#14 - Her

I no longer know who I am.  I dream of my brother.  He has the tiny cabin in the clearing scoured clean of trash and the dying? Man? God? Is now clean.  He no longer lies buried in human sacred filth. Arnziel is cleaning himself up and the rain that falls on him falls out of a clear blue sky.  He prays to the Tiger Master and his face is ecstatic, sun falling on his face.

Where is he?  I can see his bruises and bleeding scars all over his soul softening and beginning to wash away in the water.  Is he a witch to command water?  Scorching shit I don’t understand.

I stand in the pool of the Goddess Veil, Demon Bitch that She is, and feel the water pour over me, dragging my carefully cherished agony away.

I feel Her hand on my head, slicking back the water that hides my tears.  It is cool, not hot, not flaming.  “Is this how you seduce the women to be witches?”

“And the men.  If there is no water, no coolth, there is no life.  It was killing the male half of Me. Your priests, burning women, burning and hanging witches, are… or were… killing the God you hold so high.  He burns with fever and there is no water to quench His thirst, no wet cloth to cool his brow.”

“But… but… You’re evil!”

“Yes.  But you see I am also Good.  Nothing is just one thing."

"Just as the God drives a human heart beat, and warms a body in the winter, warms a house, gives you motive power for your engines… He is also the fire that burns the forest to the ground, that bakes the soil into a hard salt pan that grows nothing.  And He needs water to create the steam that drives your engines, of civility and of war.  Both.”

“But…”

“I am the water in your blood, the moisture in your eyes and mouth.  I am only as evil as you are.”

I start laughing. “Then you’re lost because I am ALL evil.”

“I reserve judgment on that, my son.”

“I am not your son.  I am the Great God’s.  SCORCH YOU!”

“Thank you for your heat.  My husband’s passion is enchanting.  And because of you, and your other self, He will live.  Your brother will be his new priest.  A priest who truly believes.”

“Arnziel?”

“Yes.”

*

For once he woke in the cool darkness of the cell in peace instead of shrieking, flailing nightmare.  The bed under his back was soft.  The pillow cradled his head and he could feel the difference between the warmth his body made and the cool, damp air he breathed in.  It was a balance.  He reached out from under the covers, shivered at the reaction as his arm chilled, took up the glass on the floor to drink.  Well water.

We were once in the Cylak desert waste and we baked under the hellish sun, praying aloud to the Scorching God to look away from us.  It was a dream I had that told me to wait until dark, and then to turn our shields to the sky.

Every man exclaimed as they watched beads of water form on the hot metal, and eventually pool, enough to keep them alive, though not enough to quench their thirst.  I offered the Tiger Master sacrifice, though I wonder now if we were all saved by the Tigress of Water.

That’s what they called Her, here.  He’d read all the blasphemous chapters.  Memorized them because there was nothing else to do.  All of those chapters about water and ice and snow and trees… apple trees mostly… and – though it made him sick – birthing blood and fluids and even life’s blood that he had shed so freely as a warrior.  All those Goddess chapters and he became aware of  his heartbeat.  

The Fire of God drove it, but it needed the body’s blood or nothing would move, nothing would live.

All those chapters called for balance between forces.  In the Empire they’d killed every woman they could get their hands on who practised water medicine, like the Imaryans. Water magic.  Ways to keep water clean and to cleanse fouled water.  His grandfather had had an awful outbreak of disease in his Empire that coincided with witch burnings.