Daughter to Demons

by Jeffrey M. Mahr and Levanah

Chapter Twenty-Three:
World Enough and Time

They had behind them, to my mind,
the terrific suggestiveness of words heard in dreams,
of phrases spoken in nightmares….
 ― Joseph Conrad,The Heart of Darkness (1902)

 

Jackie immediately took Ruth’s arm and said reassuringly, “Don’t worry, Ruth, this is just a childish prank by a stupid man. He didn’t really mean to frighten a pregnant woman; he’s just clueless, as usual.” Then she turned to the menacing figure and said calmly, “Tris, you owe this lady an apology; she’s an innocent who has no part in whatever puerile grudge you harbor against either my mother or myself. Allow me to introduce Ruth Bernstein, my friend Tom Ackroyd’s lovely fiancée. Ruth looked at him, still fearful, but somewhat reassured by Jackie’s calm demeanor.

To his credit, he whipped off his mask instantly, but lacked either the sang froid or savoir faire to either conceal his astonishment or make the appropriate apology to Ruth. “How did you know it was me?” Then his outrage came to the fore. “Stupid?! How dare you!”

“Tris, Tris, Tris,” Jackie tched three times, “you left far too many sloppy clues, of course, almost as sloppy as your grammar. You’re obviously past your prime, having failed to match wits with real women lately, and this is a violation of the Compact.”

“What!?” he sputtered, a bad sign. “It’s only a simple crime!”

“Not, I’m afraid,” a distinctly masculine voice spoke from the dark shadows of the doorway to the fashion storage vaults, and then a tall, sombre, man walked out wearing a simple black business suit, but with a black shirt and white clerical collar that belied his powerful physique, “not when you’ve entered a building very well-protected by a state-of-the-art burglar alarm system with what might seem to be murderous intent, and have been caught on hidden video up to your nasty little tricks. You didn’t trip the alarm, of course — a master thief like you wouldn’t be so silly — but you didn’t bother to make sure that it hadn’t been tripped already.”

“Ruth Bernstein,” Jackie made the introductions, “this is Father Sam Ngelaf, a Roman Catholic Priest, but he used to be an Orthodox Rabbi, and I think is either undergoing a crisis of faith even as we speak or will be in a few moments, so may well be a Rabbi again quite soon. In any case, when I knew you’d be coming by, I asked him to drop in, because I knew that he’d have unique insights in helping you and Tom with planning your coming nuptials.”

“Oh! How wonderful!” Ruth said, visibly relieved to find a helpful man nearby, especially one so visibly fit and unperturbed. “We’ve been having trouble finding someone local who was willing to officiate at an interfaith ceremony!”

“I thought you might,” he said. “The pathetic fellow with the dangling… mask… is Tris Magister, a petty thief and con man, so don’t worry about him at all; the police are already on their way.”

“Pathetic? Petty? Police!?” Tris scoffed. “They can’t touch me! I haven’t committed any crime yet.”

“I’m afraid, Tris, that my lovely daughter may have used the term ‘police’ in the poetic sense, but you’ve used the term ‘crime’ rather loosely as well, so I’m sure you’ll forgive us any legal imprecision.” Lilith stepped out from behind the same doorway Jackie and Ruth had used to enter the warehouse space.

“Lilith!” His composure slipped to the point that he blanched a deathly grey. “But you were gone! I saw you leave the building!”

“I’m so terribly sorry, Tris,” Lilith said smiling, surprisingly pleasant, for her at least, “if you had that impression, but there’s no fool like an old fool, is there? I’ve a bone to pick with you,” she said even more pleasantly, almost beaming in friendly bonhomie.

“Ruth,” Jackie intervened with no particular hurry, “why don’t you let Father Sam, or Rabbi Samuel — whatever he’s calling himself these days — take you through to my vaults so you can start looking over my wedding collections for some ideas about your bridesmaids and the decorations? My mother and I will wait with Tris for the authorities to come dispose of him, but we’ll both be in directly.”

“Are you sure? Will you two be alright?” she asked.

“Don’t worry, dear,” Lilith said. “Tris will be no trouble at all, now he’s caught fair and square. He’s always been a bit of a cowardly custard, all talk and no action, if you know what I mean. He has a lovely tenor, though, and will make a nice addition to the prison choir. You two run along and we’ll be fine for just a minute or two.” They both waved gaily as Sam ushered her through the door that led toward Jackie’s vaults. When he shut the door, they turned as one to Hermes.

