H C Turk, page 6
With the sinner's gown at my feet, I was revealed by the dim lantern as a stranger known, the bishop unable to recognize Alba, for he saw only a creature to become his most intimate friend -angels have neither age nor identity. As I removed his cover and pulled at his clothing, the bishop was replaced by a man, revealing a male's uniqueness, that central bone grown on occasion as though replacement for Adam's taken rib. This rib I smothered with an insertion foretold by Marybelle the swimmer. The former bishop swam against me, stroking through my body, receiving ecstasy from the special pressure of sex. Now the bishop was a man forcing his woman flat, holding her down with his bulk and his thrusting as he gained great pleasure denoted by his groaning, great pleasure from the muscle he stroked through. But soon he found the pressure of this angel uncommon, giving great pleasure that came immediately before equivalent pain. The force of her vagina holding him increased with his arousal until his ecstasy hurt. Until he had to cease his swimming. But the pressure did not end.
Careless was I, without intent, as the man failed to remove himself, the lust rushing out of him. though his phallus was un-changed-too hard, too hard and hurting as noted by his silent grimace. But what equivalence had I gained to be equally pained? Was my sinning aspect the reception of the same misery in sex as any male invading me? Surely die bishop's misery could not have been worse, for my body was cramped as though crushing me, the agony so tortuous as to convince me death was next. This impression, however, was only feeling; the bishop's was fact, the former minister and temporary man grasping my thighs and attempting to remove himself as the agony increased, filling his life as completely as God's awareness. But awareness was soon lost to him as he fell away and the torture ended, replaced by a shocked numbness more terrifying than any pain; for when he fell away, he did not fall whole.
Too exhausted to move, too damaged to respond, the former man only temporarily alive looked to me, to the orgasmic contractions of my witch's muscle. Certainly no awareness was to be seen in my persona, only the same exhausted pain. And the man became religious again as he stared at the child's tearless eyes, became religious with guilt, perhaps, or had he ever felt remorse for fucking such a baby before she pinched his prick off? Whether awareness or shock, his attitude was ending, replaced by an empty sleep that remained. Before morning, the bishop was holy again, for although without blood, permanently he was with his God.
Again I dreamed, for God had not allowed the interval between Mother's death and her daughter's new life to end. Hellish was this intervening era to provide dreams as tortuous as they were real, to be verified later only by further death. Within this reality that my memory made a dream, I remained upon a sinning bed. So sickly I felt the entire night that only vague impressions of lost Mother could penetrate, soon replaced with further pain, no comparison, no seeking a source for my illness in my family's death, only suffering as I perspired and shivered uncontrollably. Scarcely did I feel better when a vomiting came, an expulsion so forceful as to seem murderous. So weak that I could not lean toward the floor, upon myself and the sinners' bedding I vomited utter misery. Thereafter, my pain remained dense enough to make me oblivious to those sick materials. The Lady Rathel, however, was interested in my puke.
So ill was I that I could not distinguish that dream of illness from the evil health itself, could not be certain whether the lady entered in the morning of my day or the era of my imagining. But if not a dream, it became a dream, for what other source could generate such strange activity? Lady Rathel searched my vomit. With the sounds of sinning males outside the chamber of my nightmare, Rathel entered to view that literal illness coating the bedding and me, finding an item so desirable that she stole it. Into my vomit she reached to lift an object, and then she had six fingers on that one hand. But those nearing voices chased her hand away, men entering the room even as Rathel entered her own clothing, that increased hand swiftly into her bodice to come away with only five fingers, her stolen good safely stored against her bosom, both hands and their body bilge wiped upon her gown as though to lead the curious to that locale.
