The original text was written in the Rinliddi vernacular, using the standard letters of Peloria prior to Great Sister's Great Spelling Reform which produced the New Pelorian writing system. There is one exception, which is found throughout the text. The word written as “Gbaji” was in the original text “liar” written as if it were a proper name and with an unusual variant letter for the first letter of the word. When converted into New Pelorian, this was retained in the old style for printed editions, with “assignation letters” placed above reading “Gbaji”. As such, I have presented it in all capital letters to set it out from the rest of the text as it would be set out for a reader in its original alphabets.
Sojourn towards the Dawn
When I had made my way through the library in the palace at Torang, and the season was turning to the summer, I felt a spark leaping between my breasts, a tension tugging at me, and a desire forming within my hearts. I went then to She, my liberator, and begged leave to go forth on a journey, and She called me a drama queen and charged me with the liberty of Torang and of all the liberated lands of the coalition, and remarked that She was going out into the field for campaigning soon in any case. I rose to my feet and kissed three of Her hands, and took my leave.
In consultation with Goodears, Eserela, and the other Naturals, I left most of my bodies behind, and left sufficient will in them to aid the Naturals at such tasks as demanded labor. Fourteen of myself went out together, and I dressed my bodies as if they were a noblewoman of the countryside and her retinue, gathering ponies that could carry my bodies, pack-reindeer, and a mule-cart. I gathered up the pay I had received for copyist work, and I paid for two hundred lancetips, five hundred arrowheads, one hundred knives, one hundred belt-buckles, and one hundred clasps, in bronze, in copper, in silver, and in gold. Last of all, I made a passport, stamped with the sign of the Made Woman.
I rode out eastwards, moving against the Sun, through the land of Velthil and eastwards into the land of the Kargzanti, the Hyalori, and the Yamshri. I thrust the sign of She before me as I passed through the prairie at first, and all were aware of the day when She had brought seven winged horses back to the world, and the treaty that had been signed under the shadow of their beating wings, and so I was able to travel in peace, and give gifts and share camps as needed.
I went deeper, and the people here knew nothing of that treaty and had not fought at the battle, and so I gave more generously, and offered my hands at labor, for foaling season was upon the plains and hands were welcome. As I went, I shared stories of ghosts and terrors, and asked for others in return. Rumors had long drifted to my ears about a place hidden from human eyes far to the east, one inhabited by fierce monsters.
My interest did not go unnoticed, and at last I admitted to one subclan that I was indeed on a pilgrimage to find this place and confront the residents. The eldest father nodded and said, “Whatever has driven you so far is not something I or any of my brothers or sisters could halt in its tracks. All I ask is that you leave something of yours with us so that we can give you a funeral and keep your ghost peaceful.” I gave him one of my robes. What else could I do?
All the while as I traveled, I thought of what I would say when I reached my destination, and I wrote down my notes and when I was well away from any camp and on my own, I apologized to the fire for imposing on her, sweet lissome daughter of the hearth, and I practiced by speaking to her, and she never stopped dancing because of it, at least.
In the end, I came to the Hidden City, which wore the mask of ruins imperfectly. The mortar looked as fresh as the day it had been laid on the crumbled walls, and there were shutters on the windows of buildings that were open to the sky with collapsed roofs. I rode through a gate that had been shattered into four perfect quarters, and hallooed into an empty plaza.
I rode deeper, then dismounted my bodies, and led my horses on foot through the ruins, until at last the hidden people sprung their ambush in front of the gates of a charming manor, somewhere in the maze of false wreckage.
What shall I say of the hidden people? They have horns on their head, in numbers from one to five that I saw, and they have flesh of more colors than humans tend to around here, and their teeth tend to be sharp. I could try to estimate the percentage that had some mutation or another, and if I did, I would be speaking on such paltry information as to make myself a liar. They spoke a form of the language of the Star-Wandering people, which I could speak passably well, and in this way they demanded I give my horses and reindeer and mules over, throw down my weapons, and consent to meet with their Princess, who ruled this city and all the lands around, and on whose land I was trespassing without cause and without paying any tariff.
I complied, making sure to put on a show with various of my bodies reassuring others and clenching fists and so on, and entered into the manor and its inner court.
The Princess of the Hidden looked to be about eighteen or twenty years old, slender, dressed like a wealthy tomboy, and sat in her chair accompanied by two swords. Four courtiers dressed in a reasonable approximation of court garb sat to either side. She began, “Greetings, fair travelers! I am always delighted to welcome guests such as you to my halls, and to offer you such fodder as you may need, but one so regal as me deserves proper gifts, does she not?”
