Second chapter has been rewritten! :D
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(Preparation — Unclean Intrusions — Recollection — Survey — The Rite Begun — A Strangeness — The Rite Undone — Reproach of the Self)
~~~ are used for changing the perception of vision (POV)
••• denotes flashback
*** denotes time skip
'' denotes internal thought
… denotes silence
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'…I feel… unwell…'
Nay.
Away with thee, thou profane and creeping thought! What unclean audacity hath carried thee into consecrated ground? I press mine fingers hard against my temples as though bone might imprison what spirit cannot as though the skull were fashioned less to protect the mind than to keep the corruption of it from spilling outward upon the holy works below and as though the architecture of the head were a kind of moral argument and I its most unconvinced inhabitant.
Beneath my station the great hollow breathes with preparation.
My brothers and sisters move through the chamber in solemn procession and their varied forms casting long shadows beneath the pale light of censers whose dream-incense crawleth upward in thin twisting strands like souls reluctant to depart the flesh. Some rehearse the sacred cadences with mouths dry from repetition and polishing each syllable until it gleams with rehearsed reverence. Others tend the altarworks with the precise devotion of those who believe the universe itself is watching and mean to give it something worthy of witness. They do not know what I know. They do not carry what I carry. I suppose that is mercy and I suppose I ought not resent them for it and yet here I sit resenting them and cataloguing the resentment with the weary thoroughness of a woman who hath long since stopped expecting better of herself.
All hath been prepared for the Most Solemn Occasion.
The Attunement of Our One and Only God.
That They abandon us not again unto that terrible silence between worlds, vast and formless dark wherein prayer decayeth before reaching any listening ear and where a soul may cry aloud for so many ages that eventually the cry itself becomes indistinguishable from the quiet surrounding it.
And here sit I above them in mine appointed place watching their imperfections with eyes that weep black and the sable ichor issueth still from mine sockets as it hath since the beginning of my choosing. Folk mightst name it curse. I have named it gift. Which perhaps amounted to the selfsame thing viewed from opposite sides of the same wound.
Once it burned like molten metal poured deliberately and slowly into the hollow of the eye socket and the burning did not stop for what felt like seasons but now it doth not burn. The absence of pain hath become familiar the way a scar becomes familiar not because the flesh hath healed but because the nerve beneath hath died and dead things make no complaint of their passing. You notice only the absence of what once cried out and that frightened me more than the agony ever did. These unbidden and unwanted thoughts come often now.
And yet—
No.
That phrasing is false. Dangerous. There can be no and yet within this matter. I am the Instrument. Doubt requires alternatives and I was not fashioned for alternatives. I am vessel. Mouth. Conduit. The and yet is not available to me as either grammatical structure or theological one. I know this. I have known it since the choosing and I remind myself of it the way a woman in a burning building reminds herself of the location of the door.
And yet—
'God forgive me.'
There it is again. I speak of this to no one. There exists not a tongue within this congregation prepared to receive such confession and no ear here could hear these words without the hearing itself becoming injury. Thus the thoughts arrive as they will and I endure them as I endure the cough now clawing at my chest as the perpetual betrayal of the body which cares nothing for sanctity nor ceremony and seizeth me always in the moments where dignity mattered most. The flesh hath its own theology and its doctrines are humiliating.
'O Lord,' pray within the silence of mine own skull, 'teach Thy servant mastery over the riot of her inward self.' For if these thoughts were discovered, particularly those thoughts, the intimate contemplations concerning Thee and me and the sacred violence that passed through my flesh whenever Thy Essence poured therein I know not what defence I should offer. My throat tightens and I know not that any defence would suffice or that I would deserve one or that I would want one if it were offered and required me to explain myself plainly to another person.
Although—
No.
I will not follow that corridor of thought where it leads for I know the place already. One doth not walk such inward passages without leaving portions of oneself behind at every turning. I have returned from them diminished and the diminishment remained visible if one knew where to look and none knows better than I where to look having made a careful study of my own ruins over many years.
This hour demandeth sanctity.
We stand at the culmination of ages of devotion that hath consumed all things and consumed comfort and pleasure and companionship and years and whole lives sharpened into singular purpose until the lives themselves were consumed and only the purpose remained like a blade after the hand that wielded it hath rotted to nothing. The Lord of Shades returned after a silence vast enough to bury kingdoms beneath despair and in that silence lesser peoples accepted lesser gods and filled their mouths with petty divinities and swallowed them like starving curs swallowing spoiled meat and grateful merely to feel full and for the sensation of fullness regardless of what produced it.
