47 - Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion_Paradise of Pretenders

BACON, 1944

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 The knight stared at the vulture, the stork, and the crow. Pinned as they were to the slabs of wood. They were pallid and no longer bleeding. It''d taken some time for their feathers to fully slather off, and hearing Macotta’s snorts in the dust-strewn air made the knight desire rest. But the vulture was peering down, its wings bound together in one swathe, red-like, the coagulation become the shade of skin. It was writhing in pain. But the stork was barely perched above a low wooden chair, its wings tucked in, a child’s swaddling cloth giving its otherwise bare neck and head the raiment of hair. It was grinning with anticipation. But the crow was stuck in some swords of grass, its rear feathers and tail losing all mercy as they merged into the cross, its wings shorn, a swarm of jaundiced yellow piercing its heart. It was embracing God.

 The knight interlocked his fingers. He seemed to pray.

 Tristan sat by the door, waiting for it to open. It was the sixth hour. An image of the headline, ALTER BOY LOSES HIS BEAT, held firm in his mind. An impression of Father’s gauntlet, striking his cheek. For Father knows. Father knew, even if Energetic didn’t. And Syz hadn’t told anyone. Starboy hadn’t really seen. Agent Avalon…

 Tristan thought of the last words told him by Senra Beaudicious, those Do you wish to do it again, and the warmth in his chest, the cooling warmth that threatened to overflow, to ride over and trample on, the hand of the Father, hot feeling of energy, to the becoming cold feeling of touching his cheek. Threatened to crash over that rampart. For this time Father had given him ideas: more than one, ostensibly to work to work with some of those older techists at your school, or even that presumptuous one who thinks he can only use the primary colors. Tristan sat by the door to his room, waiting for it to open. You’re not eating until you come to me with an idea better than Anima Rin’s robot metaimage. Tristan sat by the door. Waiting for it to open. You’re not the Alter Boy. I was the Alter Boy my first year at Restor High. Anima had nothing to me then. Tristan sat. Waiting for it to open.

 He couldn’t count any lines on it; it was solid steel. Either his father would open it, or the dark knight would crash through, landing on him with his charger, pummeling his chest with its hooves.

 Tristan thought of a means of escape; but the chamber was closed, without windows; and he lacked his bow.

 No, he was still in the chamber, still in his room; he wasn’t a knight. He was a techist in his first year, approaching its end with the green summer, at William Restor High home to the Restor Techist Academy which had once housed Anima Rin, the Boy Robot, and his companion and challenger, eventual ouster, the Boy Pilot, Meliodas Mott. Tristan shook his head. He was just a son. He was nothing. He had, briefly, pierced the art of Cel Rin, his father’s oldtime rival’s son, a facet of this new circumstance that only after the Alter Boy’s losing his beat did Father tell him of, but he was now here, stuck, with the gate closed.

 Perpetual Fleet, he thought. He could use regenerator to combine those two pieces. Even if nothing was really made for the perpetual motion model. Planes in Existence, to really bring them to fruition. Make the alter darts hang more, look like they’re actually flying. More suspension; closer to the Rins. Planes, not robots; but mechanical all the same. Tristan shook his head. None of those would work. They weren’t really going anywhere; planes could fly, but they still needed something to fly towards, to fly into more than merely flying through. Like the V, but modeled with actual direction. He liked that. He found himself cast to that image of the knight, standing before the carcasses of the birds, their feathers gone, their skin pale. It didn’t really mean anything.

 Tristan thought for his holoscreen; it emerged, sleek and see-through. Almost crepuscular, as he could see his plants through its faint matrix of intersecting lines. It was almost green; but it was a holoscreen, and so technically didn’t have any color, only showing the green leaves.

 So it was with just a thought for my piece that he found the V-bow, its slim green bound by white, smooth crescent and triangle hanging there. In the light. Off to the bottom right, he found the alter darts: simple, white triangles (if not silver) that lay unplaced, waiting for their turn. His simple pieces. Tristan remembered. Taking one and placing it on the palm of one who pretended, one who was known to him. Y’sazant Syzer. Tristan saw as the green knight notched the silver arrow, small and aerodynamic and true, to the shaft. Pulling back, letting go. Flying straight and silver.

