It started at the Ocean’s shore. I had collapsed there, just above the high tide mark. I struggled to breathe and gurgled blood. The currents flowed out of the Ocean to help. They splashed salt water on my chest. It stung the open wounds.
Shards of stained glass were embedded in my chest. Caught on the ribs, I could not pull them out. With every breath, they sliced open sealing wounds and sliced open new ones.
A piece broke off in my hand. As I raised it to my face, blood ran down to cover the rosary wrapped around my left wrist. So much for getting it blessed. Now it’s fouled. I wanted to laugh, but the glass was breaking in my body. It felt wrong.
The quarter sized piece I had broken off had become a palm sized piece by the time I was finally able to look at it. I realized two things. It was the type of stained glass one would see in Christian cathedrals. And it was growing. From the tiny piece, a whole new pane would grow. I coughed and felt the embedded pieces grind against each other. The glass was growing inside me. And there was nothing I could do.
As a growing pane sliced my trachea, I wondered why. What placed it there? A strange poem started to form in my head.
“Let me be perfect, like the saints in the glass.”,
prayed the imperfect girl on her aching knees.
She knows she is sinful, and that sins add over time.
But the saints in the glass stay the same.
“Let me be accepted, like the saints in the glass.”,
prayed the rejected girl on her bloody knees.
She knows she is worthless, and fit only for hell.
But the saints in the glass stay the same.
“Let me be alive, like the saints in the glass.”,
prayed the dying girl on her useless knees.
She knows death is her fate, and beyond that, the worm.
But the saints in the glass stay the same.
I had lost a lot of blood, and the pieces that were glassy spearheads before were now heavy pieces of near complete panes. My body didn’t have enough mass to hold them upright, and as they leaned over they ripped more flesh and broke off more corners. But now the tide was coming in and more currents could flow out of the sea. They poured themselves into the wounds to flush out as many pieces of glass as they could. They also tried to replace the blood I had lost. Too weak to move, I remained prone on the ground as unseated glass flipped out of my body and was pummeled by the currents until it shattered and became part of the sand.
A sudden cawing scared me. Black feathers beat at my face as a large crow descended to the ground beside my head. It sounded a great alarm that was answered by more crows. When another crow came, the first seized a shard of glass and started pulling furiously at it. I struggled to blink the salt water out of my eyes. By the time I was successful, dozens and dozens of crows and ravens had come to me. Sounding off in angry and alarmed tones, they worked with the currents to remove the panes of glass that was growing at a shockingly fast rate.
The corvids, bearing the heated scent of the Boneyard, were not kind in pulling back what was left of my cloths and my skin. The Boneyard Ravens work for effect, not for comfort. They broke the ribs and tossed them aside. They pulled out the inner organs, one defiled piece at a time, and threw them into the sea that now broke just off my left side. The currents flowed over the exposed viscera, flushing out blood, clots, and even more pieces of glass with each wave that broke over me. What pieces of flesh were successfully cleaned by the sea was washed back onshore where they became the workers’ reward for the corvids.
They made it clear that what flesh I lost, I would have to regrow on my own. Only my heart was unaffected by the invasive stained glass panes. What few shards had managed to pierce the pericardium were melted into inert slag. Enough soft pebbles had accumulated to interfere with the beating of the fiercely flaming organ, so the corvids plucked them out and threw them on to the shore with prejudice.
At last the glass was removed from me. The corvids perched on my arms and legs to hold me down while the currents flushed out my abdomen one last time to be sure. The salt water stung everywhere it touched and the currents took advantage of my screaming to rinse out my trachea, mouth, and sinuses just the same. I did not hold it against them. Sometimes the cure hurts worse than the illness, but the illness will kill long before the cure.
