Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!
Sir Walter Scott, 1808
18
MAIDEN - CRONE
The seagulls screamed and the blinding sun shifted. I was on the deck of a restaurant floating out in the middle of the ocean. Round tables were shaded by cheerful blue and white umbrellas.
“What are you doing, little Bird?”I turned to see an old lady smoking a thin brown cigarette, like a baby cigar. She wore a wide-brimmed straw hat and wide white sunglasses that made her look like a bug. Her red lipstick sealed the end of her cigar with a slick kiss. She wore a white halter-neck dress that shone in the sun against her tanned and generous cleavage. Her skin was reminiscent of worn leather. Not at all healthy looking.
“That’s rude,” she said.
“Is everyone a mind reader now?” I said irritably.
“Just like my father,” she cackled as she spat something into her stubby fingers and flicked it away into the water. She positioned the intrusive white frames back at me.
Even with the sunglasses hiding her eyes, I knew she looked not at me but into me, the way Blue used to. She puffed on the cigar. I squinted into the sun, seeing my reflection in her sunglasses. I was wearing my ‘download in progress’ t-shirt. It felt appropriate.
“Why are you asleep when all the realms need you to be awake?” I blinked and changed hands to shield the sun. “Have a sit-down.” She gestured to a chair under the shade with her cigar. “I know you don't much like the sun.”
I sat down, happy to be out of the heat. She took three little puffs before taking a fourth, deep pull. “It’s all smoke and mirrors now, Little Bird.”
I had no sarcastic comeback that was too clever for the adult to comprehend.
“She's dulled your brain.”
I felt a stirring somewhere. Again I blinked. I had a mild thought process about saying something. “Who are you?” Was the best I could do.
The old lady pulled on the cigar. She exhaled a cloud of blue smoke. “A better question is, who are you?” She puff-puff-puffed and blew a smoke ring into the salty air. It hung there.
Eventually, she said, “Part of you is here because you need answers – that I have.”
She poured something from a white jug into a glass I was sure had not been there before. The ice tinkled. She took a deep sip.
"Truth.” She exhaled, tilting her face up into the sun. The word had barely left her lips when Truth filled the space between us. “Oh, what tangled webs we weave when we practice to deceive.” She sucked on the cigar again.
“Part of me?” I asked dreamily.
The old lady clicked her jaw three times. Three perfect circles eased between her parted red lips. The circles did a seductive dance as they floated around my head.
“Where am I?”
“You tell me,” she said.
I blinked again. There was a jarring sensation, like falling.
More smoke rings.
More sun.
MOTHER
The morning sun warmed my back, and a little rivulet of sweat trickled down the inside of my arm. I was acutely aware of my sense of hearing and my heart beating furiously in my ears. I heard the waves lapping at my feet. I sank even further down, deep, down, into the folds of the sun, the sand and the sea. A rhythm invited me to breathe and to bear down. So I did.
Inhale… 2,3,4. Exhale… 2,3,4.
Inhale… 2.3.4. Exhale… 2,3,4.
Inhale… 2,3,4. Exhale… 2,3,4.
I don't know how much later because my relationship with time was changing, I felt a familiar sensation inside me. I put my hand under the loose old dress I’d been grateful to find in a cupboard because it was just too hot for jeans and pulled my panties down. I was not surprised to see my period. I took them off and parted my legs to squat on the sand, letting the blood drip out of me. I had never done this before but didn’t question the instinct that led me to do it now.
I watched my life force drip into the sand that sucked it up. Each grain of sand, a part of the whole beach, drinking my blood, a part of the whole me, intrinsically connected.
“You are one thread of many,” Sophia spoke as she came out of the ocean like a celestial bond girl. The turquoise elixir slid between her bare marble curves, cascading back to its source. “Your purpose is to tighten the knot that binds us.”
“For once, we believed we were separate,” added Ala, coming out of the nearby cave. “When Utterances were begging to be born, and Choice was abandoned.” The folds of her luscious dark skin shimmered with the gold dust in her dermis.
Today I was aware of their size. They were bigger than me. Than everything. All I wanted to do was to climb up into her lap. Her smile told me that I was welcome to.
