Imajica 02 - The Reconciliator

21

WHATEVER DEBATES AND QUARRELS went on in Uma Umagammagi's temple while Jude waited on the shore, they brought the procession of postulants to a halt. The tide carried no more women or children to the shore, and after a time the waters became subdued and finally becalmed, as if their inspiring forces were so preoccupied that all other matters had become inconsequential. Without a watch Jude could only guess at how long a time passed while she waited, but occasional glances up at the comet showed her that it was to be measured in hours rather than minutes. Did the Goddesses fully comprehend how urgent a business this was, she wondered, or had the ages they'd spent in captivity and exile so slowed their sensibilities that their debate might last days and they not realize how much time had passed?

She blamed herself for not making the urgency .of this more plain to them. The day would be creeping on in the Fifth, and even if Gentle had been persuaded to postpone his preparations for a time, he would not do so indefinitely. Nor could she blame him. All he had was a message— brought by a less than reliable courier—that things were not safe. That wouldn't be enough to make him put the Reconciliation in jeopardy. He hadn't seen the horrors she'd seen in the Boston Bowl, so he had no real comprehension of what was at stake here. He was, in her own words, about his Father's business, and the possibility that such business might mark the end of the Imajica was surely very far from his mind.

She was twice distracted from these melancholy thoughts: the first tune when a young girl came down to the shore to offer her something to eat and drink, which she gratefully accepted; the second when nature called and she was obliged to scout around the island for a sheltered place to squat and empty her bladder. To be shy about passing water in this place was of course absurd and she knew it, but she was still a woman of the Fifth, however many miracles she'd seen. Maybe she'd learn to become blithe about such functions eventually, but it would take time.

As she returned from the place she'd found among the rocks, lighter by a bladderful, the song at the temple door, which had dropped away to a murmur and disappeared a long time before, began again. Instead of going back to her place of vigil, she headed around the temple to the door, her stride lent spring by the sight of the waters in the basin, which were stirring from their inertia and once again breaking against the shore. It seemed the Goddesses had made their decision. She wanted to hear the news as soon as possible, of course, but she couldn't help but feel a little like an accused woman returning into a courtroom.

There was an air of expectancy among those at the door. Some of the women were smiling; others looked grim. If they had any knowledge of the judgment, they were interpreting it in radically different ways.

"Should I go in?" Jude asked the woman who'd brought her food.

The other nodded vigorously, though Jude suspected she simply wanted to expedite a process which had delayed them all. Jude stepped back through the water curtain and into the temple. It had changed. Though the sense that her inner and outer sights were here united was as strong as ever, what they perceived was far less reassuring than it had been. There was no sign of the origami light, nor of the bodies these forms had been derived from. She was, it seemed, the sole representative of the fleshly here, and scrutinized by an incandescence far less tender than Uma Umagammagi's gaze had been. She squinted against it, but her lids and lashes could do little to mellow a light that burned in her head rather than her corneas. Its blaze intimidated her, and she wanted to retreat before it, but the thought that Uma Umagammagi's consolation lay somewhere in its midst kept her from doing so.

"Goddess?" she ventured.

"We're here together," came the reply. "Jokalaylau, Tishalulle, and Myself."

As the roll was called, Jude began to distinguish shapes within the brilliance. They were not the inexhaustible glyphs she'd last seen in this place. What she saw suggested not abstractions but sinuous human forms, hovering in the air above her. This was a strange turnabout, she thought. Why, when she'd previously been able to share the essential natures of Jokalaylau and Uma Umagammagi, was she now being presented with lowlier faces? It didn't augur well for the exchange ahead. Had They clothed Themselves in trivial matter because They'd decided she wasn't worthy to lay eyes on the truth of Them? She concentrated hard to grasp the details of Their appearance, but either her sight wasn't sophisticated enough or They were resisting her. Whichever, she could hold only impressions in her head: that They were naked, that Their eyes were incandescent, that Their bodies ran with water.