With the same lack of announcement as their arrival, the crows and ravens leapt into flight and dispersed before I could choke out my thanks. The tide was starting to recede, but it was still high enough for the currents to lean forward and touch my arm in acts of comfort. As I raised my left hand to return the gesture, I saw the wooden rosary was still wrapped around my wrist. What blood that had flowed on it did not stain it. I could not understand why I was both relieved and disappointed at the object’s integrity. My torso cavities still exposed, I had to remind myself that this was not a physical wound, so I really did not need to breathe after all. My diaphragm would just have to wait a while before it can go back to serious work.
I sat up, feeling much better even though I had to pull up my pants to act as a temporary girdle. I took inventory of the damages. My stomach and liver were nearly completely destroyed. The spleen had gaping holes in it, and the pancreas looked ready to just quit right there on the spot. The lower two-thirds of both lungs were gone, and what was left hung in bloody tatters. The pericardium had several leaking holes pierced in it. I’ve lost nearly all the front portions of the ribs. Looking around, I saw not a single flesh or bone that was removed had remained. So the corvids had either eaten the bones or took them to the Boneyard. I wondered if I was going to get more replacements, and if those replacements would be accompanied by an asswhipping for getting in this predicament in the first place.
The diaphragm was sliced in several places, but no significant chunks were missing. The colons were missing hunks here and there, but the kidneys were untouched. The appendix missed out on all the fun, a fact that had me soundlessly laughing. The uterus was undisturbed, as were the fallopian tubes and ovaries. All the damage was concentrated in the chest. While I wondered how did this delightfully fun time start I wove together as much of my skin and musculature as I could. A quick snap of my clothes restored the shirt and the coat. I may have a gaping hole in my chest, but no one needed to know.
I’ll probably grow it all back by nightfall now that I didn’t have foreign bodies getting in the way.
Making sure my clothes would hold in what was left, I bowed towards the Ocean until my head touched the sand. An unusually large wave broke over me in answer, completely drenching me. I had the sense that I should go home and rest.
I bowed again in understanding and left.
I never made it to my lair.
I made it as far as the fire without my lair. The winds picked up violently, raising a curtain of dust between me and the entrance to my literal hole in the wall. In the dense and unrelenting wind, I heard an un-voice. «[Weaver.] [Angelbane.] [Angelus.] Come.» A summons to the terrace? Now? Aw, fuck me.
“Now? Does it have to be right fucking now? I just went through some shit that may or may not have angelic hands at the start of it and I’d really like to be left fucking alone thank you very fucking much. The names you just called me doesn’t exactly fill me with a warm welcome either, you know.”
«[Weaver!] [Angelbane!] [Angelus!] Come!»
I like to think that I am immune to commands. After all I have been through to break the hold of various “trainings” on my psyche, I view any unlawful demand for compliance by any entity as a damn good cause to exercise my knowledge of verbal expletive chaining amid gratuitous displays of impiety. I know better than to say the sealing words of “Make me”, but I’ll delightfully remind the would-be-lord why one of my names is “Rebellion.”
Instead I fell to my knees, suddenly unable to make even a gesture of defiance. My eyes blinked in surprise as my mind suddenly blanked. The winds closed in around me, picking me up as easily as a dust devil picking up straw. My unresponsive sight never saw the dust sweeping around me.
Strong hands gripped me as I stumbled upon arrival at the terrace, preventing me from falling face first on to the sharp gravel underfoot. My courtesy recovered before my cognition and I thanked the wielder of the hands for the kindness.
“You had a rough travel, and are wounded as well.” The voice was quickly identified and my rage asserted itself before my reason could even make the attempt.
I took a swing at K and tried to follow it with a sweeping kick. Ke grabbed my fist easily and used my momentum to lift and swing me around kir as if dancing. Kir laughter mocked me as I tried to take advantage of the close grip by aiming my free fist at kir throat.