I answered, using only one of my bodies, “That is indeed reasonable, your Serene Highness. Though we travel humbly, all that I have is yours.”
She smiled, with the sweetness of bad honey. “There is nothing within your bags that I would consider fit to give to my drudges. Further, as you rode from the west, you were surely guests of my long-standing enemies who live there, and have most cruelly oppressed my people, driving us off of our ancient hunting grounds and leaving us in desperation.” Her eyes flashed. “Therefore, the only gift that shall do is service. All that you have is mine? Give me one of your attendants to serve me for no more than a week.”
“You shall have one,” I said, and sent one of my bodies to kneel before her, and the Princess's mouth opened wide, and she swallowed my body whole with one gulp.
“Another!” she cried out. “Your debt is not nearly discharged!”
“You shall have one,” I told her, and sent another body, which she ate in the same manner, and then another, and then one to each of her courtiers, and then a fourth and a fifth to her, as each time she cried “Another!” and I replied, “You shall have one.”
She drooled and wept and howled and finally there was one body left. “Another,” she said, slurring it a bit. “More, I haven't had anything this good since the surveying expedition came this far west, or maybe the royal hunt that came north, or-”
“You have had enough,” I said, and I let my eyes glow and my claws show, and I stood up to my full height, and the Princess of the Hidden stared in shock.
“I didn't know,” she said, “Forgive my discourtesy, sister of mine from afar.” And this I had heard of the hidden people- that they were truly gregarious and considered all we who had reason to fear the sniffings of the bullman or the old man of the third eye their kin. “I had no intention to rob you of anything, and I shall surely make good for your eaten slaves, for my treasury is open to you.”
Her eyes narrowed. “And yet I must know, impertinent as it may seem- how did you cross the prairie so openly? How could you mask yourself for so long?
I said, “Is that truly a subject for the open court?”
She said, “Very well,” and clapped her hands and dismissed her court. “Let us adjourn to my chamber,” she said, and took my hand in hers and led me down the corridors. Her room was furnished very simply by contrast to the near-splendor of the court, and I sat down on the floor directly. “Now tell me,” she said.
“It is a long story,” I said. “Much of it concerns matters of philosophy, but it is that philosophy which has allowed me to travel here.”
“Nobody likes the overly coy,” she said. “Spill the beans.” So I did.
This is what I said to the Princess of the Hidden:
"You know, I am sure, that in the lands between the great rivers they say that we, you and me, are each one of the Incompletes, and in the southern wastes, they would call you and I Devils, and say we are filled with malice and wickedness. We are a wrong existence, because there is something lacking from us, or we are a wrong existence, because we are filled with the essence of villainy. The philosophical mind can reconcile these with effort, but toss aside philosophy and we can see that at the root, all parties define us as existing wrongly, but disagree entirely as to the reasons why, and this definition is entirely absent of our actions.
Nor can they agree on our origins- they say that we must have come from that which is outside the world, but all things which once were not and then were also must come from that which is outside the world, and so all things and all people would be lacking or villainous in this way. But perhaps they mean that we emerged as a whole from the outside. Look at the scorpion people of the rocks and mountains! Their mother was of this world, they were made entirely within this world. Look at the blood-drinkers, and you will see the same. But they are also like us, they are lacking or are villainous.
I tell you, everyone wears masks. We choose our words, we choose our actions, and we make a mask that sits atop all the things we could say or do. But the mask can come off. For many of us, it does come off. You, O Princess, show a face to me that is not the face you show to your people, nor to the nomads, nor to the people from across the mountains, nor to your lovers and concubines. Each mask is different.
But we, you and I, we have had masks made for us, and they have been nailed into our faces, and this is the source of the pain and the weariness we feel, and it is this mask which makes those whom you call the people of order fear us deep in their souls. The nails dig into our flesh, and so it cannot heal, and they suppurate us, our bodies and our wills. The mask you bear is that of a demon who eats people, and you cannot resist the demands of it forever, and so you and your court swallowed my other bodies one after the other. The mask I bore was that of a thing which looks like a person but really is simply an appendage of something which is not, and for over a thousand years I, too, lived within that mask and bled and was suppurated and abode by the mask which was placed on me.
