The General's Bride

by M F Sullivan

  Full of joy—full of something! These people were alternately in touch with the source of cosmic truth, or a jet stream of cosmic bullshit. But Dominia was forced to admit: it was hard to hold on to grief, fear, and resentment when in the hands of the Water Bearer and her friend, lysergic acid, once they retired to the baths. Far from being the terrible, downright demonic trip once feared, the General relaxed more than she had in weeks—months! Since Cassandra’s death, or even before. Each time the caresses of Gethsemane crescendoed in what Dominia found to be a more enjoyable purification ceremony than the day’s prior, the General had the surreal sensation of being so relaxed it was as though she had no body at all: as though it had been dismembered, burst, scattered in pieces among the stars of outer space. The Void of space. That nest for the real center of reality, that anti-space of the Ergosphere and the black hole around which it swirled. The cradle of all things: good and bad, life and death, Cassandra and Dominia. Her wife seemed so close, and so comforting, even as the General submitted to this near stranger. Each heartbeat pounding in her chest gave hope, seemed to say her existence was the only reason Cassandra lived in the first place, seemed to say nothing in this universe could exist without every other thing also existing.

  But could a thing return? There would be opportunity for Cassandra, Dominia remembered while the Bearer anointed and dressed her. This time, the kimono was a woman’s, and Dominia realized only belatedly (through a wandering mind that felt suspiciously as her Ergosphere nous) that the gown was that same Miki had worn the day before. Shimmering brass silk adorned with those long, midflight herons. As her consciousness mounted breathless heights, the General’s body lifted her arms and showed the kimono’s long sleeves to that hovering self. The patterned birds upon it appeared to move their wings. A still thing, given life. A single heartbeat, separating the dead from the living.

  More heartbeats separated the dressing from the ceremony. Once both women had dressed and exited the baths, the Bearer led her by the lysergic-hot hand to the palace throne room: empty of the Lady, but overflowing with Her followers. Most crowded the edges of those pools flanking the path to the throne, but many more had been forced to fall back into the crowd. Still others were poised to contribute to the ceremony, each in her own special way. Overwhelmed by the suffusing fragrance of women, of lavender and frankincense and sweet plum, Dominia felt suspended upon the wavelike murmurs—the laughter, the weeping, the shrieks and moans of the crowd. The General squeezed Gethsemane’s hand tighter and tried to laugh away the fright that crept in only because the drug left her, like a raw nerve, disposed to experience all passing sensations in triplicate. This was not always good.

  Laughter, however, raised her up, and inspired more laughter. After a big, dimpled grin from the Bearer and a kiss that reminded her of Cassandra, Dominia forgot all her fear and became aware only of the intensity of the moment and its endless beauty. Basil bounded from the crowded women, anointed, the fur of his face having been washed only to be redecorated with the maroon lines of chalk or makeup. Guilt sprang as she leaned down to pet the dog and saw by his huge eyes that he, too, had been intoxicated by that evening’s drug of choice—but, now more than ever, it was important to remember Basil was not just a dog: he was a man.

  Yes. He was a man. Dominia’s heart sank into a quicksand of grief when the nymph’s counterpart pressed into her hands the playing cards along with Cassandra’s diamond. She had never seen the Bearer acquire them. Dominia’s hand tightened around the deck, its surface cool as that diamond whose pendulum swung against her wrist.

  “Why have you come?” asked the Bearer of Dominia as the sound of the women diminished in a bobbing hush.

  “For Cassandra.” The General’s words were weak: she knew it was not quite true even before the patient woman pressed her.

  “Why have you really come?”

  Lips parted, heart racing, Dominia lifted her eyes to see the red sky of night (“a sailor’s delight,” as her Father chimed) glowing through a glass ceiling she had ironically not noticed while having her sight restored. The question of why she had truly come barred from consciousness the beauty of that view. She felt on some mission for which she had been dispatched 331 years ago, which she had forgotten, or been made to forget. (Why—no! Thirty-two! Hadn’t she passed her October Feast Night in the Ergosphere? Oh, spiteful Saturn and his ceaseless march.)