“You’ve been a bad boy, Hermes,” Jackie said, “what with murdering innocent angels and other mischief. You do realize that you’ll have to be punished.”

He laughed, a cynical snarl of a laugh, but a fairly good attempt at making light of them both. “I’d like to see you try, a failed Goddess and a upstart Cupid! Pathetic, the pair of you.”

Jackie said, “I’m afraid you’re laboring under a misapprehension, quite literally, because I’ve apprehended you, Hermes.” She sank her ætheric claws into his soul, wrinkling her nose in distaste as she did so.

He grunted, “Hnnnh!” but couldn’t speak. He began to struggle, but the more he exerted himself the more energy he fed to Jackie, so his struggles were useless, although Jackie was surprised to find that she was actually enjoying them. He tasted… aged, with an acerbic piquancy that offset the complex flavor of his essence, almost like a very strong brie. His hatred of her, and of her mother, was pungent enough almost to bring tears to her eyes, but the sheer power of his ancient soul made up for it, like an undiluted cask-strength single malt whiskey, the spirits of which can bring a flush of heat to the skin, as well as a burn to the throat, even as it begins the process of intoxication.

“What’s the matter, dear?” Jackie said, mocking his efforts to speak or escape. “Cat got your tongue? No, really, it was simple to discover your childish schemes almost as soon as I took a few moments to think about the problem. I constructed what they call a psychological profile in the detective business, a little précis of your personality: arrogant — I almost had you there already — improvisational, contemptuous of excessive planning, misogynistic, ruthless…. Well, I won’t bore you with the tedious details. In the end, it was a very short list of suspects, and your name led the list, because you’d had a childish need to flaunt your pathetic ‘charms’ to me in particular, and dick-wagging is rarely an appropriate method of endearing yourself to women. Once I knew that it was you, it was trivial to track you down, so your little brainwashing Stalag is toast now, and all the inmates and their jailers safely grasped in my capacious hands.” She loosened her grip slightly, but he was so weak by now that his struggles were still futile. Jackie began to feel a bit like a cat with a mouse, fascinated by her prey, despite a certain distaste for her own cruelty.

“What my daughter is trying to say, dear, quite delicately, is that she’s the greatest Succubus raised in this millennium, quite possibly in this age of the world — excepting me, of course — and that she has you by the balls.”

“But she’s just a stupid cupid!” he managed to gasp out, writhing in agony.

“And who else but a cupid is capable of taming the fiercest and most rapacious lust?” Lilith asked reasonably. “Who else can insinuate herself into the proudest heart and lay it low? What’s more tender and humble than mere love, and yet so powerful that one might die of it?” Lilith sneered at him. “We’re both cupids, you silly twit, it’s just that some of us are a bit more saccharine about it than others. I’ve tried to cure her of it, but she will persist. I consider myself lucky that she doesn’t dot the ‘i’ in her name with a tiny heart.”

Jackie smiled, because she’d had an almost irresistible impulse to do just that when she’d first started signing her new name, but had restrained herself, even then, thinking of her future in academia. “And I’m afraid you won’t be singing tenor in the choir for a good long time, Hermes,” Jackie added, “because I have other plans for you.”

“You can’t! My followers! It’s a violation of….”

“…The Compact?” Jackie asked sweetly. “You’re not protected by the Compact, Hermes, because you’ve flouted its strictures and flagrantly violated even its spirit, so in fact your name is somewhat prophetic, in a way, a mere rock by the side of the road, your own pathetic monument to yourself. I’d suggest that you take time — and you’ll have beaucoup leisure to meditate, if you could, at length — to think upon my sister Jane, who was murdered by one of your proxies, but it would be a waste of breath, since your memory will be going the way of your potency in just a second, so let’s just consider this little taunt a last little bit of ‘gotcha!’ from the world’s most vicious ‘ball-busting’ bitch.” She tightened her grip, letting him feel her claws again for just a second. “Oh, and you might spend a few seconds ruing the fact that your utter failure to excuse yourself to Ruth has exposed you to the full measure of my wrath without the slightest temptation toward mercy, so let your last regret be that you didn’t try to talk your way out of this, you silver-tongued devil, you.” She gripped him more firmly then, so he struggled, gasping, vainly twisting in her grasp as she toyed with him before her power pierced through his heart and soul, before she ripped away every vestige of arrogance, of pride, of happiness, of desire, of whatever masculine power he possessed, taking it for her own, and then paused to let him feel his own final despair before she destroyed whatever memory and sense of self were left behind.

