My conclusion approached, or I to it; or rather than call it by an end, I’ll best borrow from the francophones and call it mon destin.
The shrine itself was no more’n the size of a shed. By omission, I’ve neglected to say it was naught but an arrow’s commute from our graves to it, and Momma was stood there waiting patiently by the door for me. So I’d seen them both already, and she’d likewise seen me.
The thunder-crack of the rifle echoed from beyond my seeing. I flinched and kept on.
Where my Aunties might have attired with reverence of ritual, Momma presented in much the same preference as was her day-to-day: the style we’d come to call precursion as it moved from folks’ habit to their history. In more than a few ways, I recognized the similar instincts of her wear to Ashli’s, and thought on the little ways that all of us choose to mimic the ones we admire.
Then I arrived.
“You can try,” Momma regarded my weapon, and me. She made the effort to smile, which was good of her. “Our Lady’s never been known to choose a spear as her symbol. I don’t know why.”
“Bow and arrow, though,” I misled her.
She acknowledged the point, but not the implication. Reaching out, she tenderly made some small and unnecessary adjustments to my shirt, and hair. “I’m not going to stop you,” she advised, “but you should wait anyway. If you try to put together a blessing from scratch, you’re going to end up with a tertiary.”
“I won’t mind a weaker power, so long as it’s mine,” I said to her and for me.
Momma licked her thumb and subdued my eyebrows; treatment I squirmed against. “It’s not about strength, baby. A prime or second blessing isn’t necessarily stronger. See, Anne and Vaunda tried to sanctify a tool with Rahit once, and some of the other ‘holds have tried it too. A tertiary can do miracles outside what any other grace can do.”
This was news I’d not known. “But why once’n not again? And where’s this periapt of Hers, that I’d not heard of it til now?”
“Peri-what? You mean the bridle? We had to destroy it in the end. The problem with a tertiary isn’t what it can or can’t do, it’s that… well, when we try to make one, we misunderstand our Lady’s intention. Without the benefit of something at hand that was wholly hers, I guess we mix up our own wishes for her will, and all it comes out as a grace astray.”
“The Argument?” I asked.
“Like she’s at conflict with her own self,” Momma nodded. “Jacket on,” she directed me.
Lending her my lance and study (the mass of which surprised her), I threaded my arms through blue sleeves until I looked the finest I could manage. Then I took back my implements. Momma withdrew and presented a folded sheet of paper from her pocket and tucked it into my suit pocket.
“That’s our prayer. It’s probably not suited for what you’re doing, so…”
I suppose there are few ways more difficult than to embrace someone than with a vakero in hand, but I managed it, and Momma squeezed me back once before we parted. “It’s fine.”
“It should be Vaunda here for this. She’s better at this stuff, I’m sorry that –”
“It’s fine, Momma,” I assured her. “She’d’ve pitch a fit if she knew what I was up to anyway. Good night. I’ll see you come morning.”
“Good night, baby,” Ms Osberh Zugravescu wished me. Then she was left and gone to collect the girls back home from the company of the dead.
The walls of the shrine were made from carefully planed and shingled wood, and the same for its roof. Few buildings we built ourselves received such care at Ghost Perch, though the construction was also small and far from our home. These were the signs that evidenced our faith was necessary and precious, but like so many things, unwelcome under the jurisdiction of one soul in particular.
The first of stars were just out, and the warmth and shine of a fine lantern opened up to me as I did likewise the door. The niche of our most reverent petitions was a snug and private enclosure and I laid my satchel on the floor beneath the altar board. In and shutting the entry behind me, I leaned my vakero against an inside corner of the walls and let out a long breath.
Shelves ran along both sides of me, about rib high and speckled with wax. I ran my hand along the surface of the left and felt the grain, picking off a caked bead that stuck to it and flicking it to the bare packed dust below. A stack of lumpy dipped candles stacked at the end, with a spare flint and steel rod to wedge them from rolling away from the wall. On the right, there were tins from a variety of Auntie Hektor’s alchemies: from clarified oils and greases to pungent tinctures, perfumes and stains. There was clean water in a high glass jar, and a stack of bleached felt polishing cloths.
A bowl of freshly boiled and stripped knuckle bones was protruded with the handle of a sharp carving knife.
First, I untied the wicker cage by my foot that held the sacrificial chicken. She reacted with an obnoxious and fluttering panic before I shooed her out the door with a roll of my eyes. Then I began unpacking my books and miscellany, laying them out atop the fine altar cloth.
