Spring 31 (evening)
As the sun set, Valkyrie slouched on the bench of the rooftop garden above her prison. An ancient book lay open and ignored on her lap, its yellowed pages rambling on the matters of Light, sephiroth, and the eternal soul.
Vocabulary covered by her demonic education.
Hollow words, really.
“If the words could do the trick, some babe would have babbled them in the right order by now.”
One book said to court the eternal Will; another to chant the seven names of seven spheres; and the third to inhale a concoction of poisons that would expand her mind and/or kill her by dinner time.
Then again, what else was there to do? She’d finished every lock shy of the top Novian brands, rehearsed her guitar chords until her fingers ached, combed the library top to bottom, and failed thrice on the slippery door to Alisandra’s study.
To think Ali would have a private library and not a single comedy!
She was almost desperate enough to seek Sebastian’s company. Almost.
About the only point of sanity was her newfound radio pal. Unfortunately, Esmerelda Azure-blessed only showed up late in the evenings.
Thin clouds swirled overhead, promising a gloomy night. Reflected by the low clouds, she heard the distant rumble of Sevensborough drums. They beat two, one, two, one, five in familiar beat.
“Fuggettaboutit already? I could be there!” she groused to the clouds.
Please. Like mom would ever let wander so far.
“Fourteen more days,” she sighed. And one cursed speech.
If she could manage the words without gagging.
And then? Back to Mom?
Her mind flit to a different course: a swift journey south and a new start beside Alisandra. Instead of dancing before the throne, she would take her share of it…
Valkyrie the Illustrious…
Yet a sour taste filled her mouth and cracked that inviting vision.
Of course I’m a good girl
Suddenly the fantasy felt tawdry and self-important.
“What is wrong with me all the sudden?” she wondered to the sky.
Paused.
“That’s not rhetorical, Rie. I thought we were going to unlock magic.”
Things had been so promising. Rie had planted seeds of power within her, and for a tantalizing moment they had begun to bloom!
But now Rie would not answer her, and she was left to scrounge for clues from the stuffy, dead words of a stuffy, dead world.
Maybe magic was behind the butler’s dead language? Had it been hidden from mortal men for its dread power?
Before all this, that would have sounded so exotic. Now, bathed in demonic knowledge, she heard only the statement of historical fact.
Is this the magic we so desire?
“Rie?”
The Sevensborough drums stopped, probably for some sappy speech.
“Are you listening?”
Are you even still there?
By now, she knew better than to expect an answer.
Guess she ditched me too.
Squeezing her eyes shut, Valkyrie leaned back on the bench and soon fell asleep.
In dreams, memories rose clearly.
White bodice, knee-length tutu, flower crown
Behold Valkyrie the flower girl
Dancer number nine on her way to honor the Maiden
What a pain in the arse
So I snuck away…
Valkyrie the dreaming child soon found her way away from the grand temple. Clambering up a wall, she hopped through a window and dropped into an art gallery where paintings towered on every wall.
Canvas floor to ceiling, each one a portal to another world.
There were works from all over: Auren portraits of the faithful seated beside Azure displays. Plateau vistas, harsh and bright, next to Jungle warrens where the leaves all melted together into elemental beasts.
She blew past them, unmarked by their grandeur. Having never held a paint brush, she considered herself its equal.
At the end of the hall, one caught her eye. Twelve foot tall and eight foot long, an isolated mountain range. White-cap peaks glowed with the mist of dawn; three slender glimmers of water cascaded down and spilled over into placid, cool waters; a lake slept hidden among the peaks, attended only by peaceful deer.
The placard declared it, Sierra.
A world like the garden Eden claimed to be.
“A world for me alone…”
Outside, her mother’s voice rang. “Valkyrie! You will miss the recital!”
Without a backward glance, the girl stepped into the oil painting and to another place.
Anywhere but here
The waves of paint rippled with her passing, and she emerged on the cool granite cliff above the lake.
Having broken the context of her dream, she glanced down to find herself her normal age…though she still wore a tutu and a flower crown.
“Still just a dancing flower,” she muttered to herself.
The mountains echoed back, Still skipping recital like one.
Scowling, she turned to take in the towering peaks, the waterfalls, and the trees. Pleasantly chill, air sharp as a knife, perfectly crafted to her specifications.
The words fell into place – vocabulary turned real.
“This is my garden.”
Which means Rie is here.
She stepped to the edge of the granite cliff. The stone hummed from the waterfall, teasing her bare toes with the prospect of a short slip and a long drop…
“Rie!” she shouted into the glade. “If you’re here, answer me!”
