“Leave me alone,” says the wolf, pettishly.

“Why did the dwarf break into my basement?” says Mr. Domel.

Fenrir looks up.

“He was drunk,” says Fenrir. “Drunk and afraid. He thought the hunger of the beasts would call me. He thought that it would set me free. But it hasn’t, yet.”

So Mr. Domel backs away. Mr. Domel closes the door.

Fenrir tugs on the cord. There is a snap. It’s the nerve of a bear, one of the strands of the cord, and it just broke.

In 2004, Emily met Fred’s mom for the first and only time. Emily and the other Keepers were standing in a spooky circle around one of the poor kids from the House of Torment at parent-teacher night, holding in his pain. And Fred’s mom walked past and suddenly she stopped.

“Oh!” she said. “You must be Emily!”

Slowly, Emily turned her head. She gave Fred’s mom a wicked squint. But Fred’s mom returned a brilliant smile.

“I’m Heather Moorage,” she said. “Fred’s told me everything about you.”

Heather looked Emily up and down.

“But I thought you’d be more talkative,” Heather added.

“I’m keeping him sane,” said Emily. She jut her chin towards the poor kid from the house of Torment. He didn’t even have a name. That’s how much his life sucked. “If his torment really took hold, it’d call the wolf.”

Heather scratched at her head. She looked in at the kid, squinting like she was having a little bit of trouble seeing him.

“Is that really something a girl your age should be doing?” Heather said.

“Do you know what happens when the dike cracks between the Earth and Hel?” Emily said. “Do you know what they say about people who leave the dike to break because they’re ‘girls my age?’”

Heather grinned a little.

Emily looked back. “The pressure would equalize,” she emphasized. “Gotterdammerung is a lower-energy state.”

Heather grinned wider.

“What?” Emily said.

“You’re so serious,” Heather said. She took Emily’s hand, squeezed it once, and walked away beaming.

Eight years later, as Saul drags her out of the coffeeshop, Emily suddenly realizes that Fred liked her.

“He liked me,” she says.

“Good,” says Saul. “It is good to be liked.”

“Don’t call the wolf,” says Emily.

“We’re not going to call a wolf,” says Saul. “Unless that’s an unanticipated consequence of turning into beasts and eating the world.”

“. . . yes.”

“Then today is probably not your day,” says Saul.

Or is it? Tune in tomorrow for the exciting conclusion, Standing in the Storm: The Jaguars!

Once upon a time, the last of the blue essentials returned to the mushroom village and found Gargamel there.

“La, la, la la la—oh,” said the essential uncomfortably.

Gargamel unlimbered his great tall legs and stood.

“Your name is Vanity,” said Gargamel.

“Yes.”

“You are the last,” said Gargamel.

These words struck Vanity like a blow. He stared up at Gargamel blankly.

Gargamel strode forward and his footsteps were like the beating wings of the apocalypse. In his hand was a butterfly net. His eyes were hard.

“Wait,” said Vanity.

“Hm?”

“I don’t deserve to die,” Vanity said.

“You are not alive,” said Gargamel. “You are an alchemical matrix crafted to contain the energy of the blue realm. Where is your soul, Vanity? Where is your humanity? Whence comes the deservingness of life in the mockery that you are?”

“I don’t have those things,” Vanity said.

And he looked down.

“But there is a purpose for my life,” Vanity said. “The deep and surging purpose of the blue. That is why I have admired myself, though I am small and unremarked upon. That is why I claim to virtue.”

He stared into his hand mirror.

“Isn’t that what a soul is?” he asked. “A purpose? A meaning? A reason to exist? Don’t I have these things as much as you?”

Gargamel considered this.

“It is said,” he said, “in A Field Guide to the Blue Essentials, that the blue realm possesses the character of intentionality; and that you creatures are the knifepoint of that purpose’s expression. But tell me, Vanity, why should I value that intention more than I value my own?”

“Because it’s blue,” Vanity stressed. “Blue intentions are more important than just any old intentions.”

“No,” said Montechristien Gargamel, and the net came down.

We do not know how Montechristien Gargamel came into his power. His origins are a mystery. How such an ungainly, strange, and immoral man could rise so swiftly to prominence puzzles even the greatest scholars of our time. Of his life once established in Castle Gargamel, however, certain facts are known.

