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The imps are arrived inside the earth. They peer around, amazed and thrilled to be received in the rock-bound court of Lord Judas, second born of the Virgin Mother’s Divine Twins.
Jude is a celebrity among Immortals of the Book. They are a most self-satisfied generation of deathless beings and the first to enshrine Themselves in text. Sacred Stories fill Their Holy Books, every Infallible Word the Absolute Pinkie-Promise Truth. It appears self-evident to Book Immortals (lots of “self” in the thinking of this bunch) that They are the pinnacle, the perfection of divinity, more clever and modern and brilliant than Their elders, those fusty old Ancients.
Isn’t that how it goes? Ancient Immortals, in Their heyday, look with smug disdain upon rude Primitives who, in turn, jeer the formlessness of Primals.
Imps are oblivious to such rivalries.
“Mutter, mutter, bread & butter,” whispers Cornumsdotter and points with delight. “Fakery. Not a drop of nectar in the lot of them.”
She is gazing at a thousand thousand copper poppies standing upright, seeming to grow out of the throne room carpet. A wondrous expanse. Their petals are wire mesh so fine the light filters through. Blooms wave and ripple atop articulated stems, yet there is no breeze. The automated flowers rise out of a floor-covering woven from strands of luminous brass. The carpet threads glow. All else is dark and cavernous. As far as the imps can see the only light is a knee-deep layer of illumination given off by those threads, like a ground mist, grainy and reddish, in which the poppies bob.
Sarconsson remembers, and his small heart leaps. “Mechanical nectar,” he says. “For mechanical bees.” He has been here before in a long ago Age. “As you please, here come the bees.”
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The air fills with the droning, humming, softly clicking murmur of a thousand thousand clockwork bees. Their count corresponds to the number of flowers. Wings of peeled mica vibrate in unison. On spun silver legs hang teeny-tiny pollen baskets bulging with metal pellets. The swarm appears, descends, mechanically sups, then whisks away.
Beyond, in the far distance, steel columns rise to groaning heights. Iron balconies hang suspended from unseen structures. Medallion-like shields decorate the railings, many of the shields bright with color, but others framing nothingness, their centers full of blackness.
“The bees descend at ev’ry flower upon the hour ev’ry hour,” confides Sarconsson, pleased he can enlighten his young girlfriend. Sometimes he surprises himself to realize that his life has not always been so narrow. “Constant and continual. A clock for recurrent counting. Curated by his Cleverness, Lord Judas.” Sarconsson coughs politely.
“Our little friends join us,” says a jovial Lord Judas. His divine voice booms in their ears.
Cornumsdotter is busy wondering how this can be a throne room when there is no room. No walls, no ceiling, no doors. And no throne, if what is meant is a chair. Two monstrous yet gorgeous Beings lounge on the field of light as if on cushions. The pillowy radiance yields beneath Them. Cornumsdotter takes an instant dislike to the Immortals. Bloated, she thinks, swollen with immortality.
Love meanwhile is frowning ferociously which has nothing to do with Their mood but with the intensity of Their focus. It is so very hard for Love to perceive individual mortals, even long-lived ones. A mortal, from Love’s vantage is utterly insignificant, impossibly minuscule. Put yourself in Their place. Imagine you are seated at the summit of the world’s most majestic mountain, and you try to see down in the valley a bacterium as it waves its hairy pili at you.
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“Are You sure?” inquires Love. “Where?”
The Primal Immortal barely breathes these words, but the imps experience the voice as shattering, cataclysmic. Solar storms penetrate the earth. The air engorges with shrieks. Time hardens like fired pottery, then breaks into shards.
The imps throw themselves down prostrate on the glowing brass rug.
“Ah, there,” says Love and acknowledges the bit of motion. “Hoppy little customers, aren’t they?”
“Jumpy as bugges,” agrees Lord Judas.
Face down in the field of light, Cornumsdotter giggles even as she shudders.
But Sarconsson seethes. He is outraged. He raises his head and glowers at Those who insult him. Cornumsdotter may call him bugge, a casual label that applies to many wee folk, but not grand beings who are stuffed full of Their grandiosity. “We fain not to be as faery fuckers,” he splutters. “Not shit-stained shaitans nor incontinent incubi.”
He cannot bear to be lumped in with other trickster beings. Truth be told imps really are of unique stock, but mortals and Immortals alike ignore the differences.