 But they had missed the first—just by a hair. Tristan thought shaft, angle, aiming capability and after a quick examination of the horizontal and vertical motion equations, inputted a different ρ. Of course, the strength of the green knight, how much Y’sazant pulled it back, would all come into play; but with that, instruction would do; after verifying by Euler, he thought adjust, and the V-bow II—a name that came to him—Tristan saw the new V-bow before him, and it was good, it was striking, and it was beautiful.

 He ran his hands across it; touching nothing but the shape it drew.

 Thought-message to Syz. Syz, I made the adjustment. Next time you won’t miss. And he waited.

 After about a minute with no response, he shut the holoscreen. Now he saw the leaves, and felt a pang. Of course, he wouldn’t be able to eat until Father came in. Like the barest flicker of recognition that he might give to a fellow techist he’d only known at Exhibits, he thought of how Meliodas might react, seeing not the model to overpass the Alter Boy but a true V-bow to do it again, penetrate, infiltrate, disrupt his piece, and he soon forgot, for he was hungry, and so Tristan got up from his sitting position, shimmied over to the nearest leaf, tore one off, and ate it.

 It had no taste.

 Hey, Tristan. 0.5 degrees to the right?

 No, not exactly. He sent Syz the V-bow II by image, and waited. There wasn’t even an aftertaste, and he was still without food. Reaching over to the next leaf, still on the same twig, he tore one off, and put it into his mouth. It had no taste. But, maybe if he had one more, he—

 It’s good. It’s great, Tristan. Obviously I’m no Don De Mai or Chibio, but I can tell. This is something.

 Thanks, was the immediate thought, or rather unconscious feeling, that Tristan felt, but without actually saying it. Thanks for looking at it even if you really don’t understand the equations. (They haven’t even come to this room, he thought, looking across the walls.) Thanks for, for firing my V-bow, and at a techist no less. My green knight. Thanks for listening. Thank you for being here for me.

 My green knight.

 Tristan realized he’d let all of his feelings seep into the Thought-feed. I can’t leave until I do something for Pops, though, ha ha, he said quickly, and Syz only released an equal feeling of gladness through. I’m sure you’ll think of something. You’re Tristan! they Thought back.

 Tristan reached over for another leaf. His fingers grasped. It was nothing; just the brief air; he looked over and saw that the little auta fern was bare, its mock boughs showing their skin of green with the hint of where leaves had been. He swished his tongue around inside his mouth; still no aftertaste. The pang, down in his stomach, was still there.<hr>

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 “The boy tried to step down. But he could not—for the bird’s wings were too spread too wide. And the sky itself, of stark white plumage, was refusing to relent. Water and sleet whipped past them both, as the bird beneath the boy continued flying, headlong, into the storm.”

 More Barry stopped reading.

 Continue, my heart demanded. Continue, and when you reach the end, Thought for beginning, and start again.

 The small Agent, uncertain, was checking the glinting, golden buttons on her overalls. They were tinted. They could, with my gaze, reflect the barest shadow of her pouting chin. She was dissatisfied. She didn’t like it. Or her buttons were sweet golden rims, curved to bend towards the will of a miserly dragon, sitting atop its hoard. Or—

 “Is that all?” she said.

 “What,” I stuttered. “But—it’s only—”

 “It’s only 222 pages,” Ari Cato said, removing the V-book from beneath More Barry’s fingers. “Raegoth, Morht not giving you any assignments?” He scanned the pages quickly, as if to remind himself of its length. He then removed his sunglasses, as if to look at me more closely, bearing his eyes of a crowded silver. “Are you sure you haven’t written before?”

 That was the question.

 William picked up her two receptors from the petite coffee table. She nodded, as if answering her inferior’s question, or answering for the Agent Raegoth, who was lost, tossed like salad. Thrown, danced into the pot by the talented murine. She stood and left. Ari Cato nodded, as if to himself, before stretching. He had, after all, been sitting for the past twelve hours, the light’s change around us the only indicator of time, and I was surprised to not hear cracks issuing from the Agent’s knees, concealed as they were by his suit.

 “The Agent More Barry is surprised,” More Barry said, her hands patting, tapping the coffee table, looking for water—she had read the most, even adding her own imaginative sounds for the wind, the sky, the sea as the boy had flown it. “She thought this was all the first chapter.”