Then came street theater, the male sinners mentioning witches and asking of the girl's whereabouts as though some reasonable association existed, Lady Rathel insisting in the negative as per her recent proving. But with a new death and the witches all executed, it seems one was left, the men replied. Left in the world due to your inferior search, the lady retorted-or believe ye this child was out killing folk in all her illness? Rathel then moved aside to reveal a sickly lass with vomit everywhere and a personage too vanquished to be aware. Awake the night I've been with this child who has retched upon myself, the lady asserted, displaying her bodice. And if you need more convincing than this blatant proof, I suggest you find another occupation. Now, away with you to find the true witch, though doubtless the creature is escaped to the wild world, what with her cleverness to have eluded you while in your own town.
Away the males went to gather many witches, though Rathel pronounced them all human the following day. Thereafter, she refused her further expertise, for surely the killing demon had been lost, and work had she in greater England denouncing available evil. Away the males went, the lady allowing me to sleep, returning in my better memory to have the servants clean the bedding, though Rathel with a soft cloth wiped my face herself; for some stolen items should be handled only by similars, wealthy folk aware of an evil as expensive as death. On to London, then, for further malice, Rathel's greater task not denouncing evil but promulgating her own, the lady's best sin in the guise of a comely lass who ate men and discharged vengeance.
BOOK TWO: LONDON
Four
Sinners excel at calculation. From the firmament of nature issues the Earth in portions, all its living parts mathematical in growth: the geometry of a leafs veining, the symmetry of a ferret's coat. Ponderously imitating God's superior ways, sinners effect nature's numerics by calculating exact lengths and widths of the stone rows thfey've heaped to form buildings. How profound these people are to emulate a tree by killing it, cutting it, and rearranging the pieces into shops. But how unnatural was this witch to approve of, even appreciate, their architecture?
No more unnatural than silence, a trait found only in the sinners' realm. In the deepest caves are scurrying creatures' feet or water dripping from cracks in the stressed but stabilized, irregular roof. No forest is without a variety of unsi-lent animals; every desert has a wind. And have certain oceans not been violated by the sounds of witches' feet dragging, dragging along their floors? In my dreams, every sea is defiled by this noise. But only in a sinners' construction have I heard utter silence. Only in a site free of life's activities did I begin to understand the lives of sinners.
The tremendous buildings of London I first saw in a daze, a dull delirium of living wherein my life of forest and family was exchanged for a land of city and enemy. The sea voyage from Man's Isle to England remains to me a poor memory of vague aching. That additional journey up the River Thames then deeper into London I recall no more clearly, my memory tainted by a death to last a lifetime and dreams to corrupt my recollection by becoming real.
Days after my arrival, I was scarcely more comfortable or actively alive, not speaking nor eating, feigning no interest in Rathel's world, which had been reduced to her massive town house that seemed a city in itself. Provided as my own was a chamber, a bed, and thereupon I remained, sleeping for constant hours, dark and light, until one morn when Lady Rathel stepped from my room and left me an exit. Having said something I ignored, Rathel vacated my chamber through a door, a door left open so that she or one of her countless servants could come with ease to speak with me fruitlessly. Since even witches know doors to be temporary holes in walls, after Rathel departed, I followed. Achieving my best awareness in this sinning world, I understood that more than one door existed in the house, and surely one to lead outside. Therefore, I searched until finding a door in a wall with a window that revealed the exterior. Since the door was locked, I waited behind drapery like an animal in the wilds, one hiding for prey or from a predator. Wait I did for the first person to quit the house through that exit I observed. Then brazenly I ran outside, past the departing Rathel.
Being no expert in counting, I knew not how many days I was gone. Being no specialist in surviving within a sinner's world, I was too weak to struggle with the constables who returned me to Rathel's house, her city. Then I consented to eat rather than starve, consuming uncooked food that would not sicken me, thereafter returning to that chamber designated as mine, returning for more sleep, further vagueness.
Sense enough had Lady Rathel to wait for my strength to increase before again speaking to me through that open doorway. Her next offer I reasonably heeded, for the woman offered to reveal London so fully that I might learn of quitting the realm. Of course, I agreed to
travel with her through the city.