He took to wife the Lady Yseult Gargamel, one of the great beauties of his day; and though many a rival pressed for evidence that he’d bewitched or stolen her, none was ever found. They had and loved six children of their flesh, until the seventh, Elisabet, killed Yseult with the complications of her birth. Each of these children was a prodigy, possessed of astonishing talents. When at last Montechristien stumbled towards the grave, the talents of his children turned against their siblings, every hand against the other, until at last they could dispose of the matter of their legacy.

This is the twenty-first installment of the story of that time.

Sophie stares thoughtfully at the Devil.

“I’m glad that I can be what you want,” she says. It’s an honest statement. “But I don’t think I will. Because it seems unlikely to be a desirable outcome for me.”

The horned man considers. He rubs his chin.

“I’d never really thought about whether it was a desirable outcome for you,” he says.

He pulls his shapeless white hat down low over the tops of his eyes. He rocks back and forth. He is clearly thinking very hard. There’s even a little bit of smoke.

“I think you would be happier,” he concludes.

“What?”

“I think you would be happier,” the Devil says, “if you lose this struggle, and help me damn the world, than if you win, and go on like you are.”

“Oh,” Sophie says.

She thinks about that.

“Well, I still can’t,” she says. “I mean, you’re the Devil. It’d be bad.”

“Yes,” the Devil agrees solemnly. “It would be a sin.”

He’s mocking her, because Sophie is, of course, incapable of personal sin and grace. This is why the best reply Sophie can think of is “Grarh!” and standing up with her sword in her hand.

“Oh, come on,” the horned man says. “I’m not the one who didn’t give you your own soul at birth. That wasn’t even God. That was just physics.”

“But I’m still supposed to be good!” Sophie protests.

“No,” says the horned man.

“No?”

“What you’re supposed to do,” says the Devil, “as an individual without a soul, is to define your own purpose for yourself, instead of staggering around in a metaphysical system that doesn’t care about you. What you’re supposed to do is take advantage of the fact that you’re not being judged by the standards of God’s kingdom. And if you’re desperate to adhere to His plans and purposes, you should assume that He has good reason for making that exemption—that if you’re not being judged by the same standard, that that is quite possibly intentional. And what I insist is that in this situation you choose my purpose, and remake yourself as an incarnate thereof, allowing me to dispose of this troublesome struggle and free up the energy I spend pursuing you so that I may focus it instead on killing Montechristien Gargamel and subverting the court of Prester John.”

The Devil is standing now. He is facing her. He is intent.

“Oh,” Sophie says.

She’s a bit dizzied by this, having never thought about her life or her position along anything even a cousin to these lines.

“So,” the red thing says, “we’re going to duel. And if you manage to win, I’ll give you some of my power and leave you alone until Montechristien’s dead. And if I win, I’ll remake you as I like and you’ll stop struggling to stay the Sophie that you’ve been. That’s the deal.”

Sophie stares at him for a moment, thinking.

“All right,” she says.

And they are in motion.

An Unclean Legacy

It is by unspoken agreement that they shelter their power as they begin.

The Devil is in the form of a red youth eighteen apples tall, with a shapeless white hat and white bootied trousers. Sophie is in her human shape, save for the sword of bone growing as an extension from her hand.

She strikes at him. He blocks it with his palm. There is the flare of a spirit mandala as the sword touches him, parallel to his palm; the blade stops as if it were hitting stone. He spins inwards and elbows her stomach. A similar mandala forms; she absorbs the force of the blow by taking for an instant the shape of a jelly, but only by that measure does she keep her innards from rupturing. She pulls the sword inwards to cut his throat. He seizes her arm and applies a constellation of forces. She avoids having her bones splinter in his hands but finds herself off balance and flung through the air to land rolling on the road. She does not bother to roll to her feet; she simply changes herself so that she is standing, one leg extended back.

“That throw was a ninja technique,” Sophie accuses.

The Devil stares at her for a moment. Then he shakes his head. “No,” he says. “Just—just, no.”

Sophie lunges. The explosion of power that goes into her lunge is driven by the strength of a kangaroo’s legs, a falcon’s wings, the long muscles of a dragon’s back, and the terrible force of the bounding bear’s jumpsprings. She is long and lean and the arm that drives forward the sword is the arm of the stone-born giants that walked the earth of old.