When she held his naked soul in her hand, she reached up with the other and then inserted that tiny speck — oh, so delicately — into a random diamond she’d plucked from the air. “Now we have a matched set, Mother, the puppets and their puppet-master — we could make a necklace, perhaps a tiara — and Jane has her full measure of vengeance. I’m not sure what to do with them all, though. I could send him to join Sanvi and Sansanvi, perhaps, since I don’t think this particular soul is worth saving, but what would that make me? I’m not at all sorry about Sanvi, nor even Sansanvi, but those situations were more or less forced upon me, and in the end I did what I had to do to survive. This would be much more like revenge, or at least an execution. I have a sort of inchoate feeling that I ought to try to salvage the larger group of angels he’d subverted, but I’m not sure where to begin, since they weren’t exactly innocent victims, but rather predisposed to hatred and violence. He just took a group of ‘rotten apples’ and deliberately set out to exacerbate their antisocial attitudes and behaviors. I suppose it might be possible to try to undo their specific conditioning, but what would be the point? I’m not sure it’s really possible to rehabilitate a mind so deliberately twisted into murderous sadism, if they had a taste for it to begin with.”

“Why don’t you let me handle it, dear? I’ve had both the high justice and the low for so long that the mantle rests more easily on my shoulders. I’ll sort them out, and see if any are worth saving, but please don’t think that your hand wasn’t forced by Hermes, since he would have attempted to kill you, or someone, until he succeeded.”

“It’s alright by me, Mother. I’ll be glad to be rid of them.” She smiled grimly. “Although not necessarily in the same sense that Henry II wished to be rid of that troublesome priest.” She took a largish handful of diamonds from her foxy pocket and handed them over.

Lilith took them carelessly. “Think nothing of it, dear. I’ll handle the matter with dispatch and all due consideration, but I have to say, quite frankly, that I admire how busy you’ve been.”

“Thank you, Mother. I won’t trouble you to account for any of them.”

“I understand, dear. They’re already forgotten. I’ll send a few more diamonds by courier, to replace these, and perhaps a few more besides, since you seem to be going through them rapidly, not that I blame you in the slightest. Would that you burned them by the bushel basket if you could but give me a handful of these tinned crêtins in return.”

Jackie nodded in acknowledgement, then took out Jane’s green diamond and gazed at it, by now a habit whenever she was feeling contemplative or morose. “I think it’s time, Mother. I really think Jane would prefer being an only child, especially a first child.” She cradled the stone in the palm of her hand, feeling its warmth, the faint whisper of Jane that radiated from the core of it.

“I miss her too,” Lilith said. “It would be nice to hear the patter of tiny feet around the house, especially if I don’t have to change the diapers.” She smiled.

Jackie put the stone away and laughed. “We’ll make Frank do it. He’s working at home these days.”

“It’s your choice, dear. Shall we go in? We still have a wedding to plan.”

“We shall, and Mother….”

“Yes?”

“Give the poor schmuck a break, will you? He’s been in love with you for at least ten thousand years.”

“Who?” Lilith asked haughtily.

“Rāmin, Tristram, Sam, the guy whose fancy sword you instantly recognized after nearly a millennium.”

“Well, I have a very good memory!” she said defensively.

“So do I, Mother, so don’t tick me off.” Jackie had her admonitory glare down pat, since she’d learned it from her mother, and was now returning it.

Her mother was immune. “Well, I might talk to him, just to say hello.”

“You do that, Mother. As you yourself so recently admitted, we’re all of us cupids. We can reward as easily as we can punish. You’ve seen my dark side; so please show just a little more of your alternate profile. You’re quite beautiful, you know, and I’m sure that beauty extends far below the surface. Don’t let his agony of devotion to what he saw as his ancient duty blind you to the present reality of his love. Isn’t a thousand years of penitence enough?”

“We’ll see…,” she said as primly as Carrie Nation marching her stately way toward a hatchetation, but taller.

