Edicts

I imagine she's doing her 'thing', even as we slog through Ada. She tethers the horses at the place designated for them. The prison is a good quarter mile away, at least for the gates. If we had a proper vehicle, we could get into the parking lot. But since a horse can't be locked…

  The guests lobby is arrayed with guards, and tables. It's like one of those old high school lunch rooms, with various boutique restaurants serving food and sweets.

  Naeyr doesn't have an aversion to eating. In fact, she returns to the table with a pile of Ptong food: fried rice, with orange-honey glazed chicken, a couple of eggrolls and those snazzy folded, wrapped-crab things.

  Ellia helps herself, taking a plate and sectioning off what she wants. Naeyr offers, but I wave her down.

  After several swallows, she speaks, "So have you figured it out yet? How you're going to kill Pephistofar?"

  "Kill?" I'm blinking. "Me?"

  Naeyr nods. "Yes, you."

  Ellia swallows. "You can't kill a goddess."

  "She's far from divine." Naeyr grins. "I'll assure you of that."

  "How would you know?" Ellia snaps.

  "You're a Herald in denial." Naeyr gives her a mockingly pitiful glance.

  Ellia narrows her eyes. "You're crazy," she says, "and you don't believe that. You don't know that. You're going to eat, and when you're done, you'll immediately get up and go back with the officers. Back to where you belong."

  "Yes ma'am," Naeyr says, lifting a spoonful of rice to her lips. She shovels her rice down. Once the plate is empty, she crosses her arms, and leaned on the table.

  We were quiet for awhile.

  "So is that working for you?" Naeyr grins. "See, power such as that is what makes a Herald. These 'gods' need people like you because you're authentic. Just where you get these capabilities is beyond your comprehension, sure, because it's far from hereditary, and your gods can't bestow it."

  Ellia was speechless.

  "In fact, I've been catching up on the lore of your world."

  "And?" I'm eager to know.

  "No one in the history of all Em-Gaiea knows where these gods actually came from. It's pure fantasy that they've descended from this 'Mother of the Heavens'. In fact the existence of this 'Mother of Heaven' is a fallacy, and a recent one at that."

  "As though the peoples of your universe know where you came from." Pft.

  That smile broadens. "Now that you've seen me, what do you need?"

  I'm not sure.

  "I'm going to propose something to you, Jaime, and I hope you do it. You wanted a new life, a life off of this dreadful planet. I'm going to offer you the beginning of that life. If you want it."

  "I'm listening."

  "Before the break of a dawn, arrange a pile of stones, like the marker of a burial place. It will serve as 'Jaime's' memorial."

  "Memorial?" Ellia asks.

  Naeyr nods. "One life has to end. 'Jaime' has to 'die'; he has to let go of being Em-Gaiean, and embrace being a Yatomite, one of ours."

  But if I'm metaphorically dead… I mean, who will I be then?

  She utters something in that alien language. I only catch the end of what she'd said: 'Aluric.' Then: "When the sun touches you on that morning."

  Stop reading my thoughts, damn it!

  She shrugs.

  "How do we know you're right?" Ellia asks, "How do we know that you're not misleading us to our death?"

  Naeyr slaps her hand onto the table. She stares into Ellia with that rigid, serious gaze. She takes her fork, and with one hard slam, stabs it through her hand.

  Both of us jump back in shock. Then she pulls the fork out and shows us her palm. The hole is there, but instead of blood, water seeps out. "Divinities don't bleed." She takes my hand.

  I jerk back, she holds fast, peering into my eyes. She squeezes some water onto my hand, and with the first finger of that hand she had stabbed, she draws on my palm. Afterward she gets up and heads toward the guards posted at the rear of the lobby.

  Ellia gives me a sideways glance. "Strange 'friend' you've got there. Alien?"

  "Chyeah. Something about a universe in another dimension. I'm not sure how they ended up here."

  "'They', as in 'more than one'."

  "As in eight more, yeah." We exit the facility. The horses are hardly excited to see us.

  "So, proposing that we actually 'kill' Pephistofar." We climb onto their backs, and start off for somewhere. "What effect is that going to have on Em-Gaiea?"

  Anarchy? Not sure that's the word I want to use. "Social reform."" Yeah that sounds good to me.