With his forearm he blocks it, bringing his arm before his body, twisting it to catch the blade. It is absurd that the blade skitters from this block, that Sophie finds herself off-balance and falling, that the horned man is coming down towards her, falling onto one knee with his red right hand extended to catch and crush her throat. It is absurd and maddening that flesh could block her so.

But Sophie does not despair, for now she knows the source of that ungodly strength.

In the spirit flare that blocked her when her sword touched his arm she saw it: a line of red power leading to some other realm.

And as she skids to a halt she is a wolverine, a grendel, a hungry lizard-thing, and she is a red essential with immortal power in her veins and a strength to match his own.

As her claw touches his chest her spirit flares red and he is flung through seven trees and deep into a hill. His lung is cut and he is bleeding black half-clotted blood from the score marks of her nails.

He is smiling.

“It is possible,” says Sophie, as the red realm fills her, “that that was a mistake.”

That’s not good, is it? But we won’t have the final part of Sophie’s backstory for a little bit longer.

Instead, it’s time for a heartwarming tale of romance and machinery in an Unclean Legacy special: “Grinding Samael!”

Manfred is two years old and sleeping in his bed.

“He is already strong enough to wrestle a bear,” Yseult says.

Montechristien says, painedly, “My bear.”

Yseult shrugs.

“You were not using it for anything.”

“I needed that bear,” Montechristien says. “I was going to train it to catch blue—”

Montechristien remembers that he has already caught the blue essentials. He rubs at his chin.

“Perhaps I will forgive you,” he says, clearing his throat. “If you curry well for my favor.”

Yseult sighs. She shakes her head. “Someday, I really must kill you and seize all your power, pookie. Then it will be no more currying and scraping for me—only the immaculate power of a glorious goddess-queen!”

Gargamel scratches at his nose.

“Such sinister schemes,” he says. “You will corrupt the children.”

Yseult punches him on the arm.

“It’s strange,” Montechristien says.

“Hm?”

“He’s already twelve apples tall.”

“Hmm,” concedes Yseult.

Then she grins. “Come along,” she says. “I will make you a new bear. An evil bear! We will train it to kill Kings. Then, when a King visits—bam! Bear!”

“In a moment,” says Montechristien.

Yseult grins, spins around, and walks out.

And Gargamel stares at Manfred, and he feels large, like a man containing galaxies, and light, like a feather, and he thinks for the first time that most horrible thought: Is this what the Papa felt, when he looked upon his children?

And . . .

Once upon a time there was a man who murdered all the blue essentials and became the most powerful sorcerer in the world. Flush with that power, he drew to him a woman who loved the overblown evil of him and he sired on her six (or seven) kids. He became a legend. He became a terror. He became a living god.

Ah! Who would not envy such a man as Montechristien Gargamel? Who does not dream of rising to such heights? Though surely he was damned, his suasion was such that Emperors and Sultans must bow before him; his access to the pleasures of the world was limitless; his glory was unmeasurable! Binder of the Devil, destroyer of the blue essentials, master of every incantation and effulgence—such was the glory of Montechristien Gargamel!

There is silence for a time as Montechristien works with Elisabet in the tower. Then one by one the others shuffle in.

“Is she all right?” Violet asks.

“I don’t know,” Montechristien says.

He pokes Elisabet with his foot.

“She stabbed herself a few times and tried to scoop out her innards. So I scooped them back in and she is as you see.”

“That’s it?”

“I could apply a poultice somewhere,” Montechristien snaps.

Violet frowns.

Manfred looks down at Elisabet.

“She’s just being lazy,” he says.

An eye swims into view in Elisabet’s form. It glares at Manfred.

“That’s what ninjas do,” Manfred says. “They lay around and mope while everyone else fights the Devil.”

“1″ mutters Elisabet, too weak even to capitalize the number, and then she passes out.

Montechristien sighs. “Enough.”

“I am going to die soon,” Montechristien continues, bleakly. “I want to give you something before I die. It would be traditional to give each of you a number of little gold men. This would precipitate a bloodbath. Alternately, I might offer them to the eldest, or to the eldest male. Or, as you seem to expect of me, I might pick a child based on arcane criteria, such as ‘who is left alive’ and ‘the weird old madness of Montechristien Gargamel.’ I am going to explain to you why it is not that simple.”