Jackie rolled her eyes.

“Oh, hello, Jackie,” he said, then went a little pale when he saw that Lilith had followed her into the room. “I… unh, I was just explaining that I’d be glad to perform the service at any venue of their choice, and that they were free to write their own vows, of course, but that the rules of my order — although tolerant of interfaith marriage per se — couldn’t countenance open displays of religious… unh… symbolism… of… unh….”

“Hi, Father Sam,” Jackie said cheerily, blithely ignoring his discomfiture. “I was sure you two could work things out somehow. I don’t suppose you need any introduction to my mother, since I believe you know each other very well.”

Lilith snorted. “In his dreams, perhaps.”

Ruth was still wandering through the racks of outfits from last season, having moved beyond wedding regalia of various sorts and on into seasonal items, oohing and ahing from time to time when she saw something that tickled her fancy, but was otherwise oblivious to their entry, completely focused on a self-paced private showing — or viewing, at least — of Jackie’s entire collection for the past three seasons, including some that never made it to the runway.

“Now, Mother. Be nice,” Jackie said. “We’re here helping to plan a joyous celebration for Ruth and her fiancée, not to rehash old misunderstandings. Let bygones be bygones, as the saying goes….”

“Bygones!” Lilith restrained herself to a quiet shriek, if not entirely sotto voce. “After what he….”

“Now, Mother,” she began…

…when Semangelaf interrupted, “Lilith, leave the girl alone. She’s only trying to help.” Then he turned toward Jackie. “Jackie, you’re meddling in the personal lives of your elders, which is unbecoming at any age. Please credit us with the wisdom to handle our own private affairs and….”

“Oh, please!” Jackie scoffed. “As if! That’s why you’ve both managed a perfect snit for years now. As my mother so very wisely pointed out not so very long ago, I grew up with Mister Rogers and his neighborhood, with Sesame Street, and bookstores with more space devoted to pop-psychology ‘self-help’ books than to science, religion, and/or history combined. Introspection is our collective hobby these days; even hard-hearted businessmen are studying The Art of War and The Book of Five Rings to get in touch with their ‘inner oriental philosopher and warrior.’ You grew up when figurative two-year-olds with knives made every important decision, not that we don’t have legislatures filled to the brim with more than enough of our own. Get over yourselves! Your tragic hero schtick is so last week, Sam, and you, Mother, have carried on the ‘woman scorned’ drama queen act long past its shelf life.”

Lilith was furious by then, and said, “Jackie! Just….”

Jackie whirled toward her. “Shut up, Mom! Just listen!” Then she twisted her head back toward Sam, while her mother was only temporarily at a loss. “Sam, it’s time to grow a pair. I’m only going to do this once, so start talking now.”

Father Sam only hesitated for the barest moment before he said, all in a rush, “Lilith, my dearest love and heart’s desire, I’ve done a lot of stupid things over the years, but never having mustered the courage to defy conventions, to set aside my own sworn duty and act on my own to ensure your happiness was the stupidest. ‘The grave’s a fine and private place, But none, I think, do there embrace.’ ” He reached for her and, throwing caution to the winds, pulled her into his arms.

She screamed, but it sounded less like a protest than the howl of a Bengal tigress in heat, and then she had her own arms around him, kissing him, her hands clawing at his clothes, pulling out his shirttails, popping the buttons off his shirt by the simple expedient of ripping open the placket with both hands as she lay suspended in his arms, then shredding the sleeves with her nails as he carried her out the door.

“Well, Jackie,” Ruth observed dryly. “ I don’t know all that much about Catholicism, but it looked to me like there’s his vow of perpetual celibacy shot all to Hell and gone. I guess we can have the chuppah after all.”

Jackie took her time talking Ruth through the various options she had available. Despite having faced down a marauding gang of angels armed with deadly swords, and even a minor God, the thought of catching her mother in flagrante somewhere out in the workshop terrified her. Ruth, of course, had to go and ruin it.

“What do you suppose they’re doing out there?” she asked. “Do you think they just left and went off somewhere? Or are they still here?”

Jackie closed her eyes. “I so don’t want to know, Ruth.”

Ruth looked at her with shrewd appraisal. “Let me guess, you and your mother have never had ‘the talk’, then?”