“I’m not sure if you’re listening, and I don’t suppose I know what’s the most fit way to address you,” I whispered, “so I hope you’ll forgive me my artlessness, such as I am, so long as I mean you naught but respect. Which I do.”
I set the silver-wire lantern aside to cast the light better, and raised my eyes to the gods we’d lost.
Twelve diamond-shape cubbyholes had been carpented and arranged such that (along with their connective ornaments) they gave the impression of a disk or wheel. The whole was artfully done, if not precise. Though I’d’ve been grateful to study under the hand who’d been the doing of all this woodwork, he was years since gone from our budget and employ.
A rack of tightly packed skulls, horns, and antlers was fixed to the wall in an ossuary above the shrine with brass hooks and iron nails. All these gruesome plunders would be stored until they were deconsecrated of their providence; then once inert, they would return back to our merchandise. I pointedly ignored the defleshed and dried pair of troll skulls. They hung from a thong threaded through their eye-sockets, and I desired firmly they’d not hence worm their way later into my dreams.
Reaching into one of the shrine’s center recesses, I daintily withdrew a little man made of twisted metal wire. He was depicted with the rigid posture of a sarcophagus, and the barest minimums of anatomy. His arms were crossed about the grip of a zinc-plated bolt and snug nut, the head of which lay down to his toes: Forge and his hammer.
It had rarely occurred to me, but there were certain ways that grace was a shelter outside the provinces one might have expected. For example, it’s said, written, and pictured that the steels of old industry had once raised towers into the sky; before the ‘vader perspective had laid them low over the most of two decades. Like ergot on wheat, a blighted wind of killing rust blew through all lands which were made savage by their trespass. Here, though, Forge shone just as he did before the world was ended. Here, nickel and vanadium and manganese remembered themselves and endured.
I anointed the Saint of Amalgam and Furnace with a clarified, gentle oil, then buffed him clean with a cloth and returned him to his place. “There you go, sir,” I smiled, “well, and as you ought to be.”
From the Twelve that were, we’d come through effort and the years intervening into some part of the revelation of seven. Each of that number were fashioned with an idol, or replaced by a talisman: to the limit of detail we’d been inducted into their secrets.
Craft lay in an outer slot, a tiny porcelain figure rubbed bare of paint and featureless. To mark her office as the Witch, she was crowned in dried blood and tucked with a dried and poisonous flower, to restrain her influence, she was tied with leather cords over her mouth and eyes. Seeing her so misunderstood, and angry that Ashli had not corrected her image, I threw away the binds and jimsonweed and scraped her clean of the low blood of pigs. Kissing her head and her hands, I rolled up a sleeve, took up a knife, and put a shallow, careful cut on the back of my arm. Across her hands, I scratched my sanguine (best as I could) into the sign of Proskauer’s knot, then cut out every loose string I could search out from my clothing and twisted them together. “By your hidden names, I call you Weaver, and Weft, and Arachne too,” I set her back with twine about her head like a crown. “Thank you for seeing me into the world.”
I pressed my cut with a cloth, and fastened it secure with my cuff. Then I fetched out the figure which was least known to me, a laughing, vulgar bodhavista, whose lips were stained with libations and neck was draped by a fine chain of gold. Paper bills of dead currencies were folded up into flowers and laid at his feet. I simply petitioned Commerce, “grant fortune to those I love,” and fired either end of a candle (wick and base) to light and adhere it to his box.
Without love, and wary of their ignominy, I next considered the seals and banes which were our rebukes for the names which we dared to curse. The anger I was meant to inherit from my house was second-hand, so I set aside space in my heart for questions and the attitude of the Empiricists as I inspected the charms set against the two. The tyrant’s nook was stuffed full, from disrespect and the intensity of her disfavor. Her effigy was a ruin of a slinky, long-haired doll: blistered, swelling, and blackened as the chemistry of its material had failed. There was no shelter for the plastics of the old world on Freehold land; the pliable synthetic had broke down into tacky carbons, or organic filth. A cord of black silk was bound around the doll’s hands and feet, and the mummified remains of a snake was packed with her in severed sections. A slit was carved into her lips, and feathers of extravagant colors were stuffed into the aperture – like so that she might choke. Macabre, I reflected. Foul.