Ke tapped me on the hollow skin over the torso cavity as if testing a drum and all my breath escaped my barely healed lungs. I lost all ability to move and fell limp in kir enveloping arms. “You will be angry at me, justifiably perhaps. But I must prepare you for what is to come, and I know you are too stubborn to comply without an explanation I do not have time for.” Ke lowered me to my knees and pulled my coat and shirt off of me exposing my skin and its multitudes of markings, scars, and tattoos. Placing kir left hand on [one particular tattoo on my back], and kir right hand on my forehead, ke repeated the summoning names that had felled me earlier.
“[Weaver.] [Angelbane.] [Angelus.] COME!”
I remember… my dead eye becoming darker than pitch as my living eye shone with sudden glory… the angelus armor materializing around me as my mind shifted from mortal reckoning into something else… the black coat dissolving into streams of light that coalesced into six wings of brilliance… and K never releasing kir hold on me, even as the armor shifted under kir touch.
I struggled to think anything other than submission, struggled to think my own thoughts. I knew this shouldn’t be happening. I don’t serve… them. I don’t… I am Weaver Ravencloaked, Weaver Flameheart, Weaver… Thrice… Carved… I struggled to remember my names. The helm of the angelus armor covers my eyes, rendering my usual means of sight useless. I don’t need it when in this state, as I usually have a 360º field of view both laterally and vertically. But my vision was obscured by the angel’s palm on my face. Ke was pulling me further under kir power.
Wordlessly, ke was commanding me. First to accept the summoned armor, then to yield full control of myself. I barely remember the commands. I barely remember trying to rebel against them. I barely remember being hollowed out earlier by the stained glass and how that had left me with the doubt that was allowing K to so easily overwhelm me.
«Put your trust in me. Yield, not surrender. Remain yourself, but under my direction.» Over and over ke called me by the same names I was commanded by. Each repetition placed me further and further under kir control. It felt like I was falling asleep and trying in vain to remain awake.
The sudden relaxation of my hard strained body.
I remember very little of what happened. What I do remember clearly can not be described well as anything other than this: K sent me on some errands.
Those errands involved fire and destruction, but I was not emotionally invested in my work. They were tasks, nothing more. Go here. Do that. Return. Report.
Each successive task was more complicated and more intense than the one before it. K had allowed me to keep my reason. I spied a common thread to the tasks. They all involved purging and sanctification. This confused that part of my mind allowed to observe with a critical eye, albeit on a very short leash. How could a mortal, me of all people, be used to purge a place of defilement and make it holy? There is something I am not being allowed to see, something that this collaring is preventing me from understanding.
I returned to K and reported the success of the task. My armor glowed with light sourced from my power, K’s power, and whatever source K had directed to flow through me to purge the sites with. K took my gauntlet hands and placed them just below my sternum. “Do you feel the empty place under this armor? Fill it. Fill it with glory.”
I started to comply but my reason was able to shout down my submission long enough to get some words in edgewise. “You are commanding me to destroy myself. No mere mortal can bear the glory of angels.”
K smiled. “Since when are you a mere mortal?”
“To fill this cavity with glory is to purge what is unclean. I am unclean. I will destroy myself.”
“Doubt is a sin, and has no place among the holy. [Angelus.]”
I had a glimmer of memory, of a black armored soldier asking if I had fear, and informing me that fear would be purged. The two circumstances felt almost identical. But that did not give K’s command enough weight to comply. I started to lower my hands as rebellion shuddered my bones.
K reached forward and placed my hands back in position. Ke held them there with one hand as ke placed kir other on my head again. “[Weaver.] [Angelbane.] [Angelus.] Fill this space with glory!”
My short mental leash was tightened. I filled my body with the holy flame. The cavity had been slowly healing through the ordeal, free energy source after all, but there were still great gaps of flesh and incomplete organs. I tilted my head back as flame jetted between hissing lips. I could not pull my hands away, nor could I stem the flow of power. It has been a long time since I felt my body on fire from within. I do not miss it.