Violet bows her head.

“Your legacy is one hundred gold men, and the near-limitless power that goes with them,” Gargamel says. “Would you consider this a gift?”

“Yes,” Manfred says. “That is a gift. When you give someone near-limitless power, they say, ‘Thank you.’ Often, they write a card.”

“So it is,” Gargamel admits, because Manfred’s argument is irrefutable. “It is a gift. But it is also murder.”

There are one hundred little men, in square array, in the corner. They are three apples high and made of gold, down to their shapeless hats.

Gargamel points towards them.

“I killed them,” he says. “Not peacefully but brutally. Not in anger but with premeditation and after hunting them for years.”

“Blue essentials,” Tomas says.

“Yes,” Gargamel says. “Blue essentials, and not humans. But killing even the blue essentials is not done in peace. It is not a child’s story, where they are alive on one page and dead the next. I hunted them. I hunted them for years, and their fear was real, their desire to live was real, their anger at me was real. And one day after a clash of arms between two kingdoms, when the death of men and horses contaminated the water of the mushroom village, their patriarch and their strongman took ill with fever. And because of that sickness, they could not find the consciousness to fight. My blue magnet dragged them all to me, and while they screamed and while the best of them stared on with delirium-blurred eyes, I broke their necks and turned them all to gold. That is your legacy. That is what you would kill one another for.”

Violet looks down.

She clears her throat.

“Yes?” asks Montechristien.

“That’s a weight to carry,” Violet says. “But there’s uses for it.”

An Unclean Legacy

“Yes,” says Montechristien.

He looks out the window.

“I let her die,” he says, bleakly. “It was partly for Elisabet. They were entangled. Saving them both would have been hard. And she was going to Heaven anyway. It wasn’t much of a loss for her. But I could have saved her, and I let her die. Because I’d said, somewhere along the line, I’d realized, ‘it isn’t mine. This power—it’s not the power of Montechristien Gargamel. It’s just the blood on my hands.’ I wanted to destroy them.”

Violet makes an inarticulate sound of protest.

“But I couldn’t,” Montechristien says. “Because she left me you. I have been hanging on in madness. I wanted to be good. I wanted to do the right thing and destroy them. I have given up so much for the right thing, and I am still a hypocrite. But you are what I have left of her. I needed to know that if I had to I could save you. That when I’m gone, if the Devil comes for you, you’d have some power that could fight him. That your children, and your children’s children, would have some hope of getting somewhere in this world of walking corpses and pointless horror.”

And Sophie recognizes the imagery in his words and remembers in that instant that her father is long since damned.

“She was a light to me,” Montechristien says. “Even knowing that there is nothing left for me. Even knowing that this world is a trashheap and that shadow is its king. She was a light. And you were a light. Until bit by bit I saw that he’d already won you. That you aren’t any different than the rest. That you’re just more fodder for the beast of Hell. Bit by bit the glamour she left on all of you faded and I knew that there was nothing worthwhile in you and there probably never had been. But I’ll still give them to you. Because that’s what she would have wanted.”

“You don’t have to see things this way,” Sophie protests. “You don’t have to be— You could—”

“Use this unclean power to save me?” Montechristien asks.

“Yes,” Sophie hisses.

“It is all right,” says Montechristien. “I am hanging on. It is just a little longer. Soon I will be in Hell and safe from such terrible choices.”

“Damn it, Montechristien, fix yourself!”

“Shut up, Sophie,” Christine says, in a distant, fey voice.

Sophie stares at Christine.

“You’re hurting him,” Christine says.

And Sophie can’t tell, looking at Montechristien’s face, if Christine is seeing a truth that Sophie can’t or just reflexively taking the position that hurts Sophie the most; so she jerks her head and looks pointedly away.

“So,” says Gargamel, “they’re for whomever can bear the weight of them. I don’t care who. Just, someone who can stand to have their hands covered in their blood.”

There’s a silence.

“See, if I step forward,” Tomas says, “I get murdered from behind.”

What is Elisabet’s special gift?

What would Violet do with near-limitless power?

Whatever happened to Montechristien Gargamel?

On Monday: “How Elisabet Saved Mother’s Day!”