 Understanding. I had not positioned any numbers, or names, in breaks across the text, to render such chapters’ existence. How—by one who had read, countlessly, books enumerated by such anatomy—

 “Intentional, right, Raegoth?” N’ziet said. “Or, 9th Agent, each time an Agent changed readers, that was

 a different chapter—”

 “No!” More Barry shouted. “One chapter is not enough!” Her hands had found the nexus tube, which shot up a small vase of water. She downed it as a fish out of water returned. “She needs more!”

 “Ha ha ha,” came a laugh. I was looking at N’ziet, but it was not him.

 Heads were turning; it was Rexy, holding their sides; their weapon was not at their side, nor on the coffee table, or beneath it, or held by someone else. The 8th Agent had surprised all of us with their inflective readings, giving my verbs and adjectives an aura of expression that, other than what black mirror of quietude their eyes reflected, we rarely so saw. N’ziet slapped C. P. on the back, giving a chuckle, and Rexy stopped.

 “Chapters require patience. Patience needs an understanding of the time one has. Raegoth wanted to ‘finish’ as soon as possible, to show his fellow Agents,” they said, smiling.

 N’ziet laughed again. Istria shook her head, but she too was smiling.

 “If he says it’s finished, then—” she started, but I was seeing beyond them, the bookshelves beyond gaining a slick sense of sleet, imagining their covers and spines dappled in snow, and seeing, what, perhaps, what was beyond the storm, and why the boy was perpetually riding this great bird—an ending, a sort of rush, that I had stopped my Thought while writing into the V-book, thinking it satisfied, but really, headlong into the storm suggested that, right now, the boy and his bird were flying, in the storm, and only I could discover this future.

 Incoming Thought-message from: Van. I have an assignment for you, Raegoth.

 I’m reading,

 comes my immediate response, and then to its correction, The Agents are reading my first book.

 First book?

 Van is skeptical, and while I do know that the tread of my memory must bestow his reason, that particular breadth to my life, as yet, I do not see.

 Unless he has seen it. Director, have I written before?

 You are to take Agents N’ziet, Senra, Artok, and 1123 with you, he says instead. Returning my attention to my fellow Agents, I see that More Barry was engaged in a fit of strength and valor against Istria’s ten fingers, which parried and staved off her fists like the reds of a revolution; C.P. and N’ziet looked on, amused. It will be a techist Exhibition in two days. There will be interference. And with that note of foreshadowing, the Director leaves my mind, and I wrest myself in between the two combatants.

 “More Barry, I can write another,” I told her, as she reluctantly released her fists, and Istria laughed in her usual sanguine fashion, although I detected a sardonic aura to it. Had More Barry been winning? But these are vagrant ideas, as I send a Thought for the time, and see that it is night.

 Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

 All is calm at the Agency; but, I do have a role, and a responsibility to play. I relay them to the Agents named above, and meet N’ziet’s grin; for there are Scions to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

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 Eventually Savior realized that the mouth, the gaping beak, was still open. His crop itched. His throat was dry; and he watched as the flames of fire, their tall hands, emergent in red dressing, pulled back from the fronds. He squawked. He squawked for more – for one. He by his protubural eyes could behold the children running around, their cheek feathers bulging. They were filled, satisfied. He was not. He was still hungry; his beak drowning in the sun; his stomach, and all its fluids, dry.

 “SQUAWK!” he said. But no food came.

 Hands gone; the reeds, closing like curtains, or binds, or noodles melting in boiling water. Savior realized then that the little birds, those who had been fed, were wearing cards. White pieces of paper, very white, crisp. They stood out finely amidst the feathers that wore them. So fine that Savior could read their letters.

 WANDERCHILD – PALETTE

 A MAJOR – MOVEMENT BLUE

 MCHONGAJI – CUUBU

 ZARR – N?TR KINGDOM

 GOVERNOR – SECTOR I

 DEER – RAVING

 Each of the children was the same. Savior thought that their names, none of which came to the cavity of his mind, except DEER and SECTOR I, were strange. But as he peered at the children playing he could see no difference. They were all red. They were all orange. They were all screeching in contentment. They were all burning and he felt no flames.

 Savior sat on the tree. He was hungry. He peered down at the children.