  But wasn’t that sense of mission the truth? The way it really was? Everybody in the room had a mission remembered to varying degrees: the not-so-simple task of living their lives. Last night, her destiny seemed unfair, but now, surrounded by these women waiting for Miki to surrender her body to the spirit of a pan-dimensional archetype with no static identity but for those it borrowed, many destinies felt worse than hers.

  Of course, she had choices. Tobias had pointed that out. She could always turn and walk out. What was this silly cult business? It was her free will that was the valuable commodity, so why was she allowing herself to be railroaded? The thoughts swirled upon her as though from outside her: indeed, they felt so external, she imagined them in her Father’s voice. Though normally the General might have struggled to free herself of the doubts he posed, the tangibility of the truth was self-evident while her mind was lubricated by the unfamiliar molecule. Thus, she could dismiss all his arguments against her selfishness, save one. That of how she missed Cassandra.

  Yet Cassandra’s life had ended in such suffering, and been one of such suffering even with its many moments of joy. To bring her back would be to force her to resume life from that most hateful apex of despair from which the only way forward seemed to be her own wife’s gun. Was such a resurrection not the greatest of cruelties? Was it not possible that soothing oblivion, like sleep, served its purpose? That, to restore health and joy of living, the wounded spirit required ample rest before again enduring the material being in hopes of crafting a soul?

  What did Dominia know of life and death? What was she doing, chasing this dream of happy resurrection—in logic’s cold light, far less likely a success than the liberation of a dog and a man from superposition?

  “Please.” Her words for Basil were soft as a tear while the Bearer led them up the aisle to stand behind the throne. “Don’t disappoint me.”

  Just once, the dog wagged his tail, then fell into solemn silence as the three took natural places with Dominia in the center and Basil to her right. To their flanks lay curtained wings, as though they were upon a theater stage. Dominia grew ill with a stage fright she had never experienced before. As if she had not, a thousand times, addressed centuries of men waiting to die at war! Her one consolation was that any eyes upon her were only upon her in passing. Most shifted uneasily from the throne to the doors, awaiting, as did Dominia, the glorious appearance of Miki Soto.

  From her new vantage—still trembling, though less overwhelmed by her senses—the General studied crimson banners that had been unfurled down the columns. Man-height, thin iron braziers, like claws upon twisting staffs, were set nine on one side and nine on the other at even measure down the shallow pools. Their light prepared to support the room once night finished fading in. Those preparing women behind the columns were divided into band members, dancers, flower bearers, and still others who cared for covered boxes with contents Dominia could not divine.

  The musicians were the ones who acted first, prompted by some secret sign or agreed-upon time to ring the room into silence with their cymbals. From the first iteration of their repetitive beat, they received perfect attention. Motion in the sweet, underappreciated periphery that she still expected to be a blind spot drew her attention right in time to see tiny, near-mummified Trisha carried upon an elaborate litter whose roof was a spiral of ornate gold and silver that spun high like the peaks of her Father’s cathedrals. Four of the Bearers, Gethsemane aside, carried her. Behind this litter walked Lazarus, who moved with as much, or more, poise than the women.

  Though the cymbals continued, joined by the eerie
sound of wooden suzu bells, they did so with new, muted reverence. Women stood on tiptoes for better looks at the Lady: as a result, soon the whole crowd pressed forward with such desperation it seemed the front row would collapse into the pools. By some strength, they contained themselves well enough to watch Lazarus help the Lady from Her litter and sit, gently, upon the throne. The beat silenced.

  Dearly beloved, began that strange symphony of voices, you are gathered today to celebrate Our rebirth: but you know it is more than that. This is the rebirth of the Earth. For all appearances, it shall be the same; yet, We will find it new. We will know it to be new. We will be new. And what of that part of Us that does not survive the transition? This body? Where goes the Queen Bee with her finest drones when she feels it time to split her hive? She founds a new hive, which must seem to her absented kingdom a wholly different world. Let us pray.

