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 emplacement for a dialog.
Sarconsson leers at everyone, outrageously gleeful inside the devil costume he’s been gifted. 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 composite bow of laminated wood, horn, and sinew that is carried by wild nomads.
“You want old, Jude. We give You old.” Love pats Their curls. “It’s a concept. Don’t fuss. You are actually 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. He 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 …
“Why, He’s got a looking glass,” says Cornumsdotter.
“More of a spy glass,” mutters the gloomy Lord.
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 an arrow. “Our Gang of Four. As mismatched as a boot and a bed slipper, a toe ring and a horse shoe.”
“Damn You, stay out of my head,” huffs Lord Judas. “I think boot and You say boot.”
“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 light fill the hall to overflowing and burn in the balcony mirrors. They seem to reflect a firestorm.
“Hell fire and damnation right here,” says Love, “complete with Your own little dancing devil.”
Lord Judas, grim as the last autumn leaf, says, “A clever joke. My Virgin Mother will be amused. To see Me roasting.” He turns to His impish guests who, busy strutting and shining, ignore Him. “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. Riots in the choir loft. Beard pulling brawls among 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 inside 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 with grievances and two breezy chuckleheads, all of them limited by embodiment. They can’t help it, living like sausage packed inside skin. It’s a necessary condition of the universe where everything is, in one way or another, contained — even Immortals, or at least those Immortals (egads! so many of them!) spawned after the universe Banged into being. Can it really be going on 14 billion years now?
Love scratches behind one knee with an arrow point. The toxin is harmless to Their naked, sulky archer. That facade, while cute, doesn’t much fit and the seams itch. It encloses only a tiny sliver 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 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.