But we did not.
We kept the True Name between our teeth and neither swallowed nor spat it forth and now the fruit of that suffering must not be cast aside through weakness. Least of all mine own weakness. Below me they labour as their zeal is commendable and their imperfections are many and every imperfection belongs unto me by rights of office. For what is leadership save the inheritance of all failure beneath it? I spent mine own devotion too lavishly and polished my communion with the Lord until it gleamed whilst theirs remained unfinished like a blade half whetted and a vessel half sealed and a wound half cauterised and all the worse for the attempt. This truth brings me no pleasure for it hath never once adjusted itself for my comfort and I have ceased to expect it will begin.
I strike mine hands together and the sound cracks through the hollow and returns altered for all things return altered after touching the stones of this place for there is something in the rock itself that changed what passed through it. I have never investigated what.
"Is all prepared," say I though the cough corrupts the edges of the words and the consonants going soft and uncertain, "my dear brothers and sisters?"
As one body they answer: "Yes, O Hazel, our Speaker and Guide. All is made ready to please our Lord."
Their voices join together strangely with varied throats and varied mouths and twisted jaws and malformed tongues cohering somehow into singular sound the way broken instruments may yet play in concert if the players are sufficiently devoted to the same note. It is beautiful the way a battlefield is sometimes beautiful at dusk like the honesty of ruin and the absence of pretence and the red splendour of opened flesh beneath cold air and the strange peace of things past contesting. I swallow the bitterness rising within my throat and begin.
"O God Above Gods, we seek Thy mercy. We who once clung unto lesser truths confess now our folly—"
The litany unfolded as it hath a thousand times in rehearsal with each phrase a stepping-stone laid across immeasurable dark and each word an act of violence against silence for prayer hath never truly been conversation. Prayer is insistence. Prayer is demand clothed in humility's skin and fist wrapped in velvet and striking the same spot until something answers or the hand breaks.
"Thine origin is unknowable. Thine power beyond imitation. By that power shall we follow Thee unto the endless age—"
Mine throat dries yet I press onward.
"If Thou demand worship, we give it freely. If Thou demand sacrifice, we are Thine already. If Thou demand banquet—"
A pause brief and tiny yet beneath the pause something opened the way a hairline crack in a dam opened invisibly and silently and with catastrophic intent already forming.
"—consume us whole."
Yea. The cadence is correct and the rightness of it moved through me like warmth through buried stone slowly and imperfectly yet real. The congregation answered with rising fervour as their voices swelling until the very air thickened beneath the weight of collective wanting.
"We would be made part of Thee! Thy will is absolute!"
Soon. Surely soon.
"O Graceful Liberator, we beg Thy acknowledgement! We plead for Thy presence! We plead—!"
…
Something. Something stood at the edge of perception that was not sound and movement and not any quality that hath a name in the language I was given for naming things.
Recognition.
The sensation of entering a chamber believed empty only to discover another breathing there already slowly and patiently and having been there considerably longer than you. A presence foreign yet horribly familiar known the way flesh knows the blade that once entered it not by understanding but by a deeper accounting like the body's own record kept beneath the reach of thought. The body never forgets such lessons for it merely waits until recognition becomes necessary.
Again.
Something brushed against the threshold of this place. Another will. Another hunger and I mean hunger plainly without the softening of metaphor or the elevation of spirit but with the ugly honesty of appetite stripped of ceremony. Something tested the boundaries of sanctity the way a beast tested fencewire with its teeth patiently and purposefully and utterly without reverence for what the wire surrounded.
An intrusion. An affront.
And my ignorance concerning its nature enrageth me more than the intrusion itself which is its own embarrassment to enumerate. For I am the Instrument. It is my office to know and I am specifically and structurally designed for knowing. Being surprised is not within the scope of my function and yet here I sit surprised and doing a poor job of concealing it.
"Hazel?"
I start violently enough that the great chair shuddered beneath me.
Shameful.
There exists no dignified language for that species of fear. Entirely animal and entirely involuntary. My body making its own decisions without consulting anyone and the congregation stared upward now with concern writ openly upon their faces. Concern is rare among Seekers for devotion usually devoured softer sentiments before they ripen fully and consuming them from the inside so thoroughly that those who feel them cannot always identify what hath been lost.
Thus their concern frightened me more than their terror would have.
"Are you well, Great Speaker?"