  The mass kneeling was audible, an action that seemed impossible to Dominia, given how tightly the women were packed. As the General belatedly followed their lead, the Lady led the prayer. The chant, as ever, did not keep the martyr’s attention (particularly not under the swell of a drug that increased the excitement of her blood, the pressure in her body, as if she was, at any second, to be swept back into the Ergosphere), but she perceived it was intended for the sanctity and protection of the old world and the new. Let the light of the sun shine upon its face when it is young and full of hope, the Lady prayed, which Dominia didn’t understand. How could a sun fail to shine on the face of a world where life already thrived? It must have been a symbol. Like Amaterasu, Miki’s sun goddess, looking in the mirror. Like being upon the Earth, yet knowing—no, feeling—one was also within the black hole at the end of time. That one was eternal and mighty. More than a frail body.

  As the murmur that had hypnotized Dominia into contemplation met an end marked by the rising of the women, the Lady picked up where She’d left off.

  The planet is a rocket for the species, and the species is a rocket for the soul, and let no Man, by God, rent asunder the soul from the flesh. In soul, the flesh lives forever; in flesh, the soul is born. What is lost that does not exist? What is undiscovered that cannot be found?

  The sounds of drums gently picked up, and Dominia found herself breathless as the Lady pushed Herself from Her seat with Lazarus’s guiding hand around Her left arm. The differences between soul and flesh are mere illusion, She insisted, taking Her first step in two thousand years. All that exists is light working in harmony, propelled by conscious will.

  Paused at the foot of her stairs, the creaking goddess eased around to face delirious Dominia. The General flushed as the room followed suit.

  General—the voices boomed in her heart like the timpani of the drums and some fragile strings taught to rise at her announcement—it is your will that today directs the rocket of this world. You have a choice to make. Tonight is a night for miracles. Tonight is a night for the occluded to be revealed, for a being rendered mere concept to be given flesh. You could ask for money or power from me, but your Father could give you those. Only I can give life. Which life will you choose?

  A sharp breath clutched Dominia’s lungs the way her hand clutched that diamond. That same cold diamond that beat against her breast with each running step away from San Valentino; that diamond that contained the physical memory of her wife but only implied the spiritual memory; that diamond that could have the spirit imbued, and bring the body back with it, bring back her wife, her wife, her wife, oh, Cassandra—she was sorry. Dominia was sorry, Cassandra: but that was just the way things were. The General had to be the person she’d always wished she was. The good and generous person forever struggling to be seen as such, and not that selfish, murderous martyr, party to genocide and anthropophagy. She had to be the person she wished she could be for Cassandra. After all: What was the point in having Cassandra back if nothing changed? What was the point in any of this, if all of it happened again?

  “The dog.” She shut her eyes while a light came to Basil’s. The border collie, in his thrill, tapped his feet upon the marble floor. “Take the dog and make him—make him Valentinian. Bring the magician here, into this world.”

  The General’s head buzzed too loudly to admit the ripples of relieved sighs—the one or two cries of delight—among many murmurs of confusion. Only Gethsemane appeared she had known this would be the General’s choice—Gethsemane, and Lazarus, who met the General’s watering eyes, and nodded. As the Bearer stepped forward, herding the dancing dog, the animal paused to kiss Dominia’s hand.

  Halfway down the length of the pools, the woman and the dog both stopped, and the animal looked around, so delighted that not one scrap of magical dignity remained detectable in the beast. But this charming hound was a powerful sight when the music rose into true melody. The Lady and Lazarus waited at the path’s termination while Gethsemane stepped aside, into the water, and the dancers swirled into motion on either wing of the grand foyer at the hall’s distant end. As, in a floral hurricane of veils and ribbons, they crossed one another’s paths, the tremendous doors swung open to reveal, more doll-like and perfect than ever, Miki Soto.