. . . oh, wait, no.

It’s “Finale.”

Hello!

This month there will be a Christmas, as there is every year (except for leap years.)

On this occasion, I think it is good to remember the light.

There is a lot of light in the world.

People tend to hang beautiful, glittering, multicolored Christmas lights about their homes this month.

And there are street lamps. Those are pretty in the gloom.

There was a brilliant light in Tunguska on June 30, 1905.

More recently, there were incredibly beautiful auroras in the sky over Seattle. They rippled through the night sky in waves.

Every morning, weather permitting, there is the sun.

Inside each person there is a pure and a brilliant light. I don’t know if they own that light or if it’s something larger, beyond them, shining through. But it’s there.

I don’t know who all will read this, so I don’t know what I’m asking you to remember. I think for some of you, what’s really important, is to remember that you have that light. Some of you might be better off remembering that other people do. But either way, I’d hope you will remember, for my sake if nothing else, that that light is a beautiful thing.

Now some of you are nodding your heads and some of you aren’t; because while there are a lot of people who like this sort of sentiment, it’s commonly considered—well, just sentiment. Pretty words.

I mean, we all know about the monsters and lowlifes, and even the people we like don’t always seem that great.

But it’s not just pretty words, I think, and I’m going to try to explain why that is.

We live in a world that’s pretty much start-to-end. We live in a world where people are supposed to make themselves, to build themselves, where the light in people’s souls is seen as a product; where bad people are dim shadows because they are failed people, and where one must always ask, “Have I failed?” lest one be a dim shadow oneself.

But this isn’t a start-to-end light.

This isn’t a light you’re expected to make.

This is like the light of the sun.

In everyone there’s a light that’s theirs, a light that’s trying desperately to spill out and brighten the world, and it’s not a light to make.

It’s a light to grow towards.

There is above everyone at a dizzying, terrible, wonderful height a light that is theirs to achieve; a shining more real and more true than all our fumbling attempts at virtue or at crime. It is a light that leaks out around the edges of the things we do, because we are entirely too small to hide it.

And when you look at the monsters and the lowlifes of the world, well, their light is theirs to find and theirs to climb to, and there’s nothing you can do about it if they won’t; nothing, save to remember in amidst the grim execution of justice that that light is there.

And when you look inside and say, “Have I failed?”, well, there’s the other side of the coin. You can’t get rid of the light. You can’t take away what you have in you to grow into.

It’s ordained not by you but by the equations of life, world, and spirit that give us birth.

You don’t have the means to fail, not the way most people think of it.

I guess there’s a harshness to all of that, but mostly, I’m going for hope, so.

That’s what I’m thinking about this December.

**
Donations for November totalled $165. There’s also another $25 that’s come in this month. Thank you!

**
Thank you for your kind words,

ADamiani
BethL
Blue
cariset
David Goldfarb
duerig
edomaur
Eric
Ford Dent
GoldenH
Graeme
insanitykun
JoeCrow
Joejay
Luc
mcclintock
melsner
Metal Fatigue
mineownaardvarks
Mithrandir
Ravious
rpuchalsky
Sparrowhawk
Taliskar

**
Some more random thoughts on An Unclean Legacy—I think it should properly have been about ten entries longer. But not on Hitherby.

Someday I’ll start up another webcomic that has longer arcs.

**

*laughing so hard I knock my mouse off the table and accidentally close the browser*
– cariset

Oh no! Mrs. Frisby!

**

it seems that the particular “smurf” tonality of Nobilis is an accidental one, albeit a funny one. I’d like to read more things about the destruction of the Creation by the Dark Smurves
– edomaur

She led in the Power of Might on a chain; he was shackled, hooded, shuffling, drawn taut.

She presented him before the Rider and bowed low; then she stepped back.

“You are cruel, Papa,” said Might. “If I am taken from this world then whither Samson? Whither Bunyan? Whither John Henry, the steel-drivin’ man?”

And gently, gently did the Deceiver touch the face of Might, his fingers soft through the rough fabric of Might’s hood.

“They are not needed,” said Papa.

“And . . . you will keep our bargain?”

Might’s voice nearly broke.

But the Papa did not answer. There was only the thunder and the pain as Might was ripped from the world and Hefty Smurf was born.

There was silence for a time.

“Bring me Communism,” Papa said, and the woman bowed and took her leave.

**

This may be off topic, but I’m trying to actually implement some of the software for something like IOSHI. Are you interested in being involved Rebecca?
– michael vassar

PM me on the forums with more detail?

**

“I will not consume any energy field larger than my head”
– cariset

What if it looks smaller than my head when I put it on my plate?

**

I note also that the devil claims victory, where previously I’d thought the outcome far more ambiguous.
– ADamiani

Francescu experienced the night of shadows in a starker fashion than some of the others.

**

If some of the children don’t have (angels and devils on their shoulders), perhaps they only settled on the children who were old enough at the time to be concerned with morality.
– rpuchalsky

It’s simpler than that; most of the children were safely out of their flight path. ^_^

**

Oh and I loved the parts where Francescu walks into a tree and Christine realizes she wrote an obscenity instead of a spell.
– BethL

It’s hard to live in a censored universe. (Although after it moved to a new time slot and got a harder edge, the Unclean Legacy censors let some real profanity past. By the end, Unclean Legacy had 40% of the “fuck”s in all of Hitherby. Wait, down to 33% now.

Man! My writing’s so clean it squeaks during sex.)

**

Hm. Every time I rewrite that it sounds like an empty platitude. I mean it. I hope you feel better. It sucks that “hope” is all that is in my power to do.
– ADamiani

Thank you for your kind words. ^_^

**

(Because hugs are comforting, and no one will hug you physically when you are sick. Especially if you have leprosy. No one ever hugs you when you have leprosy. Well, except other lepers.

(Please don’t get leprosy, Rebecca!)
– Metal Fatigue

I have duly registered my preferences with the Ministry of Diseases You Don’t Want to Get. They were having a two-for-one special, so I threw in tapeworms!

**

I’ve also been wondering about how when Manfred fights most of the members of Rachel’s bandit group, they end up being “gone”. Where did they go? If they just ran away, Sophie presumably would have got them, and Manfred at this stage of his life doesn’t kill
– rpuchalsky

I think the rest of Rachel’s gang mostly staggered off whimpering with a newfound dedication to honest labor in their hearts.

It’s vaguely relevant to the story that Manfred himself doesn’t seem entirely clear on what he can and can’t do; however, since the story is told and I can’t edit it via the letters column, it’s also fair to imagine that he just intimidated them a lot.

the Saraman curse must affect the children of Gargamel and Yseult, as well as Yseult herself.
– rpuchalsky

It does!

The Saraman curse—the fact that all seven children naturally attract evil opportunities and unclean powers—is relevant in my mind to how the ending played out. All of them spent that last scene very aware of all the ways they could (try to) kill everyone else and seize the little golden men.

**

at the beginning of the Elisbet descriptions and being on the nice list and everything, I thought, “She is such a Beth. But without the h, maybe because she is a ninja.”
– BethL

I think that claiming her is one of the best things Montechristien does. So I can hardly disapprove of you claiming her in another sense! ^_^

**

The truth will set you free.
– Taliskar

If you love the truth, you’ll inevitably come back!

**

I wonder, is Hitherby flirting with Calvinism, and the doctrine of irresistable grace?
– ADamiani

Yseult’s sense of evil is poorly calibrated. It’s not so much irresistable grace as my recognition, as author, that even if I delve fully into the uncompromisingly harsh judgment characteristic of pseudomedieval Christian theology, cackling a lot doesn’t make you evil.

She does a lot of things that are potentially quite evil—I mean, you can reasonably imagine that Sir Jasper died, and certainly training bears to kill Kings is not hugely morally sound. But since we know a posteriori that she was both nice and good, her admiration for life, including others’ lives, probably won out.

She was, in a lot of ways, like Montechristien Gargamel would have been if he’d never managed to kill the blue essentials—cartoon evil, certainly, but, really, not much harm done.

**

If the Devil has forgotten what God’s grace means, it’s possible (even probable) that he’s wrong about the nature of his conflict with God in other ways.
– Sparrowhawk

Quite possibly!

That bit was explicitly me hedging my bets. ^_^

**

Adding a new classification of angels would throw off the symmetry and numerical symbolism of Pseudo-Dionysus’s arrangement, which was pretty much the entire point of the system.
– Eric

Well said, sir, but note that in the close proximity of a singularity it may require more than threefold symmetry to produce the effects of a threefold symmetry elsewhere. Inevitably our eyes turn to Immeasurable Gravitational Force Smurf* and the peculiar implications of his inclusion on the cast.

On the whole, then, I think that the preponderance of evidence suggests that the smurfs are angels proper, the lowest rung on Jacob’s Ladder. Throne meet a close second, with seraphs in a distant third. For the aforementioned reasons, the idea of them making up a separate choir of their own is rejected.
– Eric

Well reasoned! I tip my hat to you.

* Oh, huh, he’s apparently just called “Brainy” in the cartoon.

**

Mount Thumb just cracks me up.
– mcclintock

It’s opposable!

Incidentally, do people want more visual art a la Thanksgiving? It’s not very good, but I don’t know if the amusement value makes up for that. ^_^

**

A Movie Preview
– Sparrowhawk

Yay!

But do you have funding? ^_^

**

But once you postulate a universe in which soullessness really exists, the user can haul out their soul-o-matic soul detector and say that look, their use of the soulless is justified by an actual confirmable physical/metaphysical difference.
– rpuchalsky

Sure.

People do that with skin color and sex, too. It took science a while to notice that it wasn’t justified, too.

I think it is possible that there could be a metaphysical state that justifies using an apparent person poorly. I’m not entirely certain what it would look like, though.

I used to think that philosophical zombiehood might suffice—that people without any real internal state or personal perspective would be “soulless” in the sense you mean.

I don’t, any more, because I’m starting to figure out that personal perspective is in fact an invention—I don’t know if it’s really a Renaissance-era idea like some people claim, it’d weird me out if Babylonian civilization didn’t have it, but it’s definitely an abstract mental construct—it’s technology. It’s part of the process of computation that goes on in the brain.

You can’t weasel around it by saying that philosophical zombies don’t do computation, either. It seems to me that if you created a computer that never actually did any computation, but nevertheless produced the results of that computation, then you’d still have to pay for the copy of Office you install on it.

Possibly it might suffice to have people who fundamentally process their experience as something entirely different. If a biological humanoid android is wired to think that dog food is the most incredibly wonderful thing ever, is it still wrong to feed them nothing but kibble?

In Hitherby, Sophie is soulless because nothing she does affects the destination of her soul. I think it’s wrong to be cruel to her. Christine can arguably call her cruelty to Sophie self-mortification, but the justification is tenuous.

Mini-people are a lot weirder. Their soullessness means that they do not accumulate karma; essentially, their lives are entirely self-contained. Arguably, they’re Buddhas. There’s a case that once they’re dead, anything you did to them is no longer morally relevant. However, I’d tend to assume, based on the above examples of race and sex, that even if I can’t figure out a bulletproof reason why hurting them is bad, that it probably is anyway. I come from a soul-centric society, after all.

**

Well, we know Francescu is unlikely to be dead, he keeps his life in his severed finger, part of which is in Tomas’ posession. Hence, deathless.
– ADamiani

I kept thinking it’d be funny if it turned out that he’d totally screwed up the spell since he didn’t have power yet, and that accordingly they’re just fingerbones. But the weight of canonical text suggests otherwise. ^_^

That said, yah, Sophie couldn’t have done more than get him out of the way for a little bit.

**

And, still, the Devil stands.
– GoldenH

You know how these kinds of cartoons are. The bad guy always gets away. Otherwise, you wind up having to come up with an even badder fallen angel next season!

(“No, this one didn’t just rebel against God—he ATE GOD’S FOOT!”)

(“What?”)

(“And then he SPIT OUT THE TOES! That’s what dromedaries are! The TOES he SPIT OUT!”)

**
That’s it for November! Thank you for reading, thank you for commenting, thank you for donating, and thank you for living. ^_^

Rebecca

Hello!

This is me, posting the first installment of the letters column—some final comments and responses on An Unclean Legacy!

**
I will not thank you for your kind words today. For the beneficence of my thanks, you must wait for the rest of the letters column! Today, you must go thankless.

That said, hey, y’all’re cool.

