Miko:

My heart felt like it skipped a beat. “So that’s why my parents hid me away. To protect me?” That’s why they were limited in their choices of healers and probably supplemented with people they could directly trust. I had been so angry with them for so long, feeling abandoned and unloved. “You mentioned the defect has two reasons. What was the second?”

“You have arrived at the truth of why you are. The Garden has a heart and soul of its own, and it plucks and influences those it finds suitable to test. Like you, this colossal tree is disease-ridden, placed upon it by the actions of my foolish siblings who stole the very life from this place. And so, it beckons those it deems capable of repairing its injury; to untwist the knife in the wound it received very near the beginning of time.”

I locked eyes with her. “Is that what you want then, for me to come all the up here and free this tree from whatever plagues it? Your husband didn’t seem too enthralled when I told him I was going to eat the fruit.”

A snark exhale left her nose. “Did you climb all the way up this colossal tree to ask how I feel?” She laughed until it quickly felt bitter on her tongue. “How sweet…’What I want?’ I could try to convince you not to eat the fruit, but something tells me those words would be wasted on you?”

“Of course, I didn’t climb all the way up here to be swayed. My mind was made when I was trapped down there in ‘paradise,’ — forced to stare at my brother’s limp body.” I shook that thought from my mind, preventing myself from getting trapped in that place. I didn’t want to offend her and prevent her from sharing more information, so I asked another question. “You mentioned godhood, so what are you the god of?”

She became excited, rubbing her hands together and taking a deep breath. Oh no, she’s definitely about to tell me a story. I rubbed my hand against my head in preparation for a headache.

“It was easier for most of my family to understand their powers. Being gods of elements you could find abundantly around you had that effect. Others were not so lucky, bearing elements that were more difficult to understand, but they still existed, at least. I, on the other hand, was not born with an element but instead a concept. I am Ananke, Goddess of Necessity.”

I knew I was fanning the flames, but I was curious. “I’m not sure I follow. What is necessity?”

Her eyes closed, and the area around us shifted in appearance to show a field of grass spreading out into infinity. It didn’t seem tangible, but my eyes couldn’t tell the difference. “What is Necessity, you ask? I posited the same query when I was first told of this ability, which was undefined at the time of conception. There are truths upon which their very nature is not questioned, and there are falsities, statements of possibility that cannot form. You will die.” She walked to a blade of grass that stretched to her thighs and glided her hand against the length of it, showing that it could be physically interacted with. “Even immortality is only bound by the plane that allows our existence, controlled by the inevitable heat death of the universe. So, you must die; that is a necessary truth.” I placed my hand against a blade of grass, but it passed through it. “You will die today. That is a contingent possibility, not necessarily false, but a contingently true statement. You are starting to understand, yes?”

No, I thought to myself.

“We are the offspring of Khaos and Khosmos, whose divinity was processed in the infinite void with a much greater potential than our own. When intelligence persuaded necessity, the very spark of creation was formed. The laws of the universe did not call for existence on this planet, so the first beings, in their union, allowed intellect to dominate what was necessary. The very laws of the universe were intrinsically manipulated to represent new values than their previous positions. Life was made necessary with majik, and then our eyelids unfolded and saw only darkness, the belly of the tree — surrounded by a cocoon of bark, but then it opened, exposing us to this paradise.”

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The field around us withered, and in her hands lay the ashes of a blade of grass. Then, I began to understand. “You can change fate?”

She ignored me as if I wasn’t present, disregarding my question. “The ever-present burden of cost, however, continues to impede progress. The ramifications of change in the spectrum of possibilities echoed throughout the cosmos, inducing a transformative shift in the very fabric of our galaxy — impossibility, imbalance, then immortality. What you call fate, I call necessity — a change in judgment by force. One cannot manipulate fate. It is not about what will be, those events that have yet to pass; one can only change what is and what is not.”

The place she made appear blurred out of existence until we were standing again at the top of her tree, having never really left in the first place. She can manipulate the reality around her and will her desires into existence. “Tell me, though, Ananke. Why are you up in this tree and Khronos isn’t?”

She sighed, sitting back in her chair and regaining her previous position. “Our creators bargained with the great void to change a contingent truth. I imitated their great work, and I paid the price for the pursuit of forbidden sin. There was one rule. ONE RULE in this whole damned place!’” She paused. “Why couldn’t they just follow one measly rule?” She spoke in sorrow to herself before continuing in a more plain tone, almost devoid of emotion. “Although what I did might have been worse. I didn’t have the strength to do it alone, so I begged the tree to provide it for me. The tree did not yet yield the concept of necessity, so it accepted and gained my powers to its’ bidding.”

Her eyes filled with the weight of tears, her sin still brewing freshly on the surface. “What did you do?” I asked.

“Like you, I was doing what I thought must be done. I saved my family. Khronos and I had been out exploring for some time. We never counted the suns back then, so there was no way to know for how long, but when we returned, they had already eaten the fruit. When we found them, they were dying and looked half as bad as you did when you arrived. They explained themselves and their futile reasoning, and I made a decision. I changed the rules. ‘If you eat from the fruit of the tree of majik, you shall surely never die.’” Ananke wiped her eyes and sipped the rest of her tea quickly.“I don’t understand. If you can just change the rules, you can fix Maleki or change your contract with the tree!”

“No, Miko. It’s never that simple, and I learned it the hard way. That’s what I am trying to show you. My decision saved my siblings’ lives, but it also doomed them. I thought I would be returning them to their original primordial state, the way we were intended to be. Primordial does not mean invincible; we are capable of injury, but we do not age and heal from injuries quickly. Mortal wounds can be performed against us, but at that time, there were no enemies to validate that. To never die, that is truly a vile curse. We are meant to die, boy. They now possess no soul and, therefore, no realm to go to after this life. I cried upon learning of this, but they did not resent me and instead embraced me for the last time before their banishment from The Garden. It wasn’t until later, when their children filled the planet, that I learned the depth of my sin. All of humanity had been cursed to live and die without souls so that majik could flow through their blood. How vain am I?” She wept, placing her head into her arms.

I felt nothing. Her pain was her own, and there was nothing I could do to stop it or help her. My mission was too important. What would Maleki do? Would he let his compassion prevent him from healing me? In my place, would he console her? Ananke collected herself, and I got out of my chair. “I appreciate the information, but as I said, I didn’t come for stories even if they hold the truth,” I passed by her before a last thought was raised in my mind. “One more thing. There’s a place I go to when I sleep; my brother sees it, too. Do you know where that is or why it happens only to us?”

“A place?” She questioned.

“Yes, sometimes they are different. One after the other until I wake, but only when I sleep.”

“Miko, we gave that a word while in the depths of the trunk. It’s called a dream. The fruit eaters and their children cannot dream as they possess no soul. Take solace in that place you find yourself in — it is but a taste of the afterlife.”

I kept walking to the steps that brought me here before her voice rang out again.

“Miko.” Her eyes demanded of me. “We have both warned you now. If you do this, like my siblings before you, you will be forever cursed.”

I didn’t turn my head and kept walking. “I’m already cursed, Ananke.”