  Tears renewed themselves in Dominia’s eyes to see her, surely as they sprang from all the women in the room; though perhaps that was attributable to those many bright, scarlet butterflies released from the cloth-covered boxes—cages, the General realized—at the opening of the doors. Upon a twin of the Lady’s litter, one attained no sense of her beauty’s scale; but, when the litter stopped at the path, opposite the holy couple, and the future avatar stepped out, the room beneath the music became a vacuum of sound. One dancer stumbled to see the chromatic train of the splendid bridal kimono, which was embroidered with an explosive array of jade and carnelian flowers, cool turquoise mountains and swirling, hypnotic dirt paths that repeated beneath panels of violet skies dotted by glittering suns—the same suns that gave the stained-glass fabric the yet-uniform impression of gold. Even the sash seemed woven in the Void, or the Kingdom, and transported to Earth. Considering the weight of the deck in Dominia’s hand, this may have been so.

  But could that gown compare to its bride? Miki wore no makeup, and the human’s long hair poured down her shoulders in a perfect ebony waterfall. There was no one who could more resemble that statue Miki had admired the night before. Enchanted by the sublime appearance of her friend, Dominia failed to notice, until both figures were a quarter of the way up their respective sides of the aisle, that the Lady’s old body mirrored Her new one step for step. Now the General’s attention shifted, and in so doing, she caught the exact second a rueful metamorphosis overtook the old woman. A flicker of hesitation sparked in Miki’s eyes as she, too, saw the way Trisha’s feet blackened. That blackness rose higher toward her knees with every step: but the new avatar emboldened herself, and her face hardened as the encroaching old body dissolved into something not of this world. Whatever it was, it provoked, amid the many women, a series of gasps that ranged from awed to flatly terrified. There was no going back now, but Dominia struggled with her urge to sweep in and save Miki. Instinct fostered the wish that things could be different. Maybe there had been some hidden other path, and she had failed to find it.

  But, was there? Were alternatives fatalistic wishful thinking?

  Perhaps it was possible. Already, the impossible had been made possible to her, so perhaps the future would reveal some method of salvation. Hand on her heart, Dominia dared step to Lazarus’s side to watch with him. Dared, for with every step the Lady took, the entire palace—perhaps all reality—jittered and echoed like a misfed film. Was this the changeover of the film reel, following Valentinian’s metaphor? The space over the dog flexed in a way Dominia mistook for a trick of the light, of her eye, of mere dust or ash from the torches. But that quiver of darkness fomented itself, then shivered and grew until it wrenched a tear in the delicate brane of reality to reveal that same naked Void that consumed the Lady’s old body. It was wrong, Dominia realized, to call such
a thing “black”; it was the absence, even, of that much. The absence of negative space. Black was a shade of white, and negativity implied positivity—even absence implied presence. This could not even be said to be absence. What was it? What really was it? Dominia emitted a short cry to see this extra-dimensional blot (truly extra-dimensional, for she sensed it was but the three-dimensional appearance of a fourth- or higher-dimensional object, like a hypersphere, or a tesseract, but beyond the comprehension of any mortal model) expanded its navy border ever nearer the dog. Gradually, with each trembling pulse of its surface, the tear revealed the head, then the shoulders, then the sanguinary vest, of Valentinian.

  She discovered she gripped Lazarus’s hand; for how long, she couldn’t tell. The improbable image grew along with the space around it, and all light in the room—all light pouring through the glass ceiling—streamed into its vacuous mouth along with any lingering sense of time, reality, or causality. The women farthest from the (proverbial and literal) event horizon were frozen in motion, while others stuttered in and out of existence, and those closest to the scene, paradoxically, appeared the most real. Gethsemane was at times replaced by the tiny nymph of the Ergosphere, yet was still the human Gethsemane, and in this transposition Dominia believed she saw what was, arguably, the only true Gethsemane, which had to be a combination of both, plus all the other bodies to which the nymph had previously bound herself on Earth. Time compacted: there was no time, therefore all bodies were present at once. The effect was possibly the most beautiful thing Dominia’s material eyes had ever seen, a burning beauty that ached her head and made her avert her stinging retinas to the dark Lady as She reached that two-dimensional tear in space. From the other side, Miki had done the same, and when the image of the Ergopshere failed for those fractions of seconds, her friend’s openly astonished face appeared as through a window. The archetypal expression of astonishment, close to the rift as she was. All who watched the scene trembled, the atoms of their bodies threatening to buckle under stress of the shift like a martyr’s deformed proteins destroying themselves in starvation.