By the time Sophia knelt before me, her flesh was human, flawless and pale, and she had made herself small enough for humanity to perceive her: Divinity incarnate. I sat on my bare bottom on the sand, letting my blood be free as I drew my knees into my chest, the dress falling gently around me.
“Your purpose is to tighten the knot that binds us together,” Ala said, kneeling behind me. Sophia touched her pale fingers to my cheeks and took my tears away. Her fingertips syphoned them up, and as the sun hit each tear drop on her fingers, they cast a cascade of prisms, bathing us in ever-changing fractals of colour and light.
Like an animal storing food in its cheeks, she stored my tears in her celestial cells as raindrops for later. I marvelled at the light reflecting off every surface around us: sand and sea, including our skins, pale and silvery to velvety brown. It danced all over us as Ala sat with her back against mine, using her own to hold me up. I knew she had been doing this all the time. When I thought life had sucked itself out of me, she was there. Holding me up, when I couldn’t do it myself.
In my grief, Sophia had given me the gift of Wonder. Lifting my chin and looking into my eyes, she said, “Be Here now.” Both women were bare, naked and open to me. I heard their words with my heart. I heard their words in my bones. Sophia crossed her legs, sitting up tall. The sun hit her pale skin, and I worried about her needing sunblock.
“You love so easily, Little Bird,” she laughed. I didn't feel like that was true at all. I was planning to evict a perfectly decent human being when I got home. Home? What a strange concept. I’d never felt that anywhere in the world. Until now.
Again Sophia smiled. “You were lonely but not alone," she said. There is no error in being lonely. We can only recognize the Union if we have known isolation.”
Ala ran her fingers through my hair. “Each has its season, a purpose, its phase, like the moon, waxing and waning, being empty and full,” she whispered at my back. “Your Utterance began with being empty."
They waited for me, and when the words were clear in my mind, I completed the Utterance: "For while I am to bind the threads, my truest purpose is to reflect.”
The words had barely left my mouth when I could see what Regan had described as the Golden Thread. It took shape around me and placed me at the centre of a three-dimensional triangle. The point of the triangle slotted into the shimmering beach sand just below my feet, and its base formed a transparent ceiling above my head.
The thread shaped a second triangle, placing the point upwards this time, above the crown of my head and the base slotted neatly just into the sand. I was inside a Tetrahedron made up of the golden thread and the light. Sophia was spinning the thread from beams of light and Ala's Afro Crown.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
I closed my eyes, not knowing if I could cope with the illumination.
MAIDEN - CRONE
“You’re all cut up, Little Bird,” said the familiar old woman with her red lips and thin cigar. I tried to blink the sun out of my eyes but saw myself again in the reflection of her wide white sunglasses. I was not alone.
The woman from the kitchen and the cave was standing behind me. I turned to her, but she was not there - she was only in the reflection.
Puff-puff-pull... Exhale. “Be here now,” said the old lady. A vague memory nudged at me. Things were fuzzy, but the woman in the reflection? She was crystal clear: her blonde hair, the dark roots exposed, and her pale, pale skin - just like mine. She was almost as bright as the sun. The vision of her in the sunglasses draped over the nose of my dead grandmother caused my skin to crawl. Skin to crawl? I glanced down at my hands. I felt sure something was missing. I raked my fingers through my hair, trying to ease the itch and the madness.
Puff-puff-pull... Exhale. “This clever bit of biotech was designed during the second world War to keep the best scientists focused while not being bothered by their bodily functions." As if emphasising her point, she was interrupted by the need to cough. "They churned out formulas and theories by the dozen for hours and hours on end. Often physically wasting away, while their mental faculties were prized and protected.” She puffed, coughed again, and blew out a blue cloud. “The war ended just before making the breakthrough they needed to dispose of the body entirely,’
“Death to the First Casing,” I interrupted.
“Death to the body but everlasting life if you could keep the consciousness and the most valuable brains of the day functioning.” The seagulls screamed. Another puff-puff-puff on her cigar gave me time to try and piece things together.