For a long moment, nothing.
Then, a voice echoing through mountain winds.
What answer would we prefer?
Valkyrie laughed in pure relief. “Whatever answer you want! I thought you were gone!” Then, after a moment, she added, “I’m just glad to have a friend right now, okay?”
What of Esmerelda Azure-blessed, Dancer?
She flushed. “Now you sound like Katherine. Haven’t you ever had a pen pal?”
To which the winds offered a dry response.
Voices beyond measure
Songs beyond count
The girl brushed at her tutu. “I’m so glad you’re alright, Rie.” Did she use too much power on our tricks? Maybe she can only talk to me like this now… “I’m not done with you yet, alright? Let’s talk lots more!”
This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.
Her own echo rang across the mountains.
Together, we’ll find the real magic!
Her echo stirred the trees, but a shiver ran through the mountains.
Another bit of vocabulary became relevant.
The guardian, keeper of the soul, watcher and judge. By flaming sword, the path to one’s Eden barred. Let only the pure remain.
“Oh, hells.”
Another Valkyrie strode from the trees. A woman full grown, this version wore a gold breastplate over a white tunic, woven slippers on her feet, and carried on her back a slumbering greatsword. Hair pulled back, expression imperious, the guardian of her soul approached.
“By dream’s subtle door have we slipped into this treasured place,” the guardian intoned. “Always chasing, hunting, yearning is the trespasser among these peaks. Seeking neither wisdom nor reprieve, heedless of place and price, we truck with blind power.”
Her footfalls shook the stones.
Dwarfed, Valkyrie shuffled backwards. “H-hey now! The garden is a shared refuge, right? For both of us!”
“A demon speaks from our lips,” replied her guardian, advancing closer. Towering higher. “We read from the sheet music, convinced it is Song.”
“T-this is a great opportunity! I always wondered what it would be like to meet you!”
She continued to scoot backwards until her heels hit the cliff.
Her guardian followed, pressing her to the edge.
The wind played between their calves, nudging Valkyrie towards the precipice.
“Childhood ends very soon, Valkyrie. Pretty lies are no shield. You did not come to this Garden to find She Who Sings.”
“O-of course I did!” the girl lied.
The guardian jerked forward and caught Valkyrie’s jaw like a fish in a bucket.
Strange words rang through the girl’s mind – voices echoing like gossipmongers amidst the pews.
You must be stern!
Never to brook the least trespass
They will always have an excuse for why they deserve greater power
“Why do we lie?” the guardian asked.
“I…that…it isn’t precisely…”
The voices rang louder through the guardian’s fingers and into the girl’s skull.
Ours is to Listen
To shepherd from cradle to Gate
Craft small lives and gentle passings
Then claim what was pure
Those strange echoes girded the guardian, and the woman repeated, “Why do we lie?”
Heat surged through her fingertips, into Valkyrie’s cheeks, and scalded her tongue until the answer rose unbidden.
“I…I don’t know…” Valkyrie gasped.
I don’t know!
I don’t know why I lie!
“Then let us still lying lips,” declared Valkyrie’s higher self.
Another pulse of searing heat coursed down her throat as the guardian lifted her by the chin.
Her higher self turned the girl to one side and then the other with distaste, eyeing her like the dirt clinging to an uncut diamond.
“It…it hurts…” Valkyrie gasped.
For a moment, the guardian wavered.
But the unseen voices echoed louder.
Mind your duty and harden your heart
Guardian of the high and the pure, harken!
Is it not better for them to reside a short while in Grace?
Firming her grip, the guardian pitched Valkyrie off the high cliff.
Valkyrie tried to scream, but the sound caught in her throat.
Tried to wake, but the ground approached.
A dream! Nothing but a dream! I will wake! I have to–
She hit the hard rocks at the edge of the lake.
She felt herself break on them.
Twitched, struggling, against a fog of pain and despair.
This can’t be how it ends. This can’t be how I end. Rie told me I was going to…going to…
Her blood dribbling down the rocks, mingling with the waters.
Hells…what are…what are they going to tell Mom?
Her end rising, unbidden.
She’s…gonna…cry…because…of…me…again…
So soon, too soon, as she struggled to lift a hand; felt the last vestiges of strength fading; gasped one last time against…
the…
dark…
***
Soaked in sweat, little Valkyrie Osh jolted awake on the bench.
Whole, unbroken, her heart hammering like a panicked deer.
Even worse, accompanied by Sebastian Mishkan.
