I will be posting as I go today. Next goal: 1500 more words by 5:00.
*I don’t know if there’s enough plot in this thing for 50,000 words, but I’m sure as hell going to find out*
Sweet little thing. She was a sweet little thing. Underneath the bravado, she was just a little girl in over her head. Girls of twenty-one seem so much younger than they did once. When I first changed, a girl of twenty-one was most likely a married woman and a mother, already fully engaged in the struggles of life, not hovering on the edge like these kids seem to be. I told her as much when she was staying with us.
“What’s your name?” she said.
“Gervaise,” I said.
“Don’t call me a kid, Gervaise,” she said. “Just because you’re really old.”
Just like a kid. So touchy.
“She doesn’t look like a Messiah,” I said to the old man.
“They never do,” he said. “Get my globe and sextant.”
“Why do you need to do the divining ritual?” I said.
“Don’t ask questions,” he barked. “Fetch them and balance the orb for me.”
I did as I was told. I don’t know why, but I always do. As I held the crystal from its silver chain, I said, “So what happens if she’s it?”
He didn’t look at me, but stared and the light scratching across the surface of the globe. “You know the legend, Gervaise,” he said.
“I know the story from the old books,” I said.
“Well, then you know what will happen.”
I sighed. “How do you know if the story’s true?”
He sighed and put down the sextant. “Really, Gervaise, you are impossible,” he said.
“Why shouldn’t the story be true? Why doubt it when you accept everything else?”
I shrugged. “My theory is,” I said, “that the potion’s not really magic, it’s more like a medicine. It switches something on or turns something off, and that’s why we don’t age. So why should some silly Messiah story be true? Plus the divining ritual doesn’t work very well.”
“It depends who’s doing it,” he muttered, snatching up the sextant. “Gervaise, your materialism disappoints me. Bring Gina to me.”
“Remember? He let her go.”
The old man sighed an exasperated sigh. “Did he at least cut a lock of her hair?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, find out for me, you useless little guttersnipe. And bring it to me if he did. And if he didn’t, go find her and bring me one.”
Fortunately the Adonis of the piano had taken the hair. He didn’t seem to want to give it up, though.
“What do you want it for?” he asked suspiciously.
“Himself wants it for the divining ritual,” I said.
“Why?”
“Don’t ask me,” I said, “he doesn’t tell me anything.
“Well, alright,” he said, “I’ll give you half.”
Whatever. I don’t get love. I don’t know if I ever did, even when I was mortal. Love for your family, maybe – I was certainly sorry to say goodbye to my mother and my sister when it was my turn – but love for one insignificant individual over another seems like an odd thing. Not that I’m not interested in people – I am, it’s all I’m really interested in – but loving someone seems to be making up a fake person to love on top of a real one, inventing all sorts of beautiful fictions that get in the way of seeing who they really are. Maybe you only lose that after you get past a mortal life span, though.
I handed the hunk of black hair to the old man. “Not very much of it,” he sniffed.
“It’s all he gave me,” I said, which was true.
“It’ll have to do.” He placed the hair in a shallow brass dish and had me hold the orb over it. The light played over it for a while as the old man stared at it.
“Anything?” I asked.
“Shut up,” he hissed.
“Sorry.”
We stood in silence for some time – well, I stood and he sat – until a faint shadow appeared on the table in front of him.
“What does it say?” I asked.
“Silence,” he read, “silence – defeat – death.”
He looked up at me. I noticed a worry in his face that I haven’t seen in a very long time.
“What does that mean?” I said.
“I’m not sure,” he said slowly, “but it can’t be good.”
“Is she the one?” I said.
He laughed a short, bitter laugh. “Oh, she’s the one, alright,” he said. “The only question is: what to do now?”
*
“I don’t believe it,” I said to her, trying to make my face and voice hard but failing, I knew. I looked desparate and scared, because that was how I felt.