That day I experienced my first carriage journey. Immediately I felt an odd guilt for being dragged in a wooden box by horses that should have been free in the wilds; yet were they harnessed any less than I? At least I felt relief that I would never reek of sinners' contact as did these animals, because I was being shown an escape. But Lady Rathel lied. Her true goal in this journey was to display her world as so vast and complicated that one ignorant witch would never leave alone, and that to promote my own continued living I should remain with Rathel until . . . Until I somehow killed for her as she had mentioned on Man's Isle.
During that lengthy voyage, I came to understand that London had infinite directions all of which led to one another. The buildings were so massive and varied that the accumulation seemed an artificial seashore with abrupt, stone cliffs. Though different from the structures of Jonsway as the barrow vine is from the silkwood tree, nevertheless, the roofs and walls were recognizable'5 as constituting a village, one whose mass and might changed its very species from town to city. No part of Jonsway was so dense that the wilds could not be sensed beyond, but London was terrifying in having no end. The very quantity of buildings and paved streets and the accompanying populace were so ponderous as to temper my reactions. I was not then capable of contemplating such a bulk of new experience, my perceptions lessened by the remnants of my former life, inundated with past disasters. But I understood that there was no leaving London, only being in London. Therefore, my reaction to this endless city was a sense of being both lost and trapped within its midst. Evoking this response was the lady's intent, but succeed she did beyond her plans; for whereas Rathel meant to intimidate me with London, she did not predict that I would also find an achievement of her people to inspire regard.
The sight to astonish me was St. Nicholas Cathedral. The largest building seen, St. Nicholas was the most excessive yet least possessive of constructions, being both extravagant and selfless, this contradictory grandiloquence inspiring my awe.
Obviously a place of worship, the building seemed fit for Satan as its deity. The complexity of stone levels and probing spires, multiple peaks and curves thrusting upward, seemed endless rude jabs toward the sky, stone gesticulations denoting not calm worship but a type of passion; and is not passion a type of torment? Those acute roofs, complicated facades, and gaudy flashes of colored glass implied that the evil of excess was being worshiped.
A fog veiled the air between coach and cathedral, a structure that even when obscured seemed superior to such meager elements as moisture. But what influence made God's creation of airborne water seem subservient to piled stone? I then became dismayed that all the passing sinners found concern only in their own movement, as though their individual progress could compare to their massed religion's greatest manifestation. But no sinner displayed such enthusiasm, only London's single witch.
Beside me on a stuffed seat that seemed luxurious to no witch, Lady Rathel viewed her companion, noting my interest that drew her own. After tapping the coach partition for the driver to halt, Rathel spoke to me.
"Alba, your attention is unhidden. The honesty you display in not hiding your interest is typical of your people. But I find your concern with architecture surprising."
"My regard is not for this construction's being an edifice, but due to its being a church," I replied. "My concern is not for builders, but for God."
"And how is it you understand with no prior knowledge that this edifice is a church, and not a ... a university?"
"No grander building have I seen," I returned. "Even sinners are sensible enough to save their greatest efforts to promote immortality."
Evidently the cathedral had caused my life's energy to return, for although I had previously muttered to Rathel, now .ll seemed we had shared a conversation, one whose lack of animosity implied that I might soon accept this sinner's presence as though enduring a hard winter. All my sensitive comprehension was disheartening, however, because I would reject the need to become accustomed to this lady-I longed for my natural life to be returned. But I allowed no clear thoughts of such desires, for they were impossible to manifest.
"This is St. Nicholas Cathedral," the woman told me, "a structure built two centuries past."
I could smell her attempt to enthuse me with longevity, but since the cathedral was scarcely older than my mother, the sinner failed to impress.