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The crooks’ diamond was dismissive by comparison. An iron padlock was shut around the bones of a two-headed rat, about its midsection. Rust and desiccation had fused them together, and dust marked their place with neglect. Our methods were so barbaric, so clumsy. We were superstitious mystics again, grasping at the dark in our ignorance.
But of all of the Twelve, there were no others which were more revered on the ranch than the Mother and the Lady. I was almost scared to touch Juno’s idol, her form was so bizarre to me. There were some small sweets, and a thimble of wine laid in front of her. She was made from stone, and held open welcoming palms and bore a broad, shrewd smile across an ambiguous face. But her unsettling feature wound up from her skull as two great horns: spiraled about each other into a helix. Even over my Aunties’ most strenuous denials, and the lash of the willow when I’d not relent, I could never help but think how like the Mother was to the yarns I’d been spun of the ‘vaders and their clans of devil men: raised up by unholy means from the low beasts of the herd, and into a mockery of civilization.
“We have delivered three calves this week, safe of the four we might’ve, and seventeen for the season in sum; to only that loss I mentioned, and one other.” I found myself at a loss for more to say, I had not decided yet what Juno meant to me. “So, I s’pose, thank you ma’am for that, and on behalf of Su-Hope and Saleena too. We are much obliged of you, and speak of you only in the highest esteem. Though...” Since I was cut already, and I’d prepared no other gift, I chose to dab a smudge of me from my bandage onto her mouth. “Well, it is not my place to pry, but I would be much contented if, at your leisure, you would see fit one day to explain the nature of your cranial ornament. With due respect, it is some sore bit suspicious in the context of our times, which is all I’ll say. Sorry and amen.”
I discovered a dish of resin and wooden chips, and happily deduced its purpose as incense we called bakhoor. I think it was chapparal, quinine, and birch. Once lit, I recall it burned unpleasantly.
By the time I’d reached our patron, I was worn thinner and more beat down than I’d expected. “I hope you never think I’m not doing this because I resent or regret you.”
Our Lady – of the long roads, the high fence, and the mercy of knives – Diana of arms did not answer me. She was not resolved from slapdash parts, or from hearsay, or mish-mashed intuitions. There was no comparison, no equal to her in our ritual. Her fetish was carved of creamy ivory, to a degree of heroic and fine detail which made her peers’ seem like afterthoughts. The firm resolution in her gaze, the casual tilt of her fifty caliber rifle, the confident boot she rested atop the broken body of her foe, Leilung: all of it was rendered so near to perfect, I could fool myself she’d been breathing. No base or natural animal could have provided an adequate tusk for her veneration, only the dentine of a true lesser dragon, drunk deep into its color and trophy dearly-won of the hunt, would do.
Dainty necklaces of tiny bones were draped over her neck. Beads of turquoise and rings of silver were spilled under her. Bloods from a myriad of zoologies were tenacious in her every nook or seam.
“But I’d like to believe that you, most of all understand that a man ought to choose for himself who he ought to be – instead of being born ordained to his lot. Thank you for keeping my family safe, and me. Thank you for teaching me what it means to be strong, even if I’ve more yet to learn of it.” I withdrew the prayer Momma gave me from my pocket and tucked it neatly behind the Lady’s icon. “Might as well thank you for bacon too, I guess. Amen.”
Minutes passed. My fingers drummed on the altar, first nervously, then evenly. I closed my eyes and listened to that little piece remaining of the grace I’d not meant to steal from old Nick. Faster and faster, I rhythmically beat out my little percussion against the wood, and the covers of my books. My challenge was to draw one note, one chord, out into a pattern. Whether it was mine or my family’s fault, we’d been derelict in my education in music and there was no time to rectify it for this purpose.
But a sequence? That there, I could remember. That there I could replicate. All I’d need was to keep it simple, all I’d need was to let the blessing guide me.
And Her.
“I wish I could have known you,” I confided in the air, “whilst you were still sovereign in Heaven. I know that you haven’t much seen your due respect in this place, or with these people. They talk about you like were such a burden: like some iniquity, or obstacle or oppression.”
I turned the pages of my books to their marked places. I uncorked my ink and dipped the point of my quill.