 Flickering. He saw a flickering. Like a broken shade. Hovering, undulating, scissoring the air, like the weeping grain, the air above a certain spot beside the children was quaking. It was riling. Savior saw the other children, mouths turned towards this quaff of air, gaping, but producing no sound. And they all saw together the colorlessness of the air form, above the gauzelike green of the ground below, together and a singing of things, a slight burning, quivering, conceiving, creating—

 —It was on all fours. Dark, mahogany brown like blood scars on its flank. Much the same adorning its skull. Otherwise white, with tufts, claws, and a mouth greeting them with a snarl. Its eyes were stark. Sand orbs. Bright with fear. It did not know its surroundings, and red was on its teeth. It was panting. It had been fighting. It looked up at Savior on his tree and barked.

 Savior squawked at it in surprise. Then Savior saw. The collar of linen gold around its neck was changing. Gold into yellow into sun into white. Threads became solid. An open locket without owner descending into bone. A card:

 HONDIUS DOG – KAIGEUHUà

 Savior looked down at his neck. He did not have a card.

 Savior looked again at the dog—or what had stood over the fire. A child now pranced. Spindly taloned feet. A bird to join the rest.

 And the hands came. Giant hands pulling back the sieve. Reaching in. Dressed by red. As they moved over the second child Savior remembered. Burning. Falling phoenixes through the sky. Images he had created. Soundless screams muted by sky. Savior remembered the bird he now saw, that had once been a dog, barking, its fight interrupted. Its mouth gaping.

 Savior remembered as he saw the hands drop those pieces of fire, burning into the bird’s open mouth.

 Savior flapped.

 —It was on all fours.

 Fours all on was it—Names of the cards flying by—sector I and movement blue and cuubu and kaigeuhuà—seeing them go, out of Hondius, honda minato headquarters—out of kaigeuhuà, a name or a word, dogs go bark, that image burned of the dog original, caught, in his fight against, Savior flew.

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 Abraham Hondius (1631-1691)

 Dog Fighting a Heron, 1667

 Oil on canvas

 Fallen temple in background. Demon in flight off in the sky. Landscape during the end. Reeds dipped in muddy water.

 The water was wet. Savior raised his talons; they were soaked. He was standing amidst a brush of reeds. The sounds of struggle, of fury and poise, came to him.

 He looked and saw through the reeds. A dog – its coloration and vivid eyes, including the split golden collar, the same as that he had seen above – was fighting wildly, engaged its jaws around the talons of a heron. The dog kicked the water with its hind feet as the heron swung and dipped, its wings buffeting. Its eyes stared in frustration and fear as it kept swinging its wings, as the dog bit and held, but the heron’s leg was spindly, and Savior could hear it splintering.

 And then the dog would win. The heron would be unable to fly.

 Savior thought of the fire in his wings, and –

 “Heel!” came a voice. A voice of a Scion. Before Savior could light up the water, he saw a man step out from behind the broken pillar, the cracked vase on the wall.

 Both the dog and the heron turned; the man was kneeling, holding out his hands and giving them a clap. The dog stopped; it let go of the heron’s leg, and landed on the orange-baked ground. Its tongue out and lolling, some blood beginning to show, it looked at the man warily. The bird reeled off and left, its injured leg limp, winging up and away – dipping up towards the sky, its life returned.

 Savior looked at the man. The man didn’t seem to take notice, clucking and gesturing towards the dog, snapping his fingers, reaching into the pocket of his trousers for a side of bacon. The dog, upon seeing it, padded over, slowly, as the man held out his hand with the bacon; the dog dipped its head, sniffing; and then, seeming satisfied, lapped it up, its teeth and gums for a moment appearing.

 Savior watched the dog eat the bacon. It reminded him that he was hungry. So he parted the reeds with his wings and stepped forward, making low splashes on the water.

 The man pat the dog on the head, and the dog padded away. Savior watched it head into the darkness, towards the far, green-toned hill.

 Then Savior looked at the man.

 The man was dark-skinned, and he wore a dark brown hat. He was wearing above his trousers a cool white linen shirt, with cravat and fringe, and wore a greatcoat of somewhat dark orange; nearly brown, or ochre; Savior couldn’t tell. The man wore black leather shoes and tall wool stockings, and had around his right wrist and forearm a series of watches – one in gold, one in silver, one brown.