We would enter. The lady's mentioning that we might as per my choosing was a notion to secure my agreement. I found myself walking toward a mountain, a natural entity never seen by the white witch. But this mountain was a sinner's imitation. The structure seemed to grow as we approached, looming as though about to fall, about to crush me with its sensations. Nearing with Rathel, I could smell more than the odor of sinners: I could smell the stone fragrance of the building, smell that rare scent of glass seldom experienced by witches-and how was this material made?-smell dried resins applied to seal the timbers, smell the metal portions on the windows and doors, the forged and heated and beaten metal that had first frightened me in Jonsway and would ever be distressing. But these odors all became secondary as we gained the entry, an appropriately grand set of doors. Rathel opened one with some needed heft, its sound all mass and movement. Then we were inside.
The entrance chamber was as voluminous as the entirety of any home in Jonsway, but beyond I could sense the vast space of the cathedral proper. All about me were intricate surfaces the sinners had oversimplified. A deep frieze's rolling shapes of vines and flowers lacked the subtleties of an actual plant perceivable on endless levels. Unlike any natural mineral, the hard floor was flawlessly flat. Woefully had the sinners failed to improve upon nature: here a leafs
shape, there the colors of fruit, all superficial.
I waited to proceed from this chamber, waited for a superior experience, for I presumed that grandeur lay beyond. Lady Rathel for a moment spoke with men dressed in the manner of the Bishop Dalimore I had known. These folk I ignored more than that man of scant reverence, for beyond was the hollow heart of the cathedral hopefully filled with spiritual things. Rathel and I first filled the building with sound, our footfalls as we entered a corridor enveloping the air. The sound preceded us, becoming lost in an inner atmosphere more sizable than hearing. To either side were additional, smaller rooms, but at this corridor's end was the greatest cavern of this cliff, the main nave that expressed so profound a volume as to define space as another of God's elements. True, the floor was covered with pews as though a larger version of the common Jonsway church I had attended, but this hollow heart was filled with centuries of the sinners' finest attempts at holy grandeur, and I was moved by the sincerity of their worship.
The far wall was so distant that I sensed a faint haze, the cathedral encompassing such a space as to form its own weather. But this impression vanished when I saw that the same wall held a crassness turned sublime; for the heights of the vast surface were filled with elaborate panes of colored glass depicting scenes of Jesus and his cohorts. The characters, however, were of no import. The clarity of the hues extending toward me in the form of light, sheer light, was a true accomplishment of the sinners. This complexity of crystals seemed a sky itself instead of a mere usage of the atmosphere to transmit glassy hues, and the high sight led me higher. There went my vision and my breath, for the ceiling's reaching dome was another sky, a completed curve of sharp arches leading to the dome's center, a round row of glass shapes each larger than I, clear but colored connectors between God's sky and His witch below.
No Rathel existed in my world, for alone with God I stood in the center of His nave, enraptured by silence before the glass wall, the arched ceiling a clear cavern to house me. Then, without the unneeded intermediary of perception, I came to sense the concept of this edifice. Without sight or smell I achieved purest intellection, comprehending a most important aspect of sinners. Though I had known of their obsessions since Jonsway, the sinners' need to verify themselves to Lord God revealed their similarity to witches; for whereas no witch is obsessed, both mortal and well souled love God and love to worship Him. As I stood in the sinners' building that was their worship incarnate, I was filled with a contradictory grandeur appropriate for sinners; for even as they damaged their world, they worshiped the God Who made it. More understanding I became of Lord God's sinning people who by this edifice were shown to be imperfect in their sinning. As I stood motionless within this new universe, the experience affixed within me a change of living, change of life. And I could read the sinners' hearts in this machination, their edifice device not a vain display of craftsmanship, but a selfless conveyance of gratitude for expected salvation.
What inspiration was St. Nicholas Cathedral to Lady Rathel that following our visit there she changed her ways by changing mine? During my early days in London, I remained clothed in that dress lent by some Jonsway lady. After St. Nicholas, however, Rathel determined that I would be punished for my interest in London by dressing as did the city women. A servant would therefore educate me in the discipline of elaborate attire. Most of Rathel's slaves, however, seemed less than enthused with my presence, offering me neither smile nor kind word, but what was rudeness to a girl stolen from her mother's world? As for my response, what regard did the hirelings of a murderess deserve?