Jackie was mortified. “Oddly enough, the subject hasn’t come up. I was raised by nuns, Ruth, so I’ve had zero dispassionate advice other than the very generic state-mandated sex-education class, combined with the repeated exhortation not to even think about applying my new knowledge in any practical way or I’d go straight to Hell, do not pass Go, do not collect Two Hundred Dollars. It’s not as if I’m stupid, Ruth. I’ve read more books about it than you can shake a stick at, so I know how everything is supposed to work, and I’ve been practicing with Frank — he’s my boyfriend/fiancée — but I haven’t exactly done it yet.”

“What do you mean by ‘practicing,’ exactly,” she asked with a certain skepticism.

Jackie hesitated only for a moment, because she had nothing to hide about this, at least. “Well, we ‘pet…’ a little. maybe a lot, and I’ve been pleasing him orally, but I have a… condition, a sort of medical condition, that might make actual sex dangerous, so we’ve stopped short of… that.”

Ruth looked puzzled. “A ‘condition?’ Do you mind my asking what sort?”

“I do, actually. I really can’t talk about it.” ‘Right,’ Jackie thought to herself, ‘Like I’m going to tell her that I’m actually a succubus and I worry about sucking the masculinity out of my boyfriend if I got carried away.’ The stronger she got, the more she worried. She’d just killed a Godling that way, essentially, and a whole bunch of angels, so it wasn’t as if it weren’t possible, and she knew that a lot of women got ‘carried away’ when they had an orgasm, so for all she knew she could wipe out every guy within a mile with just a little slip-up in her self-control, since she did know that she could do exactly that if she thought about it really hard. She wasn’t at all sure that keeping their souls safe from harm even counted, even in the larger scheme of things, although she suposed that a clever lawyer could argue that they weren’t really dead, since the possibility of rebirth existed for them, at least theoretically, or at least it might have existed until she’d delivered up those very souls to her mother’s tender mercies. Her existence as a supernatural being was in any case sort of outside human law entirely, since there was little possibility of bringing a being who could flit off through the center of the Earth at the drop of a hat to justice with any likelihood of success, short of juridicial homicide. It was sort of like living inside a video game, a first-person shooter. She could lose ‘points’ if she killed an innocent bystander, but could only be vanquished, not judged. She had a twinge of belated sympathy for Hermes, who’d grown up — or been created — in a climate of impunity, which might at least explain — if not excuse — his sociopathic lack of empathy, and easily account for his casual inhumanity toward the people he interacted with.

“You look pensive,” Ruth said.

“What? Oh, sorry. I was just thinking about everything. I’ve been infertile too, which added an entire layer of complication, but recently I’ve learned of a… procedure that might help with that, so I’ve been thinking about it.” ‘With Frank immortal now,’ she thought, ‘he was surely safer than he had been before, and Dross… Tiamat… had surely had that in mind when she’d transmogrified him, although “transubstantiation” might be the more appropriate term, now that I think about it.’ She smiled to herself. ‘I’ll have to find a few good recipes for ambrosia and nectar.’

“So your… imperfect chastity… isn’t a Catholic thing?”

“No, not really. It’s complicated, probably too complicated to explain. Call it a very long engagement. I know people find it hard to understand, since Frank and I live together, in a house we bought together, but we have separate bedrooms, so we hover somewhere between roommates and lovers.” She grinned, then laughed. “As I said, it’s complicated.”

“He’s not gay, is he?”

“Frank? No, not nohow. He’s straight as an arrow, just… patient with me and with my problems.”

“Well, I can understand how infertility affects most women, having been there, if you ever want to talk about it. We grow up thinking of pregnancy as a possibility at least, or even a danger in some situations, so to have that snatched away can strike at the very heart of your sense of femininity and worth. Since girlhood, I’d known that I had a womb meant to carry a baby, so learning belatedly that it was all a sham was a heavy blow. I felt like I’d let down my husband, and my family as well. I spent years grieving for that loss, and every month my period was a new betrayal, so much so that I lost all interest in sex for months at a time, but Jacob — my husband — understood, and loved me anyway.” A single tear trickled down from her right eye, although both eyes were brimming as she looked up toward the ceiling high above them until she was able to quell the lingering impulse to tears.