“It doesn’t matter if you believe it,” she said calmly, raking over the spent coals “What one believes is rarely of much issue. What matters, my dear, is that it’s true.”
“He was the one,” I said. “I did the ritual and it was him. It was very clear, unmistakeable.”
“And that’s how you convinced the old one to make him keeper of the keys? I see. Did he do the ritual with you?”
“No, he didn’t believe me,” I said. “I don’t think he ever believed me.”
“Why’d he let you do it?” she asked, looking up at me.
I shrugged. “Who knows why he does anything?”
“He’s always been playing some weird game,” she said, and went back to scrabbling through the ashes.
“What are you even looking for?” I asked.
“The tab,” she said.
“The tab?”
“Yes, the tab. Don’t repeat yourself like an idiot.”
“What tab?”
She stopped and sat back on her heels. “Since the key ceremony was not complete, since it was involuntary and unplanned, there should be a tab, a piece of physical evidence of her connection to the power source.”
“Oh?” I said. “I didn’t know that. There wasn’t one when I gave the keys to him.”
“No, because you did the proper rituals,” she said. “You don’t want a tab if you can help it.”
“Why not?”
“It connects to the key in the left ventricle,” she said. “If anything happens to the tab it can hurt the keeper, even kill him.”
“Or her,” I said slowly. “What does it look like?”
“I’ve never seen one,” she said thoughtfully, “but the books describe them as small and lavender in colour. Other than that I’ve no clue.”
“Can I help you look?”
“No, dear,” she said, “I should find it myself. You run along.”
I turned and walked slowly towards the house, pausing at the miniature rosebush peeking through the last of the snow.
Under its leaves winked a tiny, perfect amethyst rose.
I put it in my pocket and walked away.
*
“Try to visuallize it, Gina,” I said encouragingly. “Clear your mind and concentrate.”
She stared again into the heart of the blue crystal. “OK.” She gazed into it for a few moments. Good, I thought, it was working. “What am I supposed to be doing again?”
“Connecting to the cosmic power source,” I said, trying not to sound impatient.
“That is just impossibly vague,” she said.
“Just try,” I said. “It won’t work if you don’t try.”
She glanced darkly at me, then back at the crystal.
“Breathe deeply,” I said, “and tell me what you see.”
“Blue,” she said.
“Yes?”
“Blue,” she said, “it’s a blue stone. It’s really very pretty, isn’t it? It would look nice as a pendant.”
“Gina, it’s a sacred crystal,” I said, annoyed. “It’s not jewellery.”
“Why can’t it be both?” she asked.
“Because wearing it might dilute its power,” I explained.
“Can we do something else now?” she said wearily. “I’m trying to be serious about this, but this crystal stuff is just silly. You can’t tap into the cosmic power source – assuming there is one – by staring at an aquamarine for an hour.”
“It’s the only way to clear your mind,” I said.
“No, it’s a waste of time,” she said. “If this power source exists, we should be able to find it, measure it, and connect with it reliably. Not by this foolishness.”
“It’s not that kind of thing,” I said. “It’s not like it exists in the same way you and I do. It’s more like a combination of things coming together, like we’re part of it.”
“That’s what people say about God, too.”
“So?”
“So it’s a bad argument for the existence of God, that’s what. God is supposed to be all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving. But then you get the problem of free will and evil and all that stuff. So people say that God is an essence of goodness or of life, that he exists as a sum of all of the love in the universe, and praying is really a way of getting in touch with yourself and your fellow man. But what’s the point? Why call it God if you have to do all the work yourself? It’s the same with this power source. If I can only contact it by staring into crystals and bullshit like that, and it only works sometimes, and even then it doesn’t always do what it’s supposed to, well, why bother?”
“You shouldn’t think about these things so much,” I said.
“Why not? Why not think about them? What, do you have to be stupid for it to work?”
“No, but you have to have an open mind,” I said.
“I do,” she said, “but not so open that my brain’s falling out.”