I would masquerade in one form to lure mortals to some thoughtless deed, then reveal my full glory and condemn and destroy them. I would find the desperate and the weak and offer for them to become a part of me. I would fight the people of some village who had transgressed against my laws, then return again and again when they feared a repetition of the transgression. In all of these actions I thought that I was serving my own will, that I bore the sharp face of justice to contrast the simpering face of the gods who were invoked against me, for the one whom I had knelt before and served, the one who I had seen destroyed, was gone and no other had a claim upon me. In this I was a fool."
The Princess of the Hidden asked me, eyes glazed over, face slightly orange with nausea, “And your mask came off?”
“Not by itself,” I said. “But the details of that are less important at this time than another question- who made the mask? Who nailed it in?”
"Listen to my witness, for I was there when the gods warred with one another. They fought over trifles and great things, they disputed with good claims and bad, but in the end their battling destroyed the world, and all of them were dead and in hell. It was only then that they made peace, and sought to make good the wrongs they had done to one another, and they summoned the world's spirit herself in so doing, and they sought to make a peace that would endure, a treaty that would preserve the world from a violent death. But all of them wished to preserve their masks as much as possible, and to keep their definition of who they were in the new world as much as possible.
But they had all been destroyers of the world, even the ones who defined themselves as just, or as peaceful, or as good. And many had enemies their selfhood compelled them to fight, for if they didn't fight said foes, they would not be who they were. And the peace was crumbling as soon as it began. Then some among the gods spoke up and suggested a way. They said, ‘Let some of us accept the role of the enemy, so that any god who needs to fight shall have them to battle,’ and they made a mask, the image of evil, and they said, ‘This is the Devil, who caused all evil in the world. This is the enemy of all good gods, this is the destroyer, this is the cause of all our problems! Only defeat him and the world will live again!’
And they took one of the gods who had many enemies and few friends, who had done more than many as far as destruction went, and they held this god down and nailed the mask of the Devil to him, and they broke each of his bones under a block of stone and gored him and suspended him from a spiderweb. And these gods with their bloody hands said, ‘The Devil needs mortal slaves just as we have our mortal servants, just as evil as he. Who shall offer up their children for this?’
And they became tyrants in that moment. One goddess offered up her furry children with their stubby horns, who she had been forced to bear, and the tyrants took them, and then from among the tyrants the Black Eater came forth and flayed that goddess, saying, ‘One who would offer up her own children, her flesh and blood, and give them away is surely as evil as the Devil’. And one offered up her scorpionlike children, and when they had been handed over, her throat was crushed so that she could only speak haltingly, and one of the tyrants jeered that she must be as stupid as the Devil to have done such a thing.
There were others, and all of them were mutilated and debased by the tyrants, and in this way initiated into their ranks, for the mutilation and debasement made the masks which were hammered on, and to them was offered power over the children they had given over, so long as they worked to keep their children within their masks.
Some without any such children offered themselves up, and some were dragged out from the mass of the gods, but all were nailed into their masks, so that the gods might have enemies who were not part of the world, who could be beaten and slain without that hurting the world. And some of the gods cut parts of themselves off and made these to bear their own deeds, and to be monsters for other gods to fight. And there were others who were not gods, and we were mostly dragged up in that same way and so stamped and nailed and put into place.
But the tyrants understood that those who had been nailed would struggle within the mask, and seek to escape it. Others would believe that there was something behind the mask, and so try to pull it off, and so they came together and made a spirit that would be responsible for lying and deceiving, who they called GBAJI. And GBAJI would direct the nailed to blame the unnailed for the pain and the bleeding, and the unnailed to never fully see where mask ended and flesh began, so that both would torment each other. And they trusted GBAJI with this.
The spirit of the world saw all these deeds, saw the tyrants make themselves, and for a breath she stood still, and then she leapt upon the god who had been nailed within the mask of the Devil, and she howled and struggled and bit and sucked and by putting on such a show pulled the god out from the mask and hid him within herself, where she healed them and appointed them to high office, pretending to give birth to them. ‘This is Time,’ she said. ‘They shall rule over all of you. You shall be bound by Time, within the limits of my laws, and Time shall be restrained from destroying you.’ And she took various petty gods and loosed them from their bondage to the tyrants and gave them to Time, and from them Time made the days and the weeks, the seasons and the hours, the years, the minutes, the heartbeats, and the aeons.
And Time addressed the tyrants, saying, ‘The agreement you made I will abide by.’ They held it up, and said further, ‘Read it well, for every clause and every article shall be enforced in full.’ But none of the tyrants who read it could understand it fully, and though they wouldn't admit it, they knew that they had missed something. And Time remarked, ‘You shall have all the authority you desire within the limits of this treaty, and you shall reign over the parts of the world you have claimed, and you shall not be overthrown, for not only shall all the other gods be obliged to come to your aid, but so shall I. And my power shall be everywhere and in everything, and I shall be able to act where your authority does not reach.’
