Ineffable

XLIII

  As he carved a knife out of a stick, Bean sat beneath the discrepancy’s window, thinking about where on her body he would stab her. His plan was to go for her heart, and keep a hand over her mouth, to catch her Light as it tried to escape. But he had no idea what to do with it; how to store it, and where to bury it, so that it was never found and never, on whatever timeline, made its way back into Heaven.

  As he sat, though, his thoughts of violence were curtailed by what he overheard as the discrepancy sat on the edge of her bed, reading from a book of short fables. It was hard to focus. The way she spoke, his mind simply gave up its defences and allowed itself to drift, being swept up by the young girl’s sea of imagination.

  It was a horror to behold.

  Bean felt dizzy at first, and so completely out of control. His mind flooded with the most incredulous ideas that were fanciful and charming one minute, then frightening and galling the next. He didn’t know whether to squeal with girlish glee or to scream for dear life. He pendulated between both ends of pleasant and perturbed.

  It was at the end of the first story - when the young protagonist was safe from harm, and when the wicked beast had been slain and gutted - that Bean was left with a growing sense of humanity. His fear trickled from his thoughts until his mind was a clear blue sky, and he no longer felt at threat – from monster, or himself.

  The first story exhausted him. It depleted him of his every reserve. Though he was not left feeling used and abused, he was, like a poor man’s savings, entirely spent. You could imagine then how he felt after the third, fourth, and even fifth story. The girl sat on the edge of her bed reading these little tales which were so potent, and so full of meaning and purpose; as opposed to the only story he knew, that of The Sun of God.

  He sat beneath her window for what felt like an eternity, listening in earnest as the discrepancy told tale after tale. It was almost impossible to believe that all these events could have occurred; that so many princess and princesses, and so many dear, dear children, had gone through so much trial and tribulation, and who had courted with so much fear - and yet not one had succumbed to peril.

  Bean forgot entirely about the task at hand. He forgot about Heaven which, in another temporal dimension, was on a path to incalculable ruin. He forgot too, about his colleague who, like himself, would no doubt be wandering through some strange parallel existence. But as quickly as he forgot, so too did the silt of his emotions sift from the cracks of his mind, as if the sensations of peace, kindness, surety and slumber were as fleeting as a sun-drenched shower - far too weak for him to cling to. And they left him in heightened panic.

  Like the splitting of an atom, his mind exploded with adrenaline as a new dimension unfolded in his consciousness - fear. Now it was impossible not to think of Heaven crumbling. It was impossible too, not to think of his colleague, lost and vagrant in some despicable world, or worse yet, being captive on The Arc, where his soul would, for eternity, writhe in agony as its Light, along with every other foul dimensional being in this omniverse, powered the machines that maintained equanimity in Heaven.

  He imagined his friend suffering; as every being did.

  And his fear quickly developed strength. It developed a shape. It wasn’t fractional and jittery anymore. It was rigid and whole. It didn’t feel like fear though it was assembled from the very same mathematics. It felt like fire; of which he could scorch a thousand Earths. It felt like an exclamation; of which he could negate any defence. And it felt like divine absolution; as if God itself were the force beneath his skin.

  Bean stepped out from beneath the carriage with the jagged knife in hand. His heart beat slowly as if he were merely rising from a stupendous sleep. There was no indecision. There was no uncertainty.

  The girl was going to die.