 “I am Didian,” the man said. He eyed Savior like he was a curious thing. “This isn’t my first Hondius. Which world do you come from?”

 Savior thought of the cards. He thought of the hands. He thought of K Jeong, floating down through the clouds, horn-wings prying close to the eyes. Pink and turpentine.

 “Kaigeuhuà,” he stuttered.

 “I see,” Didian said. But Savior could tell that the man didn’t believe him. And while the ground, stepping onto the orange-caked soil, felt unfamiliar to him, Savior knew at once that he had said the right name, from the right card, even if said in the incorrect enunciation. And staring at the man named Didian, Savior knew, that he was Scion, and without consulting the Paradisiac named K Jeong, knew that Didian would be on the power system of the world – “towards the end.”

 So he lay quiet. He did not squawk.

 Didian reached into his pocket again, and, rummaging around, seemed to find what he wanted. He pulled a small object out. A white egg.

 “Eat this,” he told the bird. And the bird obeyed. Crack – yolk slaking down throat – entering crop and torso.

 Savior jormungand. And he felt the water of the egg drip inside him, and reverse the fire of the shards that he had taken from the hands. A flame quelled, a flame deinspired.

 “When you return, do tell Feichín that, to record your name in the visitors’ list, and tell him to make a note, bodiesified. Are you from the Paradisiac Company?”

 Savior squawked. He immediately thought, to flap, or fly, and find K Jeong, or Dante A, and let them know – but Didian, continuing to examine this little curiosity, gave a hint of somewhere between a knowing and a smile. “Give Sappho my regards,” he said, bending his hat towards him. “The Revolution has been progressing well.”

 And with that, the man turned – but gestured for Savior to follow. “I have elsewhere to go. But do tell Feichín, won’t you?” And Savior followed. Kept walking. Up and behind that fallen temple – off to the left – a tall copse of dark green trees, fir or evergreen –

 Gavin Luke’s “Thread the Needle,” from his 2021 single North of Hope, can be one of Didian’s.

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 – he stepped out. The world was white. All was gone, or everything had appeared. Savior landed hard on his two feet.

 Two feet. No talons. Savior looked down and instead of the orange-brushed, somewhat feathered talons he had had, he now only saw slim, skin-colored feet. As he looked up to the rest of himself, he squealed, for he was wearing no clothes, and none of what he had on himself resembled what he had before.

 He instinctively thought that he had lost his powers. But then he heard a voice, and it was the voice of a human. So he looked up.

 Standing some ways from him, across a group of standing objects, whose colors he was beginning to realize, was a teenager. The teenager was dressed in a fine, sashed kimono full, from the top down and across the sleeves, with depictions of various flowers. His hair was long, though not quite yet to his shoulders; and had in his hair tied together a black feather and a wilting flower, whose species Savior could not name. The teenager was holding a sepia sketchpad, held close to his chest, with a stencil in one hand; and Savior realized he was being drawn.

 “Almost done,” the teenager said. “Hold still.”

 Savior froze, his right leg bent at the knee, his arms thrown out wide, searching for a wingspan. He held it, standing only on his left foot.

 His eyes were still facing forward, so he focused on watching the teenager sketch, making what appeared to be slashing motions across the pad. Skritch skritch. A few moments later, the teenager, his dark eyebrows thinning, appeared to be satisfied, or at least not disappointed.

 And then, Savior felt himself return, his color once again becoming that of fire, his feathers forming, his wings outgrowing. He landed back on his left talon.

 As his orange-rimmed eyes returned, Savior then was able to make out the rest of the wide room.

 The ceiling was arched, white; a chandelier, large and hazy opal in color, hung over the room. The objects separating Savior from the teenager were about up to his crop, some of them, or to the waist-sash of the teenager’s kimono; about half of them were black, the other sepia-white like the teenager’s sketchpad. They were all like tapered cylinders, with varying pointed or rounded tops, and were standing on black or white squares. Then Savior noticed that most of them were arranged on the right side of the room, those in white; and most of the black, on the left side of the room. As he continued to look, he saw tall white columns, mostly rectangular, rising up to support the ceiling, on the four corners of the room; and on the far left end, set into most of the wall, was a like grouping of black and white squares, but without the objects connected to them.