  She bobs her head, as if weighing those two words. Social and Reform. Should I have used 'Revolution'? "That's an easy way of putting it," she says, "Because they'll cling to morality based off of 'Divine Mandates' like brown on a black man."

  "I'm sure there's an amicable solution. Maybe you could influence them?"

  "I don't have the power to do it en masse; damn the idea of doing it on a global scale."

  This leaves me with a lot to think about.

  "Let's go back to the ranch."

  "Right." So we head back.

  The Misses is up around 3 AM daily. She never gave me her proper name, just that she goes by 'Misses' when it comes to us 'strangers'. Torrence was right. She didn't like me, doesn't like me, and won't.

  Still, I scurry down the stairs to the compact dining room. Day after day she arranges breakfast for the four of us, and the chair I sit in across from Torrence and Misses is always pulled out and ready for me.

  It's a gesture I appreciate. That I'm welcome here as long as I'm able to pull my weight. I stare at the plate. A sour taste pops into the back of my throat. I swallow, and it burns on the way down.

  "You alright, boy? You look like you's spending too much time thinking about what don't concern you."

  "It concerns everyone," I say, keeping my eyes on my cooling breakfast, how the steam gradually cases to waft up from the eggs and ham.

  "What can concern everyone?"

  I pause. I'm not sure how to express this, but… "How does one go about fostering positive change for the better of society at large without systematically instigating massacres the whole world over?"

  A fork clangs on a plate. I look up. Misses's face is pale as if with terror. She glances at Torrence, who slowly chews on his toast.

  "Go on."

  "Em-Gaiea is dependent on the divine sanction of Pephistofar's system of law. If it is possible, social ethics could be the basis of a proper 'moral' authority on both an individual and wide-spread basis. But no matter how I look at it, there's no way around the unsightly conflict of bloodshed."

  Ella rushes down the stairs. "Sorry I'm late!" She gives them both two pecks, one on each cheek. Then she glances at me. The sun hadn't ridden up the curtain of the sky like a pervert would a whore's skirt. Already Ellia's out the back door.

  "You's better not let your breakfast go cold, girl!" Torrence calls after her.

  "Sorry papa, horses ain't gunna feed themselves!"

  I snarfed my food down. Dumped my dishes in the sink for Misses to see to, darted out the back door. Together Ellia and me piled the stones out in the pasture where the sheep lazily spent their days grazing. Only it wasn't daylight yet.

  I picked up the final rock to serve as the top piece of this… my memorial. Her gaze was intense as I stepped towards the pile. I reached out, and took a step back, then held the rock idly at my side.

  She cocked her head at me. "Well?"

  All I did was stare. I pussied out.

  I'm not sure how many nights went by. I avoided the pasture like it was plagued. I'm a coward; don't need to tell me twice. Ellia would come out to the spot every few nights. We'd sit and stare into the stars.

  "Torrence would object to you sitting with me out here like you do."

  "I'm grown," she says, "I discovered 'boys' when I was fourteen. I ain't missing nothing."

  "What about 'men'?"

  "What, a yellow-bellied thing like you?"
She stretches onto her side, facing me. "Don't think I'd mix bloods with a man who's too scared to put a rock atop a pile of stones."

  "It's not just a rock. It's the promise of a new beginning."

  "So you say."

  You know what? I place the rock where it belongs, on top of hte pile. "There. Happy now?" Does this make me less 'yellow-bellied'?

  She smiles and reaches for me. I pull her up; she wraps her arms around my waist. She guides me into her room, shuts the door, and shoves me down into the bed. She takes a picture, then climbs onto the bed with me.

  "We're still wearing clothes."

  She giggles. "It's not that kind of night." Regardless she nestles up to me and runs her fingers through my curly brown hair. "I just want to… be 'there' for you. Seems few, if it ain't any one, is." She kisses my cheek, long and soft. She runs her hand along my stomach.

  And down into my —

  No. Only my stomach, up to my chest, riding my shirt up. Then she presses her lips to mine, straddles my jean-clad hips. Her sides are soft. Her back is strong.

  'It's not that kind of night.' She keeps me wide awake.

  "Try and sleep, Jaime."

  "Oh. Yes. Tease me. Then tell me to sleep. Brilliant."

  She yawns. "Close your eyes. Sleep with me. You're tired anyway."

  "That manipulative bull —"

  …

  'Who Craves Truth.'