"Do you see Us?" Jude heard a voice she didn't recognize—Tishalulle's, she presumed—ask.

"Yes, of course," she said. "But not... not completely."

"Didn't I tell You?" Uma Umagammagi said.

"Tell me what?" Jude wanted to know, then realized the remark wasn't directed at her but at the other Goddesses.

"It's extraordinary," said Tishalull?.

The pliancy of Her voice was seductive, and as Jude attended to it Her nebulous form became more particular, the syllables bringing sight along with them. Her face was Oriental in cast, and without a trace of color in cheek or lip or lash. Yet what should have been bland was instead exquisitely subtle, its symmetry and its curves delineated by the light that flickered in Her eyes. Below its calm, Her body was another matter entirely. Her entire length was covered by what Jude at first took to be tattoos of some kind, following the sweep of Her anatomy. But the more she studied the Goddess-rand she did so without embarrassment—the more she saw movement in these marks. They weren't on Her but in Hef, thousands of tiny flaps opening and closing rhythmically. There were several shoals of them, she saw, each swept by independent waves of motion. One rose up from Her groin, where the inspiration of them all had its place; others swept down Her limbs, out to Her fingertips and toes, the motion of each shoal converging every ten or fifteen seconds, at which point a second substance seemed to spring from these slits, forming the Goddess afresh in front of Jude rs astonished eyes.

"I think you should know that I've met your Gentle," Tishalutle" said. "I embraced him in the Cradle."

"He's not mine any longer," Jude replied.

"Do you care, Judith?"

"Of course she doesn't care," came Jokalaylau's response. "She's got his brother to keep her bed warm. The Autarch. The butcher of Yzordderrex."

Jude turned her gaze towards the Goddess of the High Snows. The particulars of Her form were more elusive than Tishalull?'s had been, but Jude was determined to know what She looked like, and fixed her gaze on the spiral of cold flame that burned in Her core, watching until it spat bright arcs out against the limits of Jokalaylau's body. The light of this collision was brief, but by it Jude got her glimpse. An imperious Negress, Her blazing eyes heavy-lid-den, hovered there, Her hands crossed at the wrist, then turned back on themselves to knit their fingers. She was not, after all, such a terrifying sight. But sensing that Her face had been found, the Goddess responded with a sudden transformation. Her lush features were mummified in a heartbeat, the eyes sinking away, the'lips withering and retracting. Worms devoured the tongue that poked between Her teeth.

Jude let out a cry of revulsion, and the eyes reignited in Jokalaylau's sockets, the wormy mouth gaping as hard laughter rose from Her throat and echoed around the temple.

"She's not so remarkable, sister," Jokalaylau said. "Look at her shake."

"Let her alone," Uma Umagammagi replied. "Why must You always be testing people?"

"We've endured because We've faced the worse and survived," Jokalaylau replied. "This one would have died in the snow."

"I doubt that," Urnagammagi said. "Sweet Judith—"

Still shaking, Jude took a moment to respond. "I'm not afraid of death," she said to Jokalaylau. "Or cheap tricks."

Again, Umagammagi spoke. "Judith," she said. "Look at Me."

"I just want Her to understand—"

"Sweet Judith ..."

"—I'm not going to be bullied."

"... look at Me."

Now Jude did so, and this time there was no need to pierce the ambiguities. The Goddess appeared to Jude without challenge or labor, and the sight was a paradox. Uma Umagammagi was an ancient, Her body so withered it was almost sexless, Her hairless skull subtly elongated, Her tiny eyes so wreathed in creases they were barely more than gleams. But the beauty of Her glyph was here in this flesh: its ripples, its flickers, its ceaseless, effortless motion.

"Do you see now?" Uma Umagammagi said.

"Yes, I see."

"We haven't forgotten the flesh We had," She said to Jude. "We've known the frailties of your condition. We remember its pains and discomforts. We know what it is to be wounded: in the heart, in the head, in the womb."

"I see that," Jude said.