I found my voice and said, “This is their attempt at mastering the first casing? Quantum theorists, as well as philosophers the world over, have weighed up this quandary. Is there life after death?”
Puff-puff-pull... Exhale. “That's the problem with the world today. It's got no soul." I didn't have quite enough of my wits about me to construct an argument for this. It was just like psychology, in my opinion: unquantifiable.
Puff-puff-pull... Exhale. "Little Bird, you are about to master the algorithm for Bio-Quantum-Compression. The full meat sack plus consciousness.” Gran picked something off the tip of her tongue and flicked it into the ocean. "So much effort to re-invent a natural phenomenon." For a long time, we just watched the sun sparkle on the ocean.
Puff-puff-pull... Exhale “When we explore our curiosities with no conscience, sometimes bad things can happen.”
I shrank into the plastic chair. The gulls screamed.
Gran puffed.
“Where’s Blue?” I asked, verbalising what had been gnawing at me as much as that damned algorithm.
“You shut him out.” These words punched me in the guts. I saw my eyes widen with horror in the reflection of the sunglasses.
“I never! He left me!”
"Did he?" She puffed on her cigar and peered over her glasses in a manner that suggested that I should stop talking rubbish and start telling the truth.
A child cried.
The voice of the Dragon echoed in my mind.
My body remembered something that my memory held from me.
“Why does literally everyone leave me,” I said eventually.
“That’s not how you use ‘literally.’” She said. I wanted to punch an old lady in the face.
“Relax, that's why I'm here.” She exhaled a blue cloud, “Even the Game Changer needs help in self-actualisation and enlightenment.” She paused then guffawed a hearty belly laugh. And I felt it deep in my bones.
“What about Rage?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“Not your fight,’ said Gran simply. The seagulls squawked a battle cry in agreement. Puff-puff-pull... Exhale. "What is your job?"
"To change the Game," I whispered. Truth filled every available space within me.
"Then what are doing farting around with the old one?" There was nothing but puffing and squawking for a long time before Gran leaned forward and put her cigar-free hand on my pale, delicate hand on the arm of the white plastic chair. She puffed and then grinned with her red lips. “Feeling better are we?”
“I am.” I stretched my arms above my head and took a breath in.
I sighed it out. I stood up and stretched as Tata had shown us. The tightness in my chest, which I had not known was there, eased a little. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.
I blinked again.
There was a jarring sensation, like falling.
More smoke rings.
More sun.
MAIDEN - MOTHER - CRONE
Sophia and Ala observed me patiently. “A Fractal tells a story of the processes that created it,” began Sophia.
“Simplicity leads to complexity,” added Ala.
“Which causes ‘I’ to become 'we'", chimed Sophia.
“A fractal is a never-ending pattern that repeats itself at different scales.”
“This property is called ‘Self-Similarity’,” Ala whispered over my shoulder and into my ear.
Sophia began again, “The Book of Brightness is nothing if what is written in it...”
“...Is not written in our hearts.” Ala finished from behind me.
I felt as if I were the beating heart between the two lungs of God.
“Your heart has cracked wide open.” The vibration oF Ala’s voice echoed through my body and into my heart.
“The Book is merely a record of what is True. You are fractions of the same whole. You cannot go where she does not.” I don’t know when she moved, but Ala faced me now.
Each Goddess held something out to me. “Happy thirty-third Birthday, Regan Grace,” said Ala. They offered the objects to me as if I were the Goddess, and they were my devotees. I felt their reverence for me. For me? I wanted to feel awkward and undeserving, but that version of me was gone. I had let her seep into the sand with my blood. I mourned her for a moment. She kept me safe. For years. I didn’t need that anymore.
Ala held a slender shimmering wand. She slipped off the cap and confirmed its function: a fountain pen. “Its tip is from the bones of every Arche that has gone before. Its shell is of turquoise for Truth and lapis lazuli for Wisdom.” She bowed her head and lifted the pen to me. With great care and reverence, I took it.
I held the shimmering relic as Sophia offered her gift, a bulbous glass pot with a cork lid. It held a liquid black as night. “The pot is of the hardest rock in this realm, diamond,” said Sophia. “The Pen is the conduit for the ink of immortality.”
I had to put one down to pick the other up. Ala laughed and said, “Let go. It will be there when you need it.” I was sceptical. She smiled playfully and said, “Sometimes you have to put one thing down, to pick another thing up.” I nodded, knowing I had done this very thing. With great care, I laid the pen down on the hem of my dress. As I drew my hand back, it was gone. I looked up at them wide-eyed, but their grins calmed me and we laughed at my childlike wonder.
I took the pot of ink from Sophia and held it to the light. It was so black not even a reflection or shimmer glinted off the diamond body. “A gift from our most ancient ancestor, the octopus, who tells us every Iteration is merely the remnant of a more ancient one – of which she is the only survivor,” said Sophia. I turned the bottle this way and that, knowing that my mental faculties could never comprehend that I was holding the fabric of space and time in a jar made of carbon.
I was in more than one place.
There was timelessness.
I was at the kitchen table with grown-up me with nice boobs. She read a story, my story, our story in a book. Tears slid down my cheeks. Not sad tears. Tears that the Water gave me.
I heard the wind in the trees and every living thing in creation singing a song about being alive.
Fiery orange monarch butterflies flitted across the field between the house and the forest. There were cows and goats and a cat. One cat? The porch was a velvety carpet of geckos, their beady eyes focussed on the old lady in the kitchen doorway with a wide-brimmed straw hat. The seagulls and the crows made a racket. She grinned, one hand on her hip, the other cradling the thin cigar incongruously between her slender fingers. Her red lips kissed it, and then she blew mystical blue billows of smoke into the shaft of light that held me locked inside it like Scotty’s tractor beam.
There was timelessness…
MAIDEN
“My god, it’s so beautiful,” said the Scarab from somewhere to my left. “So beautiful, so perfect,” she sighed as if she were in love. I resisted the temptation to flex my Shadow Sheath as I gave myself time to reload and reinforce my firewall. I pondered what Gran said. I needed to pick my battles. I agreed with why the W.A.R.S. were doing what they were doing, but I was pretty sure more war was not the way.
The Scarab tore her gaze away from the algorithm and opened a search engine. She typed in the words Book of Brightness. I called upon Will's ninja power of paying attention. I was right in the belly of the beast. What could I learn before I kicked the shit out of it? I was through her firewall in seconds. Thoughts buzzed around her head like putrid flies around rotting flesh.
The search engine stopped at my birthday party yesterday. My code tickled the nape of my neck and raced up into my hairline. It was the last time I had seen my grandmother alive, in her meat sack, as it were. I had no idea what it meant, but it was a clue, and it was time to stop farting around.
Kali and Sekmeht still bickered in hushed tones as the Scarab searched my memory until she hit my firewall. "What the?" she mumbled, oblivious that I was locked, loaded, and ready to show her why further access was denied. She swiped the screen away in frustration, distracted and deep in thought.
My vision adjusted as it came back online. Everything pulled into sharp focus as I began to oscillate. Thousands of fractals of this choice, this Passage stacked one on top of the other in infinite potential, reverberated through me.
The quality of light changed.
The hum started to build.
The tapping took up its beat. The Golden Thread spun out from my being as my code spiralled out from my centre. It raced in a silver glow as Truth filled the space between me and EVERYTHING.
I flexed my field. The domain throbbed with my power as the invisible Onbaord burst out of my skin like a disgusting black head. I received a flood of information about anything I focussed on.
“What have you done?” she whispered, her voice murderous. Her eyes darted around the domain, assessing the damage, as she turned to face me.
“What I’ve done,” I flexed my field with an audible reverb, “is Change the Game.”
The virus was thick, pervading and consuming the domain rapidly. Kali and Sekmeht were long gone. I felt a tug from someplace deep inside me, and I heard Blue’s words, All is one, as I undid the algorithm.
“It’s too late for that,” she said quietly. “I’m not some noob, Regan. That algorithm is on a server that you will have to look very hard to find.” With that, she was gone.