The angel of Witness reclined against the rail, hands folded over his belly. Seeing her awake, he spoke. “Though the Garden is a sacred circle beyond my sight, your turmoil was plain to see.”
I…I died? I dreamed?
But normal people woke up from their dying dreams!
She had laid in her blood and felt the black call that followed the last quiver of her heart!
“Mirielle would not be able to include every detail in her bargain. For example, mortals reach the garden only in vision; angels walk the metaphor.”
Shaking, Valkyrie wiped sweat from her face.
“These discrepancies hint at our differing nature. What is an angel but a metaphor clad in Will and Fire? What is a mortal but a seed planted at the base of the great Tree, nurtured beneath its boughs?”
She opened her mouth to tell Sebastian where to shove his lectures…
…and the words caught low in her throat, refusing to budge a hair further.
“Yet one cannot help but wonder at other paths. At other ways. Grant a man a lantern and he will seek for shadows. If all was truly set as God intended, is this not futility?”
“If God’s so damned intentional, why do we need Foundations to lay dead and undying?” she tried to retort.
Sebastian watched with those bland, unblinking eyes. “Did you wish to interject?”
She faked a smile and shook her head.
“My apologies. The sun has set, and you doubtless yearn for a bath and a proper bed. Shall we head downstairs?”
Valkyrie nodded. Why is he here?
The angel of Witness opened the door for her. “As you command.”
She hopped up and hurried past, avoiding his gaze.
He glanced to the low clouds, glowing with the reflection from the roof lights. “One can never be too careful, you know. The lights from this garden are quite noticeable on a night like tonight.”
Great. Sure. Whatever you say, she thought, hurrying down.
Behind her, he flicked the lights on and off.
Counting: one, two, three.
***
Across the Woodhaven lot, a drunkard in his cups caught the flash of lights. Besotted, he squinted as the clouds above the second residential tower flickered: one, two, three.
Like a lighthouse, flashing him a signal.
He found himself recalling that he had seen those lights several times this Spring and never once in the last two years he had spent in Sixborough drinking himself to death.
The lights cut off, and he wondered. Hadn’t the activity only picked up about the beginning of Spring? And didn’t some fancy noble own the loft? Not officially, of course, but word got around.
“Some’ody havin’ ‘emselves a tryst?” he snickered to his drink.
He had half a bottle left, and he forgot the thought by its end.
For now.
***
Safely back in the loft, Valkyrie hurried to the bath. She turned on the water as hot as the groaning pipes would provide, dropped in the best noble suds, and dumped herself into the mix.
Then she stared at her bare knees as the steam swirled, took a deep breath, and commanded herself.
“Say ‘marshmellow’.”
Rather, she opened her lips and released a breath with the cadence of her words.
“Say…’Sebastian if you lecture me one more time I will dunk your head in a well!’”
Nothing but gentle air from her lips.
Fantastic. Just fantastic. I have verbal constipation.
Sebastian knocked on the door. “If you do not object, I will take the liberty of mixing you some cocoa before bed.”
“Fine! Whatever!”
“An approving silence, then.” The butler paused. “The Archangel liked to take her cocoa in the bath at your age. Would you ask the same?”
“Hells no!” But she mustered at best a puff of annoyed air. Not even a squeak!
Sebastian’s feet retreated, and Valkyrie sank to the nose in despair.
The guardian of the garden, ruler of the high soul, keeper of the divine spark, enemy of the magus… She scrounged for understanding, trying to understand those strange echoes and her own imperious guardian. …and apparently a petty harlot!
She flung the insult into the rafters of her mind and received no response.
Just calm down, Valkyrie. Rie’s on your side. We’ll tag team that snotty guardian and spank her like a six-year-old with stolen candy!
No holier-than-thou guardian was going to stop Valkyrie on her way!
The bathroom door opened. In stepped a tall, willowy woman with razor-straight hair and calm white eyes, wearing Livery black and carrying a cup of steaming cocoa on a porcelain plate.
Valkyrie gasped in surprise and leaped to the far side of the bath, her arms over her chest!
“Ah, my apologies,” the maid said. “I assumed you would not wish to share your nudity with a man.”
“S-Sebastian?!”
“Shocked? Flesh of woven Light is trivial to change. Ah, but perhaps you wonder at the essence.” She shifted on her hip like an amused aunt. “Tis one thing to wear the seeming of a woman and another for a woman to wear her own. Like so much of life, the border appears definitive until touched. In fact…”
Valkyrie hesitated, eying this maid. Sebastian-as-maid stood prim, her feet together, elbows in, plate cradled by four slender fingers above a gently bent wrist. If this was mimicry of womanhood, he fooled her!
