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Then the wholeness of what he was seeing caught him. Three women, youthful and matronly and aged… ?Yes,? the one who bore the countenance of Juniper Mackenzie said. ?I am.? ?Are you-? He hesitated.?Are you my mother? Or… Her??
His hand moved in a sign. She answered it.?And the answer to that, my lad, is… yes!?
Impish amusement glinted in her green eyes for a second. The black woman snorted; there was something about her that reminded him of Sam Aylward, though there was no physical resemblance at all. When she spoke there was a soft drawl to her words: ?Call me a Crone, and you?re toast, bukra boy.?
Rudi didn?t know what a bukra was, but he suspected the word-she prounced it as bookra -wasn?t a compliment.
He brought the back of his right hand to his brows. ?As you wish, Wise One,? he said-which was just another name for the eldest of the Three. ?Damn, but it?s a
She looked at her own hands, flexing the fingers as if the sensation were unfamiliar. ?Marian, how long have we known each other?? the blond girl said, a soft purling lilt in her tones. ?Forty-seven years, or untold billions, depending on how you define we and know.? ?And either way you?re still a grouch.?
She smiled at Rudi.?And they called me Deer Dancer, in my day. I died three thousand years before your birth, on another turn of the Wheel. I was the Maiden sacrifice, and I was the Mother who loves, and in my age I tossed silver hair to dance down the Moon. Now I wear this face of Her once more, for a little while.?
Two ravens soared down from the branches and landed on one of the logs that flanked the fire, preening and grooming themselves. Somewhere a wolf howled. Sparks drifted upward, into boughs underlit by the flames, towards stars larger and brighter-colored than any he?d seen before; yet that paled beside the shining glory of a full moon. Despite the darkness, what he could see was hard-edged, somehow more definite than any vision by the light of common day.
If the trees had spoken, he would not have been surprised. He did not feel as if he dreamed; rather that he had woken, as if he had been drifting beneath the sea all his life and now had plunged upward like a leaping dolphin into the shock of air and light.
Rudi made reverence; then he stood erect, his arms crossed on his chest. ?Why am I here, Ladies?? he asked bluntly.?When last I remember I was on a task of some urgency.? ?You are here to understand, a little,? the Mother said.?We have to come towards you in forms you can grasp so that we can talk at all; but that limits Us.? ?Of course,? he said.?How can a man tell all his mind to a child, or a God to a man? What can you tell me?? ?What did I tell you about magic, child of my heart??
Many things, he thought. But… ?That it doesn?t stop being magic when you understand it??
She nodded.?Then see.?
Darkness; a nothingness in which he floated, nothingness so complete that even emptiness was absent and duration itself had not yet begun. A point of light, and existence twisting as it expanded and the arrow of time sprang from the string, soaring upward. Darkness that swelled, dense and hot and pregnant with Being, and then a flash of light as suns fell in upon themselves and lit. They burned with a glow that illuminated curtains of red and yellow fire, structures so vast that worlds would be less than grains of sand amongst them. Stars and galaxies flying apart from each other. Darkness again, as they dwindled into distance. Suns turned swollen and red and guttered out, or exploded in cataclysmic violence that faded into cankered knots of twisted space. Those boiled away in turn. Darkness more absolute than imagination could encompass, as the stuff of matter itself decayed into absence. Darkness without end, for nothing was different from nothing and nowhere was anyplace and everywhere. ?What does that remind you of?? his mother?s voice asked.
He blinked back to something like the waking world, where light flickered ruddy on tree bark. ?It?s… it?s like the way Sandra Arminger sees the world. From what I picked up over the years in what you might be callin? her unguarded moments. Dead, in a way. Everything moving on its own, without spirit. Grand and glorious and wonderful, but… empty. And we gone like a candle flame when we die.?
He blinked alarm.?You?re not saying that?s true, are you now??
She smiled gently at him, and indicated their surroundings. He nodded, taking the point, and she spoke: ?No. But once it was, until it was made to be different. What did?-she looked up at the ravens-?a certain old gentleman tell you once about history and time??
He blinked again; that night on the mountainside was far distant in miles and months, but it wasn?t the sort of thing you forgot. Even if you?d been dreaming a vision while your wasted body lay on the edge of death. He repeated what those deep tones had so cryptically revealed: ?Fact becomes history; history becomes legend; legend becomes myth. Myth turns again to the begi
After a moment he went on:?Was that truth? The whole truth?? ?Yes. No.?
The figure who bore his mother?s semblance smiled sympathetically as she denied him certainty. The blond maiden spoke:?It?s so hard to say this in words-? ?But hey, you?ll give it a try,?dapa,? the black woman said sardonically.
The Maiden tossed her fair head and said:?Then see again.?
His body dropped away, and once again he floated in nothingness. The point of light, and the same eon-upon-eon passage from light to dark. But this time a light was born in the last darkness, and it looked at him. ?That is Mind,? the Mother whispered.?Wisdom. Wisdom itself, that brought together all knowledge of all that ever was.? ?Hope,? the blond Maiden added.?Love.? ?That?s us,? the black figure of the Wise One said.?Including you. Many times removed. Mo? removed than you can imagine. More than we can say in words-? ?You keep saying that, but you speak in words nonetheless!? Rudi said, exasperated.?And it?s more ignorant I am afterwards than ever I was before!? ?Then see,? the Three said together.
This time the perspective was different. More abstract; he strained to see pattern, and meaning, but for a long moment all was chaos. Then order appeared. Instead of the point of light, there were two great sheets of… Being. Rippling through spaces in which whole universes of stars would be less than one kernel of barley in an ocean, like the ba
But there was a difference. Something passed from one cycle to the next. Something tiny, yet containing everything, and from that all changed as existence spread out again. ?Mind,? his mother, all Mothers, said.?The universe births life. Life creates Mind. Mind encompasses that which bore it blindly, spreads through all the stuff of matter and makes a new Heaven and a new Earth. One in which from its begi
He fell through singing veils of light, struggling with awe and anger at himself, that he could not grasp the concepts roaring by him like dragons. Then he stood before the fire again. ?Is Godhood many, or one?? the Mother said. ?Both,? Rudi replied.?Both at once.? ?She is all things.? The Maiden nodded. A sigh.?And so, He is divided.? ?Your friend the padre would say there was war in Heaven,? the Wise One added.?He?s not wrong, either. Don?t mistake this you?re seeing for the only truth.? ?The Cutters!? he said suddenly.?As above, so below. Sure, and if there?s war here, there must be so above.?