 Then he noticed there were other paintings in the room. And he whirled around, to see where he had come from.

 It was that same, deserted landscape. With great, overhanging clouds impeding any light, except that coming in slightly from the left – it was dusk. That broken temple, or at least the rightmost part jutting out, with fallen columns. A clutch of foliage in the front, and the same muddy water bordering on the orange rock. Tall, dark reeds to the right. A low green hill far in the distance; and the beginnings of a copse of trees. Evergreen.

 The dog was gone; the heron flown. Savior felt like, as he was still close, he could reach out – with his bright orange wings – and brush against the water. He clucked, deep in his throat – a sound he had not made before.

 “Are you a Hondius?” came the teenager’s voice from behind him; he turned.

 This isn’t my first Hondius, Didian had said. Was Hondius the place? That abandoned, dreary landscape… Savior didn’t feel like he wanted to go back anymore. He hoped the heron was free, away from fighting dogs. But no, he remembered Hondius Dog, and he shook his head. He was not a ‘Hondius bird.’ He was Savior.

 “That’s what I supposed,” the teenager said. He was young, Savior realized. About, or a little older, than an age of reading calculus, and throwing sticks. “Are the dog and heron still fighting?” The teenager held his sketchpad down, against his kimono; Savior couldn’t see it.

 Savior shook his head. “Didian stopped them,” he said.

 A smile crept up, suddenly, on the teenager’s face – and Savior smiled too. He hoped his drawing resembled him, and he wondered why he had been naked.

 “So which painter, then?” The teenager turned and walked, going around the array of white and black objects – Savior followed the kimono’s soft, sweeping movements. “Didian liberated you, didn’t he?” The teenager seemed fascinated. Savior, of course, could not know why. He was just a bodiesified thing, something curious, and would be handling the ‘lighting’ for the Paradisiacs.

 “No,” he said. “I am Savior.”

 “Savior, huh,” the teenager said. He came around; up close, he looked even younger, and his soft eyelashes appeared like brushstrokes beneath his black bangs. The petals and stems of his kimono’s flowers alternated jade and sepia.

 Are you in school? came a thought, but Savior said instead, “I am with the Paradisiac Company. The lighting.”

 “Sure, okay, but which creator? Ernst? Or the Egyptian hieroglyphs? Didian had said we weren’t touching those yet, but – no – wait – Hieronymus?” the teenager asked.

 He sounded fearful.

 “Didian –” but Savior raised a wing, silencing him.

 “I came from car,” he said. Those four words came out of him. He didn’t say I c0me from Earth, or I came from Lowers, or I conquered out of a boy, into a man, by a spirit. Those were the four words he said, and they came out of his beak.

 The teenager looked piqued, but didn’t say anything. He instead raised his own right sleeve to gesture across the rest of the room, across the other paintings. Savior, following the kimono’s crest of flowers, saw – saw that each and every other painting, besides some landscape, inside room, or view of a city, was empty of inhabitants. As if he had just emerged from each and every one of them, as if from each and every one of them their inhabitants, like the dog and the heron, had left.

 “Where are they?” he asked, but he knew the answer.

 “Didian liberated them,” the teenager answered. “Did he tell you anything?”

 He had forgot. “Bodiesified,” Savior said.

 “Bodiesified,” the teenager repeated, pulling up his sketchpad and scribbling down the word. “You’re of the Paradisiacs – of course, but Didian talks about Sappho and Dante A. most often. They haven’t been in our hall, but we welcome them to Kaigeuhuà.”

 Savior clacked his talons on the white floor. Kaigeuhuà. And then, for the first time, he asked where he was.

 The teenager smiled at Savior, like he was the object of some fancy – he was liberated, after all. “We welcome you, Savior, to Kaigeuhuà,” he said, leaning forward, just enough that his eyes faced the floor. Still in that posture, he kept saying, “and this is our hall.” He returned to a vertical position, and Savior thought, But which of the Sectors, or which world, as Didian had proposed.

 But, he was just a bird, and he was in this beautiful hall, with these grand, united objects in some arrangement he did not know. So instead of squawking he smiled and clucked.

AliNovel

47 - Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion