by M F Sullivan
“I’ve missed you, Lazarus.”
“Well, I’m here now, kiddo,” said the old man. “For a little while.”
Little, indeed. Too soon he was gone and there she was again. Alone with her thoughts, her trembling, the ceaseless calendar of her memories, and the awful anticipation of her fate. Three days hanging, longer without food. Far longer, still, since she had felt safe or comfortable for anything more than a handful of seconds at a time. Dominia could not feel her face, which was good, because if it was anything like the rest of her, it would be in agony. Her flesh was tight against degrading muscles devoured by her hungry body. By the proteins that could barely maintain a functional, noncancerous shape. She tried to focus on one thing Lazarus had told her during his visit: what had come when she’d asked him if he expected her to die. If the instant of death would be worse—more painful—than this.
“You know where you’re going after death. Most don’t. You can endure this, Dominia. If I can endure living over and over, you can endure suffering this way just once.”
“Just once I can remember.”
“Isn’t that as good as experiencing it just once?”
She supposed. Still—what a depressing thought! To be yet another in a long line of failed Dominias. How far she had traveled! Across the very globe, in pursuit of a dream that she had known to be ill-fated from the moment René appeared in her office. Yet, she could not help but dream it, pursue it, for nothing else bound her to the world after so many years of sordid living. Nothing but Cassandra, who weighted her to reality. Who she fancied she could, with increasing clarity, feel. As if she were with Dominia, there, in the chapel.
If only. If only she were really there. All this would have been unnecessary. If only this were the more dreamlike of the worlds the General inhabited! Alas, this was not the case. Her world had become suffering, marked by throbbing skull and cheeks not felt for quite some time. It was endless, nagging pain, and a parade of friends and relatives sent to mock her with their brief relief, their sudden absence.
To her surprise, the fourth day saw Theodore sent into the chapel, looking fretful. Even he proved relief to see, though until she knew for certain he hadn’t contributed to her friends’ capture, she couldn’t help but feel a bit standoffish. Hence, rather than joyful greeting, she asked, “What are you doing here?”
“Father sent me in— I have to climb up there to do this? There’s no other way?”
“Are you really asking me that?”
Sighing, Theodore took his turn on the ladder, and at Dominia’s question of why the Hierophant had seen fit to torture her with Teddy, of all people, the Governor exclaimed, “Because he doesn’t trust me! Because it’s a load of— He thinks I want to help your little human friends! Frankly, he owes me an apology after the way things went down in that— wretched place, that Void— and Jerusalem! Hah. I’ll tell you about it sometime. The explosions! I was almost shot. Frankly, I think I was in more danger from Father’s own men than I ever was from you and your cronies! But you know how it is, hoping for an apology from him… Anyway, he did get me out alive, so I guess I have to be grateful. Thank goodness he saved me from your band of criminals! I was worried. Not for me, of course. For Lavinia.”
This clumsy lie, told at a rapid clip and nervous pitch and packed with unnecessary, meandering details all in response to her simple question about why the Hierophant had sent Teddy in to prop her up, reassured her that her friends—and Theodore—had come intentionally. That the Lamb was not confirming these notions to the Hierophant was a very curious point that emerged again on day five, when the ram-headed man in question was the next to mount the ladder and give her support.
“You’ve been awfully quiet since I returned,” tired Dominia observed, head rolling back against the shoulder of the Lamb’s black cloak. In her sleep-deprived state, even this fabric felt too rough. He considered her statement—and its true sentiment—a few seconds before responding.
“I guess I just hate getting in the middle of all of these things. I’m sorry to see you up here, but things will work out the way they’ll work out. There’s nothing anybody can do. Certainly nothing I can do.”
“But that’s wrong. You manipulate probability.”
“Sometimes, in little ways. I can’t make a big change for anybody. Not out of nothing. And the changes I initiate are only…entropic. I can’t turn water into wine, or straw into gold. I can’t heal a person, but I can increase the odds of them becoming well.”
“Still—you see so much. And hear so much. Surely you can do more than you’ve ever let on.”
“I’ve done enough. I helped your Father gain power.”
“But why? You’ve never been like him. You were always kind to me. A better parent than he was, no matter what he’d like to think.”
His eyes trailing from the General, the Lamb said, “I’ve been by Cicero’s side since I was born the first time. The human time, if you can say Cicero was ever really human. He was always a little like a robot, I guess. But the protein changed him as much as it changed me. Power changed him. And—well.” His lips turned up in a dark smile at some taboo reality. Some act that changed the Hierophant into the free-spirited tyrant he was, which could not be spoken without consequence. The man once known as Elijah settled on saying, “I can’t explain it any more than I can explain to you why I’ve let him do the things he’s done. We’re brothers. We’ve always been brothers, but since we were martyred, we’ve been closer than brothers. We can’t help it, you understand. We’re each the only person the other can trust and—he helped me. When I was first martyred, hearing all the voices and seeing things from the Ergosphere that weren’t present in reality, he took care of me. Evil as he is. And so I help him—because I love him. I know you can understand that. I love him because I have to believe that, somewhere, something inside him is redeemable.”
Her attempt to save the Hierophant’s soul fluttered back to her with genuine sorrow. “I guess I know what you mean.” Glancing over at the Lamb’s dark curls as she tilted her forehead against the cool metal of his right horn, she asked him, “If there are two of Cicero, why aren’t there two of you? If only one person can slip into a new universe, how could he stand to leave without you?”
With a macabre smile, the Lamb repeated what he had said at the start of her questioning. “I guess I just hate getting in the middle of all these things.”
She understood why.
Her next tormentor, after the nightly visit from her Father, was none other than Cicero—but she was so tired, so beyond function, that the best she could manage was to focus on the rhythm of her breathing while the brother who was but the seed of their Father gloated, “How right it is to find you thus, Dominia, after all the trouble you’ve given us. And all the difficulty you’ve given me, personally, over the years!”
Baffling. “I never did a damn thing to you.”
“Aside from spurning my authority, and that of the Church, at every turn? Why you’ve so stubbornly resisted attending my sermons and accepting Father’s grace, I shall never understand— You are a martyr, woman, better than anything on Earth and deserving of glory. Yet you would scrape about in the mud with the humans! As if their lives could ever amount to anything.”
“Humanity did just fine before us. Better.”
“They destroyed the very planet. Before Father raised it from the waters of the Mediterranean, Venezia was drowned by rising seas thanks to the negligence of men. Rising seas that saw the deaths of many fish, replaced by his own well-funded programs. Why, the very waters of the sound around Kronborg would have ruined this fine castle had His Holiness not seen to its restoration and protection.”
The place had survived a fire before him; she would rather Kronborg had seen a flood than fallen into her Father’s hands, but this was like wishing the sky were yellow, or that Cicero would shut up. “Humans abuse the world,” her brother continued. “So we have taken it from them, as your rightly took Lavinia f
rom Cassandra’s irresponsible hands.”
“Is now the time for this?”
“When else are we to bring it up? You and I both know you are destined to lose more than your leg. A time like this is worth some self-reflection from the both of us.” After consideration, El Sacerdote said, “You know, Dominia, I never hated you.”
“Oh, please.”
“I suppose if I was a bit strict with you, it was because I was trying to save you from this. Prevent it.”
“Father told you this was coming?”
“Of course. He told me everything.” At his sister’s snort, the Holy Martyr Church’s most notorious priest adjusted his grip on her to demonstrate a shrug. “What else would you expect of him?”
“Nothing less. It’s just sort of funny I don’t even have temporal privacy. You remember that summer we stayed in France, and he took down all the doors in my apartment in Versailles?”
“You were doing an awful lot of drugs that summer, my sister.”
“I was nineteen! An adult. And I still found ways.”
“Yes, well, you have always had trouble with connecting consequence to action. That’s why you insist on blaming Father for what happened to Cassandra! Why, he wasn’t even the one who talked to her on Walpurgisnacht.”
How amazing. Even in a situation like this, even battered by a chain of horrific revelations, her faltering heart still managed to drop. Yes, that strange and uncomfortable feast night—normally one of the best of the year—wherein Cassandra exited the annual “Raven” recitation to have a crippling panic attack in the nearest bathroom. They had caught a silent jet home, had a bizarre fight, made up (so Dominia had thought), fallen asleep on the couch—
She could not finish her thought. Could barely open her lips to ask, “What happened on Walpurgisnacht?”
“I’m shocked you hadn’t heard. She confronted me, Cassandra. A fine time to do it, too, in the middle of my favorite holy night!” As Dominia’s practically disembodied spirit was nonetheless struck by bolts of pain, the priest explained, “Amazing she’d been able to compose herself the whole night until that point, planning to say all she was.”
“Let you have it, did she?”
“As I’ve never experienced!”
“Good.”
While the priest chuckled, he said, “As my ego recovered from her dressing-down of my every quality, she bashed me with the fact that she knew Lavinia was her baby, and that we had conspired to take the infant from her, and that we had wanted her to think she was crazy…”
Oh, no.
“And, why, she was off on such a screed, I had to bring her down somehow.”
Poor Cassandra.
“So I just told her, ‘You should be having this conversation with your wife,’ and left her on the balcony where she’d dragged me. And then…”
And then, the recitation. And then, the silent jet home. And then, that bizarre fight the second they hit the front door. Dominia asking over and over, “Why won’t you tell me what’s wrong? Why won’t you talk to me? Cassandra, honey, please.”
“It doesn’t matter,” had been her wife’s only response, over and over, for thirty dysfunctional minutes before her broken tone changed. Her watering eyes locked on those of the Governess like a pair of lasers, she asked, “Would you ever lie to me?”
Would
You
Ever
Lie
To
Me?
The words rang through the chapel even now, bringing Dominia that same surge of alarm such a question always brought a liar. “Never,” she had lied. “I would never lie to you. Never, about anything. Why would you ask me something like that?”
Cassandra clammed right up again. Saying only little things like, “I guess I made a mistake,” or, “There was a misunderstanding,” when pressed as to what had caused her change of mood or the sudden silence through which Dominia could not break.
Only now, the General realized she could have. She could have broken through that silence and maybe even saved the life of her wife. All she had needed to do was tell the truth when it mattered.
And she hadn’t.
“Please leave,” Dominia said, so softly that Cicero didn’t hear it over the sound of his drone. She raised her voice, repeating, “Please leave,” and adding, “I need you to go, right now, go, please,” adding the same words in all the languages she knew: English, Mephitolian, Spanish, that smattering of half-remembered Japanese and her year’s worth of shitty Arabic. “Get out, get out, get the fuck away from me, Cicero!”
In time with her words, she had begun to thrash so violently—at best, a half-deliberate set of movements—that before Cicero could react, she’d succeeded in knocking the ladder, along with its occupant, sideways across the chapel. While the priest, his foot tangled in the rung upon which he’d been perched, crashed to the floor with a terrible cry, the dryly sobbing General felt the joint of her hip slip with the full-length fall and suspected her leg had finally dislocated.
Oh, Cassandra. If only Dominia had been a better person! While the priest, bruised and cursing, limped out of the chapel with only the briefest of sneers for his sister, the General thumped her head against the crucifix, but soon lost strength for even self-abuse. Such a thing would do nothing but harm, anyway.
Lazarus was right. Nothing could be done to fix the past. But the future could always be made better. Dominia was determined to make it so, and her heart sped with that determination when the door opened but a few unscheduled hours after Cicero’s departure. The hinges’ squeak punctuated the pain of a familiar voice.
“Oh, Ninny.”
She couldn’t believe it. The Hierophant had brought Lavinia? While the General blinked stars from her sleep-deprived eyes and tried to lift her head, the girl hurried up the chapel—accompanied by, of all God’s good creatures, Basil, who already crept near the base of the cross. Her back aching as she spared energy to see him, Dominia uttered the words, “You shouldn’t be here.”
“I know, Ninny, but I couldn’t stand it. I had to see you. You know this doggie, don’t you? Isn’t he the one from the train? He’s been with us for weeks, but I only recognized him when he was next to you. I won’t tell, I promise.”
Dominia believed her, but the holo-cameras tucked in the chapel ceiling wouldn’t stay so mum. “I’m sure our Father would be unhappy for you to see me like this. Especially without his permission.”
“Daddy can pound salt,” said the sassy girl, eliciting a real smile from the General. “Look at you up there! Oh, that’s not right. I didn’t have to do this when I tried to run away.”
“Well, you also weren’t successful in running away. You didn’t help the enemy. You’re too valuable.”
Frowning, Lavinia glanced around and, spying the ladder, sheepishly said, “If I were the one who took you down, Daddy wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.”
“He would find something to do about it, all right. Just, please, Lavinia, go back. I can’t stand to see him do anything more terrible to you.”
Frowning down at the dog she stooped to pet, the Princess, up well past her dawn bedtime, studied her own pale hands. The hands she used, anyway. The same subject must have rested heavy on the girl’s mind, for she soon said, “You know, Theodore is safe! I’m so happy. I was worried, but I…after you and I talked the other night…” She faltered, and frowned. “He doesn’t know. At least, I don’t think he knows. I haven’t told him, and you know—these darn things are so realistic…I can feel with them just the way I could feel things before, so it’s all the same. This fellow doesn’t know the difference, does he?”
Basil did not wag his tail, because he knew the difference very well, but continued allowing the girl to fawn over him with her mechanical hands while he assessed, as reverently as an animal could, the woman suspended above. Dominia held the dog’s eye contact in perfect understanding of his respect for her plight while Lavinia went on. “People will know the difference, tho
ugh, when I tell them. They’ll suddenly see it the way I do…little differences. Sometimes I move too fast, or I’m too strong, even for our people. And if you reacted the way you did, as close as you are to me and as long as you’ve known me, why…I suppose I can’t expect somebody like Theodore to react differently, can I?”
“You love Theodore back, don’t you?”
It had been the silly source of a lot of teasing over the years, but the way Lavinia glowed with the innocence of true love just to have the question asked told the General all. “He’s so gallant, Ninny. Of course I love him. You know—he probably doesn’t care, or think it’s a big deal—but he was the first person I ever remember seeing, even before Daddy. Can you believe that?”
“Oh,” said Dominia, “I think he cares.”
“Really?” Hope sparked bright in Lavinia’s eyes before she smothered it with a wave of those delicate hands. “Not that it matters. Our love must remain the pure, courtly kind. What I symbolize to everyone—it’s all too important. I can’t let it be thrown away because of some silly crush, can I?”
The General had the feeling those words were not Lavinia’s but Cicero’s, drilled deep into her head. Yes, Theodore was absolutely silly: one of the silliest people Dominia had ever met by any definition of the word. But, Lavinia was right. He could also be sort of kind, even if he was a selfish idiot who let himself be a tool of the state. The flaw in his compassion was that his moments of kindness were not rooted in hidden goodness but naïveté. In fact, that was his problem. Theodore was too naïve to be evil.
In that respect, he and Lavinia were the perfect pair. Dominia’s cheeks hurt with her effort at smiling, so she stopped. “I think you should live your life, and make yourself happy.”