And the tyrants were cheered, and so too the other gods, but less so. And then Time said, a smile on their face, ‘You shall neither be overthrown nor destroyed, but you may be hurt, wounded, maimed, or diseased, and only your own powers shall prevent this. And if you are hurt beyond your ability to repair, I and I alone of the gods here shall be able to heal you, and you will have to place yourself in my power for this to happen. And the terms shall be subject only to my mother and myself.’ And the tyrants were dismayed, and so too the other gods, but less so.
And one of the tyrants begged the spirit of the world, saying, “Is there no way to escape the authority of Time?’
And the world-spirit said, ‘Time only has authority in the world of matter and the world of spirit. Find a world that is neither, and you shall be free when you are within it.’ And she said further, in a whisper, ‘But so too does all of your authority exist in those worlds.’
And the tyrant gulped, and went away, thinking of how they would have to drag all of their court and all of their mortal slaves and all of their property to this mysterious world when they found it, and the spider and Time shared a chuckle.
And-"
The Princess said, “So that's all it is? We are under the dominion of evil gods, and we simply need to kill them? And this Time bitch too?” She spat. “Is that rain as well?”
“You interrupted,” I said. “That isn't it at all. Freedom-”
“Save it, sister,” she said. And then she bent forward, wailing and keening, and her struggle was visible to me, and probably audible to all within a mile. At last she disgorged the last of my bodies she had eaten, whole as she had swallowed it down, and with the one body I lifted her up in my arms and with the other I went for water and a bucket.
I laid her down on her bed, and she glared up at me. “You're working for them,” she said. “You tricked me into eating you, and you turned yourself into poison within me, and-” I pulled off my mantle and wiped her face clean with it.
“There is no them,” I said. “You ate five of my bodies, which would be a lot for anyone even if they weren't denser and richer than a human's. That would weigh heavily on anyone's stomach.” I arrived with a bucket of water, and I dipped my mantle in the water and washed her face. “Then, of course, there is the shock. You saw me and thought I was multiple people, because I-” I sent my other body over to clean the remains of the vomit off the floor. “I didn't read as a fellow monster on your senses, now did I? And yet you ate my bodies as if they were people, going against the mask that has been applied to you, if only lightly. And that has your stomach upset both consciously and unconsciously.”
I sat down. “Now. I have on me a little charm that a friend made, and the spirit within knows how to treat this kind of digestive problem. The price for this spirit is that I will sit beside you and finish my sermon. Otherwise I shall depart and leave you to digest those parts of me as best as you can and in your own time.”
“I'll cough them all up,” she said. “I will return that which I stole, and all that my courtiers did too, and-”
I am not proud of what I did next. I spoke in the voice that Goodears once called “The Attorney General”, and I said, “That's not an option you have here. You can take the spirit in exchange for that payment, you can refuse it and I will depart, or you can try to attack me.” I took hold of her forearms and pushed them down onto her. “And nothing else. Pick one.”
She roared at me, like the lion of the grasslands, and her voice was strong indeed. But I had my own voice, and I released her arms and called forth the Laugh. Softly, quietly, I laughed, and her roar was louder, but her hands didn't rise, her claws didn't come forth, and the roar weakened and halted.
“Give me the charm,” she said at last, and I pulled it out from within my shirt, and handed it to her, and loosed the spirit. The ill-ease of her face began to recede at once.
I said,
"Freedom. There are the tyrants, the rulers of this world, and they hold dominion over you, and they once did over me. I told you that I was a fool in all my deeds, thinking I did them of my own will. This was not because I was having my reasoning fed to me, or because I was like a puppet dancing on a string.
I sought in truth to rebel against what I saw as repression, and yet I couldn't rebel in truth. For the tyrants said, with the mask they nailed on, that I was indeed their enemy and thus the enemy of their people, and so how could I rebel? If I fought against them, I was doing their will, and if I tried to submit to them, I would be put under their will and made to play that part again. That is the power of GBAJI.
Before one can rebel or obey, one must know what it is one is rebelling against or obeying. Nothing can be done without first escaping the power of GBAJI. The luminous being Nysalor, neither god nor man, sought to liberate, but GBAJI deluded him, and the eclipsing being Arkat, supposedly god and man both, sought too to liberate, and GBAJI deluded him, and the two were set against each other, and in that battle GBAJI drove onward, a whole part of the world was laid to waste, and not even the slime of gorp could be found there.