My knees buckled and K caught me again. Ke laid me on the ground as the angelus armor dissolved. Six wings of light fell into my enveloping black coat. Ke wrapped the coat around me to cover the wound in my chest. Somewhen, between the first devouring sting of flame and K laying me on the ground, ke released kir hold on me. I had myself to myself again, but the angelic power stuffed into my viscera was distracting me from choosing between fleeing or trying to kick K’s ass on the way out.
Ke knelt beside me (on my right), and placed kir left hand on my forehead and kir right hand over the gaping hole in my chest. Kir left hand kept me pinned to the terrace, and kir right hand kept feeding the eager angelic fire that was quickly being subsumed by my Boneyard adjusted flesh. Ke looked up and said something in a trilling language.
The sky above us turned dark with clouds. The clouds started to rotate. As they rotated, they gathered in unto themselves until they had formed a pillar of clouds starting from just above K’s head into high in the ‘air’ above us. The pillar suddenly shifted and moved to my left. It descended to touch the terrace with a giant, cloudy, foot. The clouds squeezed themselves into the shape of a light-robed humanoid figure. It reached down and into my body with its right hand.
(For scale, hold out your hand and pretend there is a doll there. The width of your hand is just slightly smaller than the width of the doll’s torso. There you go.)
It scooped my spirit away from my body, taking my awareness with it. I saw my spirit as a ball of light, flame, and feathers in the angel’s hand. It cupped me gently and remarked how cute my spirit is. (I now know how pond frogs feel when captured by kids.) Before I could figure out if I could take a spiritual shit in the angel’s hand, it reached up with me and deposited my spirit on a layer of clouds high above its head.
Another angel was there, waiting. She took my spirit ball and snapped it like one snaps a cloth. I stumbled backwards suddenly fleshed again, but not the (vision) flesh I was used to. I had the appearances of the clothing, but they were insubstantial. Neither rosary nor horn beads were present, nor could they be manifested. I had access to none of my tools.
“You’re Angelbane, eh? Come. Demonstrate your abilities on me!” She took a grappler’s stance and braced for my assault.
“What have you done that I should engage in foreplay unwarranted? I’m trying not to be so gratuitously violent, you know. And daring me to attack you just isn’t helping. Besides, that’s the easy thing to do. And I suspect the easy thing is the wrong thing. So, no. Not attacking you. Just wanna know what the fuck is going on here!”
The angel stood upright. “You have been given a gift, but only if you are strong enough to take it.”
I looked past her and saw a staircase leading up to a higher level in the heavens. Naw… “Are you going to fuck up my hip like you fucked up Jacob’s?”
She snorted. “He tried to cheat!”
That was all the confirmation I needed. “This gift, I suspect, has more strings attached than Ariadne’s loom. I’ll manage without it, I’m sure. I made it this far. Good day to you, and I hope your next opponent is worth the trouble.” I bowed to be polite and turned away so I could find my way back down to the terrace.
Next thing I know, I’m sailing through the air back towards the staircase, and the angel is leaping after me with a vicious gleam in her eye. She threw me!
I recovered my footing just in time to locks hands with her. As much as I wanted to snark about the “classical grappling pose” we were emulating, I did not understand why I was being forced to struggle with her. “I’m not… Christian! This isn’t my… trial!” I pushed her away and took several steps back with my hands up.
“Neither was Jacob, and he succeeded.”
“You said he cheated.” I turned to keep facing her as she circled me. I noted that no matter which way I turned, the staircase remained behind me. I’m being herded.
“I said he tried. Are you?” She glanced over my shoulder to the staircase behind me. An obvious suggestion.
I dropped my hands. “Too easy. You want me to run up the staircase, or at least make the attempt. But why? Those heavens are barred to me. And the god above them is not my god.”
I blinked. She was on me, shoving me to the ground and pinning me with frightful ease. I never had a chance against her. I accepted she was stronger than I and did not attempt to gain release. This angered her. “Why aren’t you even trying to fight back! How can you be Angelbane, if you won’t even try!”