‘There’s no perfect happiness in the world,’ Jackie thought to herself before she said, “I can’t say that I truly understand, because my losses have all been virtual, unremembered and, in the case of my mother at least, untrue; she was simply misplaced, like ‘Ernest’ in that play. I do sympathize, though. I haven’t had a period in several years, like an early menopause, so I’ve been spared that monthly reminder at least, but it’s still there like a ghost, the memory of it I mean. You know, if there’s one thing doctors can’t cure, it’s a condition.” She smiled and sang a few bars of ‘Spanish Rose’ from Bye Bye, Birdie, her big second act solo from her high school Senior play.

“You played Rose Alvarez?”

She grinned. “I did. I was pretty good, too. I was always bold as brass. The Sisters all despaired of me, but I still remember all my numbers, and most of my lines…. Probably all of them, if I thought about them for a while.”

“I can see you in the role. It suits you, except I can’t imagine you pining over any ‘Albert’ for eight years, nor pinning your hopes on marriage as the solution to everything, including your sense of identity and self-worth. I think that the schools must get special rates on that play, though; my own high school did it too, although it was awfully dated in its cultural attitudes and references, even then, but I was never theatrical, so I only went to see it with my parents, to show support for the school.” She looked puzzled for a moment. “But how did you handle the men’s roles in the play? I thought you went to an all-girl’s school.”

“We had girls play all the boy’s parts, of course; everyone thought it was a scream, especially on the ‘One Last Kiss’ number, although I think the girl who played Conrad turned out to be a lesbian. She sure played the role of Conrad Birdie well, though, lots better than the girl who played Albert — my ‘male’ romantic lead — who was much more awkward, despite trying really hard. You’re right about it being dated, though. We printed a glossary in the program to explain who Ed Sullivan and Lamont Cranston were, stuff like that. I wonder if that play had anything to do with my desire to become a teacher, the song I mean, my first act solo, ‘An English Teacher,’ or maybe it was just a desire to be out in front of an audience again. I suppose my current career isn’t all that different, now that I think of it.” She grinned again. “There’s no business like show business, eh?”

Ruth laughed, just a little. “I suppose not,” she said.

Jackie could tell she’d never been stage-struck, bitten by the drama queen bug as she herself had been, swanning around for months with dreams of Broadway glory to come, inevitably, just as soon as her performance in her high school play was brought to the attention of the theatre critic for the New York Times. Oh, well.

Lilith had a definite glow about her when she finally returned smiling through the doorway from the shop floor, followed closely by Semangelaf, who looked, if anything, more macho than he had before, with a thin sheen of perspiration over his face — as if he’d been working out — and a sort of strut, like a rooster on parade before his hens. The whole scene made Jackie a little crazy.

Ruth didn’t help at all. “Y’all have fun?” she asked, as she might have asked a fellow football fan, ‘Did you enjoy the game?’

Jackie rolled her eyes. “Sam, it’s awfully late. Would you mind seeing Ruth safely home? I hate to think of her driving back alone at this time of night.”

“Oh, no! I wouldn’t think of it,” Ruth protested. “How will you get home again, Sam?”

Sam looked over at Lilith, who nodded, before saying, “It’s no trouble at all, Ruth. I’ll just catch a cab back here, and we can go from there. I can even call ahead and arrange to have one meet me, if you’ll give me your address.”

“Well, okay, if you’re sure it’s no trouble. It is awfully late.”

“It’s no trouble at all, Ruth,” Lilith said. “You’ll be perfectly safe with Sam at your side. In his youth, he was quite the bruiser, and he hasn’t gone to flab, the way many men do, so he’s amazingly… fit for a man of his age.” She smiled with just that naughty quirk of her lips that let Ruth — and everyone with eyes to see — know that she meant more by her comment than just the state of his taut abs and bulging… biceps.

Jackie rolled her eyes again. “Well, that’s settled then. Will Tom be worried about you?”

“Not at all.” She dismissed the notion out of hand. “I told him that I might be late, and if he’d been worried, he would have called. I may call him on the ride back home, just to let him know he has to move over to his side of the bed. Or, I might leave him lay; I’m sure I can persuade him to shift about a bit with a little motivation.” She wriggled her hips suggestively.