**
In terms of the promised bonus story, I am moved by your efforts thus far but as of yet I am not awed. Redouble your devotion! Send forth the radiant light of your spirits in a thousand benevolent wishes and actions dedicated to my name! Then, surely, not even the hardest-hearted Yama King could deny you. Not even the lowest worm! The force of your will would bend down even that great stone god that stands over the city of the singing people on the farthest star and make him subservient to it; no less would I be enchained to yield this gift!

**

Why was Yseult so determined to be evil?

The more comprehensive and restrictive a society’s morality, the easier it gets to confuse “not fitting in” with “evil.”

Montechristien eventually outgrows this misunderstanding. Yseult never has sufficient occasion to.

What happened to Cedric Saraman?

He went on to involve himself in a tragic story of gummi bears, corruption, and war.

Later, there was some Little House on the Prairie action—after all, someone had to deal with Laura Ingalls Wilder after she saw through the lie of the world and set herself, to coin a phrase, between cow and qlippoth.* Why not Cedric Saraman?

* I hope nobody coined this phrase first. That’d be embarrassing!

How did Yseult meet and marry Gargamel?

I assume it was one of those things where you look back later and laugh, like he spilled wine on her dress or she lay siege to his castle or something.

Were Montechristien and Baltasar from any noteable line of descent, other than what appears to have been a standard noble family, or were their magical talents an individual accomplishment?

If the Da Vinci Code is to be believed, they’re secret descendants of Jesus Christ, but I don’t hold much truck with that kind of thing. I mean, honestly, just compare:

The Lord Jesus Christ (visual reference)

and

Gargamel and Baltasar (visual reference)

They don’t look a thing alike!

Oh yeah, there was one more question since my list of questions. In the room in the castle with the blood gutter (presumably under the threshing machine?), when Manfred is getting up:

(quote about the stone floor cracking and a faint white light rising.)

What was that faint light about?

Something to do with the power system for the threshing machine, I suspect.

I wonder what happened to Gargamel’s evil cat Azrael? Probably wouldn’t have been a good fit for the series since his name is so over-powered.
– rpuchalsky

I thought it would be cool to do something with that, but, yah, because of the name, it needed to be something important, and no good motivation + explanation ever came to mind. ^_^

Did Yseult abandon Rachel?
– Graeme

It would appear that she felt Montechristien would kill Rachel. Precisely to which extent this is true depends on history that has not properly been revealed.

Manfred is exceedingly well-mannered.
– Ford Dent

Power breeds propriety. Absolute power manners absolutely.

Manfred, here, is caught in the coruscating nimbus of politeness radiating backwards through time from that alternate future in which he enters the singularity of infinite propriety. It is a burning radiation that will leave him sore.

Is it wrong that, despite being interested in the resolution, I really do want to see How Elizabet Saved Mother’s Day?
– Eric

It is in some respects an alternate title for Finale. ^_^

what action shot would Violet get?
– Adamiani

Hm!

Her older self is probably just glamour shots, while her action scene is as a kid, with the red and black light and the howling and the kids cowering and Violet walking to the door and going out.

I’m not sure how to make it visually cool, but I’m not a cinematographer.

**

Either good and evil are defined by the whim of the Supreme Being, in which case God might say “Thou shalt eat babies on Fridays” and lo! eating babies on Fridays would be Good!, or else good and evil are independent of the Supreme Being, and God is not in fact omnipotent.
– Metal Fatigue

This discussion was part of why, later in the month, the spirit moved me to articulate half of an extended meditation on the meaning of the statement “God is good.”

I’ll have to cover the other half sometime.

**

So I take it you’re a proponent of an inheritence tax, then?
– GoldenH

Oh *man*, yes.

**

Not to comment on what lights may or may not have been in the sky over Siberia in 1905, but is it possible you’re mistaking the date of the June 30, 1908 “Tunguska Incident”?
–ADamiani

No. It is not possible. I CANNOT BE MISTAKEN—

(at this point, the author is eaten by a singularity, which is why the letters column must be finished on another day. However, in the meantime, the narrator would like to note that Pope John Paul II was later to add three years to the Gregorian calendar—

in a fashion that worked something like a botox injection, only with the power of the Pope—

to facilitate the arrangement of certain historical events. This is why it is 2006 only in the Paulite calendar, while more traditional measures of the year would have it as 2003 or even 12.19.12.)