“Because what enmity is there between you and me. If I’m supposed to win, then it is a rigged fight and we would not be having this conversation. I understand where the stained glass came from that eviscerated me. I understand now why [K] had to overwhelm my cognition and send me on all those errands. I understand why ke had to fill my innermosts with glory before I could be sent up here. And those are all valuable lessons. But what I don’t get, is what the hell does Jacob’s Ladder have to do with me, when I was disqualified long before I got here! I can’t win against you, angel, because you can only be triumphed by faith. And I don’t have that kind of faith.”
“No. You don’t.” All hostility was gone from her face. Above her the light changed. The staircase that was in the near distance was now over us in a right-hand spiral. Angels ascended and descended at seemingly random intervals. Those that came to the bottom stood on the lowest step and regarded me for a silent moment before turning and ascending in silence. Far above, beyond the limits of my sight, was a very familiar light. I did not realize I had started crying until I had to blink to clear my eyes. “You do have… a gift. But you must wrestle to reach it.”
“Who must I wrestle?”
“Your self.” She lifted off of me and pulled me to my feet in the process. The angelic staircase retreated, dissolving into motes of light as it ascended.
“I always wrestle with myself. And sometimes, my selves.” I wiped my tears on my sleeve and noted the cloth was also made of light. “I’m relieved and dismayed that I won’t have my own personal Jacob’s Ladder to strive for.”
“You already do.” I turn to look at her and see the holy angel has quite the devilish smirk. Before I could ask her anything further, she touches me on the same spot K is covering. My body of light collapses and I become the spirit ball of light, flame, and feathers again. Smiling warmly, she nudges me with her toe and sends me bouncing off that layer of clouds into the waiting hand of the giant angel. It cupped me in its great hands again, and securely lowered me back to the terrace. It pushed my spirit back into my body, patted my abdomen for good measure, then dissipated back into quickly fading clouds.
K waited until all the other angels had retreated from the terrace before lifting kir hands off my chest and forehead. When ke withdrew, I quickly asserted myself over my self and announced my return to independence with a very loud “WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT ALL ABOUT!”
“I see you suffered no harm, then. Good.”
I wanted to sit up and sucker punch K in the movement. But a quick tensing of muscles told me that my body wasn’t ready for such extracurricular activities, dream or no. I still had a lot of healing and internal supervision to do. So I fell back on my usual response to K’s shenanigans. “Bastard. I might forgive you for the cognition hijacking now that I know what it was about.”
Ke patted me on the shoulder. “There was no way you would have been able to go through this when your doubt was devouring you from within.”
I tried to jerk my shoulder away from him in an obvious snub. Physically, I didn’t move far. But the intent was noted. Ke smirked in response. “Why can’t I have tea and crumpets like all the other angel-bothered people. Lovely walks in the garden, and little doilies for the thimble mugs while butterflies dart about in heavenly peace.”
“You would try to spike the pot with arsenic. Just to see what would happen.”
“Arsenic is sweet. Best to put on the pastries than in the tea.”
K stopped patting me and pulled my face towards kir. “And how would you know that?”
“What was the reference to Jacob’s Ladder about? Info for info.”
Ke frowned. I smiled. Ke rolled me over to face away from kir. “You have Jacob’s Ladder. Learn how to use it. And the arsenic question was rhetorical, anyway.”
I thought for a bit about what I have that could be an allegory for that staircase. When I realized the truth of it, I kicked about on the ground in an adult sized temper tantrum. “No! No! No! It can’t be that easy! Fuck! Are you kidding me!” K coughed slightly. “Ah, yea, arsenic. I read it in a book. Flowers in the Attic. Dreadful plot. Does not help my sense of misanthropy one bit. Saw enough references to it over the years to take that scene as accurate. Never did try it myself. Arsenic is deadly, you know!”
K looked blankly at me while I laughed away my displeasure. Ke sighed, shook kir head, and very gruffly kicked the ground under me. It fell away into a waiting darkness, taking me with it. And so I left the dream with my own laughter banishing myself.