"Nor would We have trusted you with knowledge of Our '? frailty, unless We believed that you might one day be among Us."

"Among You?"

"Some divinities arise from the collective will of peoples; some are made in the heat of stars; some are abstractions. But some—dare we say the finest, the most loving? — are the higher minds of living souls. We are such divinities, sister, and Our memories of the lives We lived and the deaths We died are still sharp. We understand you, sweet Judith, and We don't accuse you."

"Not even Jokalaylau?" Jude said.

The Goddess of the High Snows made Herself apparent to Her length and breadth, showing Jude Her entire form in a single glance. There was a paleness moving beneath Her skin, and Her eyes, that had been so luminous, were dark. But they were fixed on Jude. She felt the stare like a stab.

"I want you to see," She said, "what the Father of the father of the child in you did to My devotees."

Jude recognized the paleness now. It was a blizzard, driven through the Goddess's form by pain, and pricking every part of Her. Its drifts were mountainous, but at Jokalaylau's behest they moved and uncovered the site of an atrocity. The bodies of women lay frozen where they'd fallen, their eyes carved out, their breasts taken off. Some lay close to smaller bodies: violated children, dismembered babes.

"This is a little part of a little part of what He did," Jokalaylau said.

Appalling as the sight was, Jude didn't flinch this time, but stared on at the horror until Jokalaylau drew a cold shroud back over it.

"What are You asking me to do?" Jude said. "Are You telling me I should add another body to the heap? Another child?" She laid her hand on her belly. "This child?"

She hadn't realized until now how covetous she felt of the soul she was nurturing.

"It belongs to the butcher," Jokalaylau said.

"No," Jude quietly replied. "It belongs to me."

"You'll be responsible for its works?"

"Of course," she said, strangely' exhilarated by this promise. "Bad can be made from good, Goddess; whole things from broken."

She wondered as she spoke if They knew where these sentiments originated; whether They understood that she was turning the Reconciler's philosophies to her own maternal ends. If They did, They seemed not to think less of her for it.

"Then Our spirits go with you, sister," Tishalulle' said.

"Are You sending me away again?" Jude asked.

"You came here looking for an answer, and We can provide it."

"We understand the urgency of this," Uma Umagammagi said. "And We haven't held you here without cause. I've been across the Dominions while you waited, looking for some clue to this puzzle. There are Maestros waiting in every Dominion to undertake the Reconciliation—"

"Then Gentle didn't begin?"

"No. He's waiting for your word."

"And what should I tell him?"

"I've searched their hearts, looking for some plot—"

"Did You find any?"

"No. They're not pure, of course. Who is? But all of them want the Imajica whole. All of them believe the working they're ready to perform can succeed,"

"Do You believe it too?"

"Yes, We do," said Tishalulle. "Of course they don't realize they're completing the circle. If they did, perhaps they'd think again."

"Why?"

"Because the circle belongs to Our sex, not to theirs," Jokalaylau put in.

"Not true," Umagammagi said. "It belongs to any mind that cares to conceive it."

"Men are incapable of conceiving, sister," Jokalaylau replied, "Or hadn't You heard?"

Umagammagi smiled. "Even that may change, if We can coax them from their terrors."

Her words begged many^guestions, and She knew it. Her eyes fixed on Jude, and She said, "We'll have time for these works when you come back. But now I know you need to be fleet."

"Tell Gentle to be a Reconciler," TishatUll6 said, "But share nothing that We've said with him."

"Do I have to be the one to tell him?" Jude said to Umagammagi. "If You've been there once, can't You go again and give him the news? I want to stay here."

"We understand. But he's in no mood to trust Us, believe me. The message must come from you, in the flesh."

"I see," Jude said.

There was no room for persuasion, it seemed. She had the plain answer she'd come here hoping to find. Now she had to return to the Fifth with it, unpalatable as that journey would be.

"May I ask one question before I go?" she said.

"Ask it," said Umagammagi.

"Why did You show Yourselves to me this way?"