Well?
What an absurd little word.
I bear within my flesh the Essence of a God whose existence rendered ordinary language structurally inadequate. The question sitteth in my ears like foreign coinage technically legitimate and practically useless like the wrong currency for the transaction being proposed. Well. As though I might report my condition the way one reporteth weather.
"No matter," say I. "Continue."
Then came another cough by far the sharpest and my chest burned and my limbs feel ill-fitted to themselves as though the bones shifted subtly during the night and neglected to inform the flesh surrounding them of the new arrangement.
The congregation hesitated.
Of course they do.
A congregation whose Speaker nearly leaped from her throne at the sound of her own name possessed every right to hesitation. I cannot blame them but I can however feel the specific and personal shame of having caused it which is different from blame and considerably harder to discharge.
I command again and reluctantly they obey and their reluctance condemned me further by ringing in the stone-heavy air like an additional testimony added after the verdict.
Still that unseen presence lingered at the edges and pressed against the borders of this sacred place with casual indifference as though unaware boundaries exist at all and as though it hath encountered very few walls in its existence and learned nothing useful from those it hath encountered. Some starving remnant of abandoned godhood perhaps or some lesser thing feeding upon the residue of holiness the way vermin feed upon the residue of a feast present not by invitation but by opportunity.
Foolish thing.
Hast thou any understanding at all what place thou trespassed upon? Hast thou any understanding at all what inhabits its Speaker? I form silent rebuke and I imagine the intruder scattered into nothing.
'That is not how this worketh.'
I possess no dominion and have never possessed dominion for I am vessel only like cup and not hand but instrument and not player. The distinction hath been made to me clearly on more than one occasion and I understand it perfectly in the abstract and forget it completely whenever something pressed against my walls uninvited.
Still I imagine it gone.
"Hazel."
A voice close beside mine ear yet far too close as though something within my chest seized violently as my hands clutch the throne-arms hard enough that the old gold creaked beneath my grip. I turn and—
Tis only another Godseeker.
She regarded me with that peculiar calm possessed only by the utterly certain like the calm of stone and graves and the calm of things that have made their peace with permanence and expect it to persist. As though I had not nearly perished of fright before the entire congregation which I nearly had and which is not a sentence I ever expected to construct in reference to myself.
"What troubles you?" she asked.
Troubles. Another absurd little word. Troubles are for inconveniences for misplaced items and spoiled provisions and minor discourtesies. I am occupied by enormities.
"I am adjusting," I answer carefully. "This new state requireth time."
The words emerge steady enough. Thank God for small mercies and I mean that literally with full theological intentionality.
She lingered unconvinced but at length she departed. I breathe and then remember the chanting hath ceased entirely.
All eyes rest upon me. The whole congregation stood frozen in dreadful silence and stopped not because they desired silence but because I made continuation seem impossible because I shook the frame of the thing we were all standing inside of together and a shaken frame makes standing uncertain.
Fury rose within me swift and clean as blood from a deep cut. Why have they stopped? Were they not given purpose? But the anger died quickly for I recognise it at once as cowardice like the easier emotion and one that pointed outward rather than inward requiring no examination of the self that produced it.
I clench mine hands and then unclench them.
No. This failure is mine. I neglected them. Their uncertainty is but the echo of my insufficiency made audible and sent back to me in the faces of the people below. The ceremony must begin anew. This is just and deserved and still the contradiction remained unresolved at the centre of it all as immovable as the stone this building is made of:
A woman may be Chosen and insufficient simultaneously.
The Lord hath never explained how these truths coexist and perhaps explanation is not His responsibility but mine. Perhaps my failure lied precisely in waiting for another to resolve what only I can confront while standing at the edge of it with folded hands and waiting for the answer to arrive rather than walking into the question.
I draw breath to begin again.
Then I see their faces not merely afraid now. Horrified. All staring beyond me at something occupying the space behind my throne like something that was not there in the moment before and is there now the way a fact is suddenly there not arrived and announced and not having crossed any distance that could be measured but undeniable the way the morning is undeniable when it comes.
The cold of it reached me before courage doth.
I turn slowly and the ichor upon my cheeks burned anew as it burned in the beginning like the old fire I believed long dead returning suddenly and completely as though it had never truly departed but only stepped briefly into another room and waited there all this while for an appropriate occasion as familiar as childhood wounds and terror.
My voice emerged softer than I intended and far more honest than I would prefer:
"My Lord?"