For the tyrants too are beguiled by GBAJI, for they made masks for each other and fastened them on, and so they put themselves in GBAJI's power, and GBAJI, faithful in faithlessness, deluded them as well. So you might speak of slaying the tyrants. Very well. Their deeds are indeed bloody and horrific. But first, escape the mask, and then see what you think about them, and know that they are nailed in too, casting about in the sea of deceit.”
I paused for breath, and the Princess said, “And how do you escape the mask?”
And I said, “You cannot do it by yourself, and nobody can do it for you. It is only with you and another that the mask can be pulled free. It can be agonizing as the nails come out, but agony is not proof of it either. It begins with recognition. The awareness that you are not alone."
“Of course I'm not alone,” the Princess said irritably, and I stood up from the bed.
“I have finished my sermon,” I said, “and I will now depart as I agreed.”
“Finish the story, at least!” she said. “I know that can't be the end of it.”
I sat back down and continued,
"Very well. There was once a goddess who was nothing but light, without color and pure, and she and her siblings flew across the sky, and she looked down upon the world of matter and wondered at what it contained. But the darkness also looked up at the light, and each thought the other the antithesis of their being, and so the darkness sent forth a champion, and the goddess fought the being of darkness, slew it, and was wounded, falling from the sky and into the depths of the dark, and the blood of darkness mingled with her blood when she fell, and every being of darkness recoiled from her when she stood up again, for she was both light-and-dark and thus an abomination.
She fled deeper, seeking the way out that the being of darkness had used, and she ventured to the edge of darkness, the end of matter, and took one step beyond. It was here that she found the Changing Power, which stirred the world and kept it moving, and she touched the Changing Power and realized it was hers, and that the Changing Power was also the powers of Reflection and Creation. She changed her light to one that wouldn't hurt the creatures of the dark, and rose again to the world of the light, changing color and shape and size for the pleasure of it, and the ruler of the world tried to drive her out, but she aided those he had oppressed and they overthrew him.
She sought merely to establish a place of her own, but then came another who sought to rule the world, and he called upon the GBAJI-power and so pulled her from the skies. She tried to rise again, and again, each time smaller and with less of herself, but eventually she was broken into tiny pieces and left that way when the tyrants usurped the great treaty.
These pieces were so small they could be mistaken for mortals, and so many of them entered into the condition of death and rebirth. And a conspiracy of mortals, acting unwittingly, found some of the pieces and tried to make a sword with them, and they picked out a girl to make into the hilt and the scabbard of the sword, but the girl was also a piece of the goddess! The pieces recognized one another, and they reunited in joy. And they threw off the mask of the sword-and-scabbard and were, for a brief moment, before she made a mask for herself, of the “made being”.
But she was still missing most of herself, and though she had remnants of the wisdom and the knowledge that she had won, something drove her outward and beyond, where she dove to the greatest depths once again and found herself in the highest heights. She faced the world-spirit, who taught her how to see GBAJI and know his deceits. She rescued an old friend from a desolate prison. She met Time and acknowledged they shared the Changing Power, the Turning Power that spins the hourglass, with her.
And she went further beyond. She pulled off all her masks and embraced her tormentors and she spoke with the Creatrix of All, who charged her with this mission: to return to the world and strike off all chains and bonds, to heal all unhealing wounds, and to proclaim the power of Creation to all. And so she did so for me, and within the light of true freedom, I saw that I wished to aid in this mission too. And from there to here is only a marginal little thing in comparison."
The Princess looked at me. “And you came here to strike off all chains and bonds? Or is it to heal all unhealing wounds?”
I said, “You were hungry and I fed you. You were sick and I healed you. Has anyone done that for you before?” She was silent. I continued, “I am still as I was before, and I am also more, and I am free to be otherwise. And should I take this joyful change, this emancipation, and hug it tightly against my bosom and keep it locked away?”
She said, “Go. There is nothing for you here, with your mad laughter and your talk of joy and emancipation. I couldn't protect you from my people even if I wanted to, and you would offer up all of yourself to feed them. For your own good, I exile you from my principality.”
I said, as I was leaving, “I will honor my exile, but look at the charm I left you. If you ever wish to speak with me again, it will guide you.” And I left the city of the Hidden, and I followed the Sun's footsteps across the prairie until I came back to the GHQ. I practiced words as I went, and when I reunited with the bodies of mine I had left behind, I had revised my notes substantially, and was ready to rest before setting out on my next journey.
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