#42 - Drown Me. I'm Terrified.

“So you are the other Ahrimaz?  I’m Teel James, one Editor/Raconteur of the premier Broadsheet of Inné.”

He’s a tall man.  His stockings are cream silk, and his brocade vest is white and gold and has tiny cherries upon it.  His great coat is dark blue brocade and his salt and pepper hair is curly and down to the centre of his back.  He’s got a walking stick almost as tall as his chin, with a quill gracing the top of it.  Aside from the middling quality of the silks he’d fit right into my court, but his eyes are blue and open and honest, unlike my courtiers.  He gives me the shivers.

My M. James is my best friend in the world, in the Empire, and the head of the Aporrheitos, Master of all Spies in the known world.

“Why yes.  M. James, I understand that you wished to interview me.  What can I possibly tell you that you cannot get from the family?”

“The personal view, ser.  You must feel very lost here.”

“Indeed, yes.  It is an understatement.”

I don’t trust him.

“M. James… perhaps we might interview another day?  I am not feeling well.”

“Oh, certainly!” His look says ‘you’re full of scorching shit’, but he’s polite.  I pull the feather quilt up and lie down again as he leaves.

**

Well that party was all well and good.  Healing and all that.  And my mind has just gone to the scorching hell again and won’t come out.

I’m sitting in the bed after M. James’s abortive visit.  I can’t even make it to the desk.  I’m too tired.  I’m too overwhelmed.  I can’t think straight.

I’m scribbling this with a smudge stick because I don’t want to fight with ink pot and quill in the bed. Limyé says this is normal.  I had so much good that my mind got frightened and retreated into this horror once more, but it’s only temporary.

I’m tired.  I’m sick.  I’m tired of being sick. I’m sick of being tired.

The only time I feel I can breathe is when one of the scorching animals is lying on me.  Heylia keeps trying to get me to follow her.  I have the stinking suspicion that if I do I’ll find that black haired girl again and I cannot bear it.  It is too good for me.  I’m realizing that I’m a witch.  And that that Goddess is no Demon.  Arnziel comes every night now, to read to me or with me, or just sit.   

Dammit why did he actually turn out to be such a good priest?

And the Goddess’s books.  How on the drowning green earth did my maligned ancestor manage to vilify Her?  I have found darkness in Her books but it is darkness that brings relief from too much light.  When we were in the desert I found it very hard not to see evil in the Sun coming up.  The cold brought us water, and the starker the difference the more water.  I began to pray for the cold dark nights, though I prayed to Aeono, not knowing any better.

Like my mother, She is there for her children and I’m starting to wonder about the timing of my… transposition?  My relocation? My swap?  Arnziel says that it might have taken so long to happen because his brother might not have been able to withstand the pressures of Empire as well as the blandishments thereof, until now.  Really?  He took thirty years to become a good enough man to not become me, leaving me and my world and my family and all of us screaming for assistance?  Goddess, you are cruel.

Well, we men are cruel.  And we’re slow.  I understand that.  The father tells me that I am not so vile as I make myself out to be.  As I was forced to pretend, by the other father.  He broke me, as a boy.  Broke me down so thoroughly that I was re-formed as a hidden child.  Limyé wonders if I am one of many inside my skull.  The Girl who is the image of love and pain.  The Monster who can do all the evil things not only with relish, but honest glee. There’s the Politician.  He does the work.   There’s the Baby who weeps and screams… but can laugh.  The Sufferer, who holds our sexuality.

It seems too easy.  I am not these others.  They are their own people and I only know the Monster intimately.  I’ve only met the others fleetingly and seen them as dreams or nightmares.  I am a shattered mirror upon the floor and the other father broke me, took up the pieces and fit them back into my frame, leaving out the bits he didn’t want.  Those pieces I have in the hands of my mind; bleeding fingers clutched tight to precious glass shards that are the rest of me.

I cannot bear to look at them yet.  I might find a Lover.  A Singer.  A Priest of the Goddess. A Paladin.  All these things that these people tell me are possible.  The other Ahrimaz is facing all the parts of me that were shambling along, driving the world before it.  I am facing the parts of me… of him that I’ve not been allowed to bear.  Goddess.  Drown me.  I’m terrified.