“But I heard tell once of Aesop, and of the fox who’d soured of the grapes he could not reach. I’ve heard them all, and listened. Their stories of before and since, from Momma, and from Mister Sadiqi,” the scratch of my quill marked the first lines of a fresh page from my little notebook. “And my Aunties, and the hands, and the people of the roads as they visit our gates. I have even sat at the foot of the Mister, as he cursed you. I listened to all the things which were said and unsaid, and followed the end of unfinished sentences to the pages where they might be made whole into the fullness of meaning. With respect, with regard for whatever love and duty I owe to my family; whatever piety that compels the honor of a filial son, or constraints of honor I’m sworn by – I’ll still say this:”
“I am sick and tired of this confederacy of sour grapes.”
My hand slapped down on an image of the ancient Sumerian, on a figure of cast bronze which endured after the stone of their nations fell.
“Anat, I invoke you! Lady of the tempest, wrath of kings, you walked the path of the spear in the days the first bricks were laid, and the first stones. Your feet were shod with blood as you made your conquest; you made garlands of skulls, and stocked the larders of hell with the dead. But even then, for all you were feared, you were still named wise. Your crown raised up monarchs from the chieftains; their nations lay on their brows by your intercession. When you laid down your weapon, you made peace in abundance. When the first walls were raised and from the city first ripened the fruit of the state, you were with us.”
Her name went into my book, and I turned the other page to the kingdoms of Egypt and Kush. Dense notes crawled along its margins.
“Seshat, I conjure you! You who were first to set the reed to clay, and the chisel to stone. You were the first to bind the mark of paper to the sound of tongues. When the grains of the fields were harvested, and the flocks were called back from pasture – when the turn of the moon, and of the seasons, marked the passage of years: the tally of all things were accounted by your hand. You who preceded the jealousy of Thoth, who measured the bounds of the temples and charted the stars of the sky. First of Scribes, the book is of your lineage. The book became our memory, that at long last the words of men might not die as they do.”
I struck the second name into my book, and I drew out another volume. I laid if flat over the histories of Egypt, and the Nile below was like to the Indus above.
“Saraswathi! I discern you! You’d seen and lived war and wisdom, and governed them too. You’d come to understand the paths you walked, and twined them; you turned the roads to new purpose. Arrived at the place of flowing rivers, you became the pure waters and spoke with the language of the poets. The new scriptures were written: in the benefaction of your ink, and the knowledge of all pages flowed from and to the book which you carried.
There was no way to know if I was reaching her. My blessing was unraveling, and I could not stop it, I could only hope. But I did, and I smiled with all an idiot’s worth of teeth.
“Athena-Minerva! I reveal you! The spear, and the word, and the waters were not enough. You returned to the shores of the sea of your birth. There, the shield became the fourth of your sigils. Where once, we were nothing but flock to you, to be spent and slaughtered; you’d since come to know mercy. The ages had taught you temperance, and you laid down the ambition of crowns. But for all that, you were still proud. In the secret heart of your book, you plotted a new audacity; a nation without kings, and a people sovereign of themselves. Then from your counsel and under your ægis was established a new city, which bore your name and prospered. But the promise was unfulfilled. The slave was chained to succor the citizen, and the lure of empire carried you from the Hellenes to Macedon, and on (in time) to the insatiable hubris of Rome.”
Taking water to recover from my sweat, I penned the pair of names with feverish vigor. I tore wildly through my notes, and my reference. There was some fair chance I was in the midst of going overboard. I cannot promise you I hadn’t already risen to shouting.
“Sophia! I petition you! You hid away your arms. You disguised yourself as the muse of skill, of cunning and handiwork. Steward of the library, curator of the lost. Wanderer. Scholar. You rekindled the Arabian, you refined the printing press in Song. Feudal winter had made a hierarchy of men, which bore no fruit; so everywhere you sowed the seeds of new spring.”
“You see, I wonder if that is why they were so easy to shake of their conviction. I wonder why that’s why our principle was so quick to wither on the vine – at first sign of tribulation. None of them took the time to ask how long it’d come took to get you to where you’d been. All the blood. All the subjugation. All the cruelty, and pride. But every year that passed you changed. Just a little, you became more true.”
“Columbia! That lady we called Liberty! How can we distangle you from conquest? How will we defray the blood-debt of bondage? We thought to make a world where every soul could live as the governor of themselves and failed. But I don’t care. I don’t care what’s impossible, because we’ll rewrite it together.”
“I call you by your name! Republic!”
“You are not forgotten, you are not forgiven. I am yours.”