The maid offered the cocoa.
Valkyrie drew a breath and rose. As she removed her arms from over her chest, she watched the angel for the slightest hint of perversion!
Sebastian-as-maid glanced down, noting the girl’s bare breast, and asked, “Do your clothes meet your satisfaction? Unfortunately, none of the Mishkan women share your petite stature. Most of your current wardrobe stopped fitting the Archangel quite young.”
He…no, she?...she sounds like the dance instructors. Like any grown woman, long inured to the mystique of breasts.
“I am, however, a practiced seamstress. Please inform me of any adjustments required in our remaining time together.”
Still suspicious, Valkyrie reluctantly accepted the cocoa.
“Ah, but you seek higher mysteries. Then let us discuss my transformation.” Sebastian stepped back, smoothing skirts for the girl’s inspection. “Observe. To shift my flesh alone risks discordance. I must create a space for the Shekinah; to receive and reverberate with that note of the Song. If you desire to understand this feminine essence, perhaps we might start with the Lekhah Dodi.”
Hiding behind a sip of the cocoa, Valkyrie shook her head. I’m very impressed and all that. Please, just go away!
Sebastian tucked her skirts and sat at the edge of the bath. “No? Then perhaps we might discuss why you cannot talk.”
Caught red-handed, Valkyrie sputtered into her drink.
Sebastian confiscated the cup and motioned. “Sit forward, please.”
Valkyrie flushed, shaking her head.
“I spent a lifetime or two as a doctor on Eden during my wandering years.” The angel motioned again. “I will do you no harm. My only goal is the best future for all mankind. I swear this.”
Reluctantly, she admitted, Overbearing as he – she – they are, I need to deal with this.
She slipped onto her knees in the water, leaned forward, and tilted her jaw upwards.
Sebastian leaned sideways and set her fingers along the girl’s jaw. Then she massaged downwards, tracing the flow of muscles into the hollow of the girl’s throat and leaving the faint tingle of Light across her skin.
“Speak for me,” the maid requested.
“Speaking,” Valkyrie obliged.
“As I thought.”
The strangest flash of pain flickered across the maid’s face like a ravaging storm, and her fingers on Valkyrie’s flesh trembled.
Ah, the road is straight and narrow!
We tell ourselves that we might swerve
Like the driver fancies the sharp tug of the wheel
But our nature always triumphs
The echo vanished into the maid’s smile. “Your flesh is strong and healthy, Valkyrie, and no outside force has laid Will upon you.”
“Then why can’t I…”
“No outside force,” reiterated the angel of Witness. “The heart of this matters rests within the heart of you – with your Garden and your other self.”
She shook her head violently. “That imperious bully is not me!”
“Two halves of the same whole at war, I fear. As you stir, so must she. Your subtle conscience, drawn close to the surface by your hand. She is the arbiter of power. The closer you draw to that source, the closer you draw to her.”
“Another obstacle on my path…” she muttered darkly.
Sebastian read her expression with ease. “Many are the tomes in this very library devoted to the dragon before you. Consider, however, the motive of those authors. Men hungering for the Will to reshape their world. Men hungry to walk as angels might.”
Is this wisdom?
A bath was hardly a well, but she considered dunking the angel anyways.
Then again, the angel of Witness might continue to lecture with bubbles.
Sebastian released her. “My apologies. I know you do not care for my presence. I ask only for your tolerance in this matter a little bit longer. I pray that, when we reach the culmination of our destinies, you understand how sincerely I place my faith upon you.”
A note of finality crept into her voice.
“By acceptance or refutation, so long as these words urge you forward, I will be content.”
Valkyrie sank into the waters, frowning at the angel of Witness. Unable to deny her annoyance, yes, but also struck suddenly by the bent arc of Sebastian’s shoulders. Maybe the sudden shift in gender highlighted what remained the same, but she felt the whisper of an immense age.
An angel walking Malkuth before Valkyrie was ever spun forth into the cherubic host before the Throne.
A man alone with his ghosts.
Sebastian curtsied primly. “Pray excuse me. My other duties call.”
Valkyrie nodded, releasing her.
The angel walked to the door, paused, and admitted, “In truth, I envy you the comfort of Grace and Song. These are things lost to my kind. Angels are such singular creatures.”
She closed the door behind her.
Alone, Valkyrie fought a sudden, intense premonition that next time she saw Sebastian would be her doom.