It was Tishalulle' who replied. "So that you'll know Us when We come to sit at your table or walk beside you in the street," She said."Will you come to the Fifth?"

"Perhaps, in time. We'll have work there, when the Reconciliation's achieved."

Jude imagined the transformations she'd seen outside wrought in London: Mother Thames climbing her banks, depositing the filth she'd been choked by in Whitehall and the Mall, then sweeping through the city, making its squares into swimming pools and its cathedrals into playgrounds. The thought made her light.

"I'll be waiting for you," she said and, thanking them, made her departure.

When she got outside the waters were waiting for her, the surf lush as pillows. She didn't delay, but went straight down the beach and threw herself into its comfort. This time there was no need to swim; the tide knew its business. It picked her up and carried her across the basin like a foamy chariot, delivering her back to the rocks from which she'd first taken her plunge. Lotti Yap and Paramarola had gone, but finding her way out of the palace would be easier now than when she'd first arrived. The waters had been at work on many of the corridors and chambers that ran around the basin, and on the courtyards beyond, opening up vistas of glittering pools and fountains that stretched to the rubble of the palace gates. The air was clearer than it had been, and she could see the Kesparates spread below. She could even see the harbor, and the sea at its walls, its own tide longing, no doubt, to share this enchantment.

She made her way back to the staircase, to find that the waters that had carried her here had receded from the bottom, leaving heaps of flotsam and jetsam behind. Picking through it, like a beachcomber granted her paradise, was Lotti Yap, and sitting on the lower steps, chatting to Paramarola, Hoi-Polloi Peccable.

After they'd greeted each other, Hoi-Polloi explained how she'd prevaricated before committing herself to the river that had separated her from Jude. Once she jumped in, however, it had carried her safely through the palace and delivered her to this spot. Minutes later it had been called to other duties and disappeared.

"We'd pretty much given up on you," said Lotti Yap. She was busy plucking the petitions and prayers from among the trash, unfolding them, scanning them, then pocketing them. "Did you get to see the Goddesses?"

"Yes, I did,"

"Are They beautiful?" Paramarola asked.

"In a way."

"Tell us every detail."

"I haven't time. I have to get back to the Fifth."

"You got your answer, then," Lotti said.

"I did. And we've got nothing to fear."

"Didn't I tell you?" she replied. "Everything's well with the world."

As Jude started to pick her way through the debris, Hoi-Polloi said, "Can two of us go?1'

"I thought you were going to wait with us," Paramarola said.

"I'll come back and see the Goddesses," Hoi-Polloi replied. "I'd like to see the Fifth before everything changes. It is going to change, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is," Jude said.

"Do you want something to read on your travels?" Lotti asked them, proffering a fistful of petitions. "It's amazing, what people write."

"All those should go to the island," Jude said. "Take them with you. Leave them at the temple door."

"But the Goddesses can't answer every prayer," Lotti said. "Lost lovers, crippled children—"

"Don't be so sure," Jude told her. "It's going to be a new day."

Then, with Hoi-Polloi at her side, she made the hour's second round of farewells and headed away in the general direction of the gate.

"Do you really believe what you said to Lotti?" Hoi-Polloi asked her when they'd left the staircase far behind "Is tomorrow going to be so different from today?"

"One way or another," Jude said.

The reply was more ambiguous than she'd intended, but then perhaps her tongue was wiser than it knew. Though she was going from this holy place with the word of powers far more discerning than she, their reassurance could not quite erase the memory of the bowl in Oscar's treasure room and the prophecy of dust it had shown her.

She silently admonished herself for her lack of faith. Where did this seam of arrogance come from, that she could doubt the wisdom of Uma Umagammagi Herself? From now on, she would put such ambivalence away. Maybe tomorrow, or some blissful day after, she'd meet the Goddesses on the streets of the Fifth and tell Them that even after Their comforts she'd still nursed some ridiculous nub of doubt. But for today she'd bow to Their wisdoms and return to the Reconciler as a bearer of good news.