It was obviously contagious, and Jackie steeled herself not to roll her eyes yet again, lest she seem prudish. “Great,” she said, and then watched as her mother gave Sam a deep soul kiss goodbye, and wriggled her own ass a little as she whispered into his ear, evidently encouraging him to come back soon, to judge from the shit-eating grin on Sam’s face when they pried themselves apart.

Jackie had to admit that Sam was a handsome guy — looked at objectively — and could probably make a living as a men’s fashion model with just a little more attention to his grooming and clothing. Even now, he had a rough-hewn beauty about him that he could easily parlay into a book cover model for the woman’s romance market. He’d look awfully good in tight Levi’s and a cowboy hat, flannel shirt optional. “See you soon, both of you,” she said. “Drive safely.”

Sam looked at her with a pained expression on his face, which Jackie supposed was understandable. Taking all in all, she guessed that his ‘gig’ for the past millennium or so had been as a guardian angel, since that’s how they’d met. Thinking about that, she suddenly realized that he’d been taking care of her, probably because she was one of Lilith’s children, and the figurative hair rose on the back of her figurative neck as she became aware of wheels within wheels, all in the middle of the air, and spinning around her, invisible until just now, and she was almost overcome by vertigo as she saw those wheels cycling through the deeps of time, whirling, turning, everything all linked together in an endless chain of relationships and causation.

Kissing and goodbyes done, the door shut behind Ruth and her protector as they left, Lilith turned back towards her and said, “Spooky, isn’t it?”

Jackie was taken aback by the depth of her mother’s perception, although she supposed she shouldn’t be. Lilith had, after all, really ‘seen it all’ for hundreds of thousands of years before Jackie was even born. “I suppose it is,” she said. “It sure seems that way to me, at least.”

“There’s more fun to come, of course.” Lilith seemed oddly resigned, as if she were in her oracular mode. “Don’t worry.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that Hermes is a messenger, and a messenger implies a sender. I expect said sender to show up very soon.”

“What? Who?” Jackie felt panicky. They’d just survived one attack, would there be another so soon?

“Vishnu once said, ‘All things move unimpeded toward a single Purpose,’ and I suppose he ought to know.”

“You knew Vishnu?” Jackie was astonished, a feeling she often experienced when talking to her mother, and even more of late, now that she seemed more inclined toward — what was for her at least a tiny start in the general direction of — ‘chattiness.’

Lilith had supercilious down pat, of course. “I suppose I must have, since I was Lakshmi and his consort at the time, although at the same time Durga and my own mother. You think our relationship has been difficult, just wait until you give birth to yourself and are your own husband’s mother-in-law as well as being your son-in-law’s wife! There I was, stuck in resenting myself as an interfering old bitch at the same time I despised myself as ungrateful young idiot who’d married far beneath her. Vishnu wasn’t nearly good enough — in my motherly opinion — to be the God I loved with all my heart inside my other body. It’s a good thing I’ve always had a great sense of humor.” She smiled, which was both disconcerting and a little frightening.

Jackie, on the other hand, had developed a sudden skill at irritated adolescence, so rolled her eyes and almost stamped her feet. “Mother! It just surprised me, because Semangelaf knew Vishnu as well, and mentioned it the first time we met.”

“He did? Must’ve been after my time….” She paused, then added, “Either that or I wasn’t paying attention.”

“But how can that be? Lakshmi is still worshipped; but if you’re Lakshmi, where is she?”

“Right here, of course. Lakshmi has many forms; I’m just one of them, or she’s one of mine.” She flowed quickly through an endless series of manifestations; as Devi in her universal form as Shakti, as Bhudevi and Sridevi, as Prakriti; as Vidya, as Manushri, Chakrika, Kamalika, Lalima, Kalyani, Nandika, Rujula, Vaishnavi, Narayani, Bhargavi, Radha, Chanchala, Bhumi Devi, Jalaja, Madhavi, Sujata, Shreya, Prakrti, Maya, Aiswarya, and Jaganmaatha; as Mary, Queen of Heaven; as Venus and Aphrodite; as Cybele, Demeter, and Hera; as Hecate; as Isis and Nut; as countless more, Goddesses, angels, saints, and every incarnation of feminine power. Are they truly names, or only sobriquets? “ ›Alles Vergängliche ist nur ein Gleichnis; das Unzulängliche, hier wird’s Ereignis; das Unbeschreibliche, hier ist es getan; das Ewigweibliche zieht uns hinan.‹  « L’éphémère n’est rien qu’une image ; l’inaccessible ici, n’est plus hors d’atteinte ; l’indescriptible ici, est accompli ; l’éternel féminin nous entraîne vers les sommets. »  ‘Everything transitory is only an illusion; what could not be achieved here comes to pass; what no one could describe is here accomplished; the eternal feminine draws us toward the heights.’ It’s all in the attitude, Jackie, just as it will be for you eventually.”

