#68 - What a Story-Theory Song!

I am Evil incarnate. I’m bad, I’m wrong. I’m the cause of all the pain.  I’m the cause of my own pain. I belong to Father, he says I’m making him do these things to me. My fault. If I make someone else hurt then I’m safe.

The taste of blood, screaming hundreds, they’re hurting not me. I am a good warrior. I slaughter with the best. Blow holes in them with carbine, thrust holes in them with sword. Make the horse stamp someone to death. That is what I’m best at.

Flogging and beating makes people obey. They are safe. But Kinourae said he loved me still. He isn’t in this world, or he’s off doing some other job. He’s not my body servant. Even if I hurt him, he said he understood that it is by Father’s will.

The monster broke me and made me into another monster. Kill or maim all around you. Assault your younger brothers. Don’t touch the girls, they’re going to some other man, or Father will teach them properly.

Only Arnziel is left alive in my world, that world. He hates me. He blames me for what Father made me, made us do.

I hear the Rummummalos tongue rumbling through my body.  Didara is curious, always.  Fascinated that I knew her from another world. Appalled that she is dead, or so everyone suspects.  I didn’t tell anyone that she died.  Limyé thinks so and he’s right.  I can hear them talking.  Ologbon’s Innéan is improving as fast as it did in the real world. My world.

“Real world?”  The voice I know.  She is everywhere wound through my life.  I am terrified of her. I must be a witch and someone will throw test powder on me, douse me with a bucket of water and watch me go up in flames. Maybe I’m ready for that.

It will hurt once more and then never again.  I find that attractive.

“No, child.  You will be able to serve as a healer for two worlds yet.”

“Liryen.”

“Yes?”

“I heard what you said, oh Goddess, but it makes no sense.”

“Just as you are one of the only people on this continent, in fact on both continents who can hear and speak to the Rummummalos, you are the trigger for all of Inné in both worlds.  Heal yourself and then we will speak again.”

“Goddess!  I’m so crazy I can’t!” I float in a sea of my screaming and I am scooped up out of it, floating as though I am held cupped in two hands.

“To me, child, you are already a flickering cloud of thought held to a particular body that enables you to perceive me and that is all right.”  The hands shake and I, the cloud of mirror particles shuffle and float and then settle again, edges closer.  “See?  That is how you change.  Gather up the bits and put them back together for me.”

How do shattered bits of glass reflect anything but ruin? But I answer Her obediently. “Yes, oh Lady of the Depths and Snow.”

I can feel her smile.  The black-haired girl who changes before me, grows rosy cheeked and ruddy, glowing with… heat?  I don’t understand.  But I am finally warm, even the cold dead pieces of me that sat with my dead mother.  That part of me might live again if I let it.  I see a few green shoots growing out of the dead pieces.

How do green growing things and glass and volcanic heat have anything to do with one another?  I see all three in Her eyes. She looks at me and I am not judged and found wanting. “Your poor Monster could never hear me,” She says.  “And ultimately you burned him to ashes, though his spirit is now far away from you.”

“I hurt, Mama.”

“I know.  It will ease.  Heal yourself. I will help you.”

Ahrimaz could feel the stretch of his lungs in his body, became aware of his heartbeat, his clenched hands, the discomfort of his clothes knotted under his body.  He could feel the worn wooden floor with waves of knots rising out of the smooth-worn surface like a benign ocean under the sun.  The circle of heat around Jagunjagun was a blessing here at the empty end of the barn where the snow blasted through the walls when the wind howled.

Limyé’s hand was on one of his shoulders and Didara’s trunk fingers curled around his other shoulder as he lay, her bulk, in her mirrored wool coat was the other source of heat, shielding him from winter’s teeth.

“Jagunjagun will be all right, Ahrimaz.  You saved him, not by force of arms, or by slaughtering everyone who threatened them.  You saved your friend by bringing Etienne and I to him when he needed us.”

He could hear Jagunjagun snoring, comfortable enough to sleep, though not comfortable enough to sleep on his side.  He stood in the dim light surrounded by bales of hay to lean against should he wish.

“The ammunition the bandits used had been smeared with filth and Didara assured me that we caught the blood-sepsis in time.  Etienne is chagrined that he missed a ball the first time, but it’s all right now.”

Ahrimaz’s eyes opened and found himself staring into Teh’s eyes lying concerned just past his hands.  When he looked at her she wiggled forward on her belly and he found himself somehow clutching the big white dog.

He coughed and turned toward Didara, who hadn’t let go of him.  “Did they tell you I’m not from this world? That I knew you in another place, another time?”

The rumble she made he recognized as laughter. “Fascinating idea.  Such a story-Theory Song it will make!”