back / next / Sarcon’s Son 7
There they stand, four entities, meeting toe to toe in one shared space, a space into which none of them fits well and yet the only possible place for a dialog.
It’s a masquerade party.
Sarconsson leers at everyone, outrageously gleeful inside the devil disguise he’s been given. Cornumsdotter’s larva-like body is electrified on the scale of summer sheet lightning, and she takes delight in rolling illumination across her sky-wide belly.
Lord Judas wears the dour aspect of a sun-burnt Biblical patriarch. Love presents as a gleaming, girlish youth, an archer equipped with the sort of bow carried by wild nomads.
“You want to be the oldest, Jude. We give You old.” Love pats Their curls. “It’s a concept. Don’t fuss. You are getting what You want.”
Lord Judas snorts and harrumphs like a mad boar. Hair bristles from His nostrils.
Love magically lifts from off a balcony one of the black shields. They offer it to Lord Judas who takes the thing and peers into its darkness. His patriarchal face peers back at him. Jude is thinking:
… all this is a lot of trouble and why do I bother and now here I am, put inside a face like an old boot and Love’s a bore and bygone Ages are better and Love calls me young but I don’t feel young and haven’t felt young since … not since … oh since I recall child sacrifice going out of fashion … what a shame that was, and oh it does still happen but in secret and the vitality’s just … not the same … kick me now … old boot, old boot …
“Why, He’s got a looking glass,” says Cornumsdotter.
“More of a spy glass,” mutters the gloomy Lord. … old boot … old boot …
Sarconsson creeps up behind Jude and peeks over his shoulder. For a moment, before Lord Judas can jerk away the mirror, the imp’s reflection shows on the surface. He observes his own new face, just long enough to stick out his tongue and see that it’s forked. “Ooooh, this is the best me yet!” Sarconsson chortles. “Can I keep it? Can I keep it?”
Love strokes the venomous tip of one of Their arrows. “Our Gang of Four. As mismatched as a boot and a bed slipper. A sandal and a dancing shoe.”
“A boot! Damn You, stay out of my head,” huffs Lord Judas. “I think boot and You say boot.”
“You’re the slippery slipper! I’m the boot!” yells Sarconsson and jumps with joy. He tramps. He stamps. He noisily sings a marching dance:
— stomp, stomp, whomp-ity tromp
— flash flood
— dragon blood
— rancid mud in the swamp-ity swamp
Cornumsdotter looks with fondness at her stupid boyfriend. Her pleasure catalyzes the phosphorus in her belly so it blazes merrily. Billows of burning light reflect off the balcony mirrors and fill the hall to overflowing so everything appears brilliantly aflame. The four costumed characters stand inside a firestorm, an inferno.
“Hell fire and damnation right here in your palace,” says Love, “complete with Your own little dancing devil.”
Lord Judas is as grim as the last autumn leaf. “A clever joke. My Virgin Mother will be amused. To see Me roasting in my personal Hell.” He turns to His impish guests who are busy strutting and shining. “She watches, you know.” His voice is peevish. “Through the mirrors. Observation portals, all of them. So She can keep Her eye on Me.”
“As You watch in return, dear Jude,” says Love. “We know how You follow court gossip. But enough. Why must You turn hi-jinks into a pity party? Imps!” Love roars, “Your attention, imps!”
The two bugges startle and freeze, like prey under the hawk’s shadow.
“Your task,” thunders Love, “is to raise Hell in Heaven.” The Immortal smiles with predatory charm. “Go have fun, silly wind-mortals. Shake up the Old Girl. Rattle the rafters. Start riots in the choir loft and beard pulling brawls among the saints.”
“In particular,” says Jude, “I want to see Jesu knocked off His high horse. Stick it to Him. Puncture that inflated, self-righteous soul He flaunts.”
The imps look at each other. They look at the Immortals. Sarconsson asks cautiously, “Harum-scarum? Hurly-burly hubble-bubble?”
Lord Judas clears his throat. “That’s the idea.”
“Doing what?” asks Cornumsdotter.
Love waves Their exquisite hands in the air. “Do what you do best, wind-mortals. Play your comical pranks.”
“Are there babies to pinch? I’m good at that,” says Cornumsdotter. “Milk to sour? Buttons to hide?”
“Surely you have better imaginations,” says Jude.
The imps shake their heads. They have come through the south gate of horn and are fixed by honesty.
“Well this is ridiculous.” Lord Judas looks a bit helplessly at Love.
Sarconsson looks with total helplessness at his girlfriend. His mouth hangs open, ready to chatter up a lot of grifter nonsense — empty promises, indiscreet hints, fawning flattery — but nothing emerges. Cornumsdotter shrugs, in her shoulderless larva way.
Love finds it amusing. Not a clever bunch, these co-conspirators. A bad-tempered god and two breezy chuckleheads, all of them limited by embodiment. They can’t help it, packed inside skin like sausages. It’s a necessary condition of the universe. Everything must be, in one way or another, contained. Even Those Immortals born after the universe Banged into being. Primals existed before the universe emerged, but the generations after, Primitives and Ancients and Those of the Book, all are bound by reality.
Love scratches behind one knee with an arrow point. The toxin is harmless to Their naked, sulky archer. That guise, while cute, doesn’t much fit, and the seams itch. It’s a costume and encloses only a tiny part of Love. The rest of Them is off disrupting the world in distant places, or even farther, beyond the universe entirely, hanging without form and void in the Primal family abyss. The truth of Love is incomprehensible to us.
But enough. Love is here by the north gate of ivory, and truth has nothing to do with anything.