St. Ursula meanwhile is face down and rump up, preoccupied with praise. The imp wriggles free of her embrace. He rolls out from under and gasps, “Saint Suck-us a ruckus.”
“Save my soul,” Ursula begs. She creeps scorpion-like to her Lord’s bare foot, puts forth one hand and pinches His hem. “Save my soul. Save my soul.”
Good Lord Jesus glances down. “You’re saved, girl. You made it. Run along, now. Shoo.” He waves her away.
“Save my soul, save my soul,” comes a muffled echo from the other saints, their faces planted in garden dirt.
“Sole?” chirps Sarconsson. “Sole-sucking sauerkraut. Serve it in soy sauce. Didn’t Underworld Guy talk about sole?”
Cornumsdotter nods vigorously.
“What botheration is this?” says a baffled Virgin Mother. The Heavenly Host is singing with gusto, seemingly well-rehearsed.
Save my soul!
Save my soul!
Save my soul, soul, soul!
It’s a new hymn and not, She thinks, very imaginative. Why hasn’t the music ministry cleared it with Her?
“Regime change,” says Lord Jesus. A haloed lamb appears, supported on His right forearm. “New doctrine. Very popular. All mortals need do is pledge a loyalty oath. Accept Me as Supreme and Beloved Savior and receive an instant ticket to Heaven. Mortals love it.”
Cornumsdotter giggles. “Save that sole in a casserole!”
Her boyfriend sings:
Fish in a dish!
Flatfish, tonguefish,
Bottom feeder cod fish!
Save my
sole, sole, sole!
A cranky looking lion appears on Lord Jesus’ left forearm and glowers at the lamb. Jesu says, “The old ways of enlightenment are tedious. Available to a few scholars and hermits. Monks and magi. Study, study, study. Prayer, prayer, prayer. Apprenticeship. Initiation. Residency. Blah. Blah. Blah. Old-school. Elitist. Screw the gurus and the gate-keepers. Screw making salvation hard to get. I’m saving everyone. …Well, everyone who pledges.”
Our Virgin Mother grimaces. “That’s a lot of souls. Where will we put them all?”
Sarconsson sings:
Bluefish, batfish, dogfish, catfish.
Shellfish side-dish, swordfish, whitefish!
Roll that sole by a flying fish!
Now Cornumsdotter regrets her silly rhyme. Why can’t she enjoy a joke? No. It has to be about him. Sarconsson is distracted. Again. Like always. What’s so hard to remember? Underworld Guy! Love’s order!
Something happens within her. Something spins askew. A sleepy inner eye opens for the briefest span of a micro-moment. Cornumsdotter looks through it and sees the grand delusion of her life — five thousand years of it passed with this idiot. The two of them, Idiot Imps of the Id.
The micro-moment ends. The eye snaps shut. Imps have by definition the attention span of a bugge.
She cries out, “No, no, Loverboy! Not a bowl, but a boot. Put that sole in a boot. Focus, focus!”
“Focus, focus. Hocus-pocus,” he hollers.
She looks into his wild eyes and sees inside his head boundless joy as wide and deep as unbound space. Joy sizzles and pops and roars with glee. He cannot contain it. Jubilance shouts from his every orifice, leaps from his very pores, crackling and streaming outward like rogue electrons fleeing their home nucleus.
Oh! Oh! She loves him so!
He’s still shouting. “Hocus-pocus, Magnum Opus. Swarms of locusts. Swarms of bugges.”
“Bugges in boots,” she yells back. She must sing! She sings:
Naked sole.
Lost sole.
Saved sole.
Pierced sole.
“Which sole fits in a boot?”