She started to say, “But….” Then she thought it through, since all the clues were there. Just as she was the result of several worldlines merging, why not more? Syncretism is a characteristic of every human religion — explicitly so in the various forms of Hinduism, implicitly in many, many more — would it be such a stretch to imagine other worldlines touching? She’d just lived through one example, during which both she had her mother had observed herself ‘from the outside, looking in upon her latest struggles with the angels,’ as had once been famously observed of Timothy Leary, who himself could be observed through the wonders of modern technology living a snippet of his life in retrospect on the Web.

Even in ancient times, people had made their Gods and Goddesses live through passion plays, the mysteries, oracles, daily rituals, incantations, ceremonies, and the endless panoply of human religion. Exactly when does holiness cross the border between waking dream and pervasive reality? Or is the transition so gradual that one barely notices the moment between wishing and believing?

Most modern humans watched people and things on screens big and small, doing things either interactively or passively, as mere observers, but always as participants, their brains engaged as if their experience involved another reality, as if they were watching some version of real life transpire. Every year, iconic films formed part of real life for many, like It’s a Wonderful Life, and The Wizard of Oz. Would it be too much to invest them with some kind of reality? Many children thought that they were real; even adults can’t enjoy them without investing them with at least some reality. If human beings were solipsistically creating that reality, might they, in some future age, become so confused with each other that they overlapped and melded into one? Would there be some in some overlapping timeline a movie called It’s a Wonderful Wizard of Life in which Dorothy and Toto rescue Zuzu’s petals by throwing a bucket of water on the evil green Henry Potter and save the Building and Loan?

Amongst the Aztecs, and their present-day descendants, Tonantzin, ‘Our Revered Mother,’ referred indifferently to any Goddess, including her mother, to the Virgin Mary, Queen of Heaven, whose epithet and starry cloak of blue belonged to many Goddesses, all around the world. Was there only one reality? Were there many realities? Was there one Truth revealed to some small portion of humanity, or were there glimpses of an overriding truth contained in the hopes and yearnings of every single human heart and mind?

“Tat tvam asi,” Lilith said. “Thou art that. Be at peace, because you are my designated heir.”

And just then there was a twisting movement in the air before them, a horrid squirming like a nest of transparent snakes through which walked three gigantic figures, figures Jackie instantly recognized as three of the Olympian Gods, Zeus, Ares, and Hephæstus. Without preamble, Zeus raised his right hand, which held a crackling thunderbolt, ablaze with electrical fire, and hurled it directly toward them as Lilith calmly stepped in front of her, taking the full impact of the supernal lightning, and her body instantly exploded into a sparkling haze of soul stuff as the lightning crashed through her and Jackie screamed in horror, thrown backward and to the floor by the power of the divine thunderbolt’s blast.

Compounding that horror, she was suddenly inundated by thousands of past lives, millions of experiences flooding into her soul as she became her mother in all her incarnations, too many to count; every human experience of the feminine in life; every awestruck husband standing helpless as his wife gave birth; every swain struck dumb by the beauty of his beloved, the magical curve of her waist and hip promising paradise; the mother he drew milk and life from; the crone who washed his dying body, preparing him for death; the frantic cries of every mother giving birth in mortal anguish, pleading for her own mother to come and comfort her; the dawning awareness of her own desirability and sexual power as a young woman watched her suitor humble himself to plead his case. She was Lilith now, and Lakshmi, and Shakti, the eternal and omnipotent Feminine Power at the very heart of the Universe, the dark energy that drove the galaxies apart, that caused the first explosion that brought the Universe into being. She was Tiamat, the Eternal Void, and the whole world was growing dark.

 

Copyright © 1998, 2002, 2005, 2007, 2009 by Jeffrey M. Mahr

Copyright © 2011, 2012 by Levanah