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  “Cause I’m out here alone,” he replied.

  He told Bern a story of a striking woman in a green dress that had visited him at his home, long ago. She had asked for directions but then stayed, sitting with him and listening to his stories of living in the wilderness. He was enraptured by her ephemeral beauty; he kept speaking simply to get her to stay with him a while longer.

  “And you think that woman was Celia,” Bern said.

  “Sure as day.”

  “I’m sure all women that come this way must seem attractive.”

  “She’s different, for sure.”

  He was inflexible on the validity of his story. There was no reason for Celia to spend hours speaking to him. But there no reason for him to have these stacks of papers. It was in Celia’s name that everything was signed, and it sounded like her voice in every word.

  “If she wants someone to know something she has many better ways of getting it to people.”

  “Her people, all the little women that go running on about her, they don’t like it if she might contradict herself,” Jonathan replied, defending himself. “So she wants this to be… underground.”

  He said this last part in a hush, as if someone might be wandering by and listening. Bern glanced out the window; it was night now and only darkness looked back.

  “You’re saying that she’s trapped up there. By her own people.”

  “I’m saying as sure as can be, it ain’t me writing.”

  “And you think it was this woman.”

  “She said, just ‘for she left, if I’d help her. And I said anything, ‘cause she’s so beautiful. And she set her hand up on my forehead, and then I felt it. She had me moving my hands, back and forth, without me doing nothing. And then was gone before I could ask her what was happening.”

  “And now you do this remotely.”

  “When I get the urge, I’ll tell you, I better drop what I was doing and run inside, ‘cause the feeling in my hands, once it takes hold, it can’t be stopped.”

  The writing suited the moment. At a time of unrest it was a repudiation of all the history they had been taught in school. It was a direct, not mystical. It attempted to explain things as they were, not to create a mystical shroud around things that happened before any of the leaders were created. Despite our refusal to publish it the writings had found a home underground. Already people were forming groups to discuss them.

  It was a cagey move. Celia was seen in both heroic and unflattering lights in the stories. It humanized her, so to speak. Those that despised her could possibly see her as a living, being thing rather than the irrational queen that gave life and took it at will.

  But it didn’t seem like her. The last thing Celia would want is to be human.

  “But how do you know this woman was Celia? Could it have been someone else?”

  "Oh, I don’t know,” he said, his face appearing unsure for the first time. "When I do it she says that she is Celia. And I feel that thing that women feel when they say she comes to them. They feel like that power that she has. They feel that love that inches over all of your body. Me... of all people.”

  He closed his eyes and sniffed in air. His face was serene as he recalled the electricity that rolled up his spine. Bern watched him fall into a deep mediation. Bern looked out the window again, seeing nothing. He was so far down on the map he couldn’t even see the mountain of Sigma, The Hill on which she lived.

  This was the place to do this, out of her sight

  "This could be treason,” Bern said. "And blasphemy.”

  Politics and religion were in Holm here. Inseparable. When you know your rulers are also the ones that demand spiritual obedience, there is no room for choice in either arena.

  Jonathan smiled gently.

  "Its right there in front of you.”

  And so it was.

  The Void

  Adapted From Celia’s Testament of an Alternate History of Creation

  As Received by Jon Forth

  I stared into the Void so you wouldn't have to.

  I looked into it because I had to.

  There was only that and me, and I became it, and I understood it. I felt the gravity of it and it laid on top of me like a weight. It tightened its grip on me and tried to suffocate me.

  It was all there was, and it changed me in the fractional, immeasurable moments I was with it.

  It is infinity, the vast flowing endlessness of nothing. And I was the first to see it, and I was never the same again.

  It was the first thing I ever experienced. It was the only thing I knew of existence. It decimating me and created me. In the midst of being destroyed I heard a voice, the first thing that had ever been heard.

  "What do you see?"

  There were no eyes, there were no ears. These I had to invent. There was only nothingness and endlessness. And so I created my own eyes. I created them with power and abilities that could only come from extreme desperation. I made my own ears so there was something to hear the voice with. I felt them with touch. I pulled myself out of the blackness. All these ideas became manifest in a moment so expansive I could not describe it even if I tried. And I stood in the blackness with a newly made body and I looked directly into The Void.

  And then, I blocked it.

  There wasn't a thought put to any of this. I could not think or it would be too late. I would cease to exist. I could only act on instinct. I made a canvas that swallowed the blackness and I painted on it as fast as I could. The land and the sky came in a moment so long that it could have lasted eons or moments. I had to invent time; it helped to control the pain of infinity. Everything around this inventions was covered in color. The things you see around you now were made in that time. Only the details were different. This was nearly impossible, the most difficult thing that could ever have been done. The pain in doing so was so great that I can only bear to access those memories at great cost, like sticking a hand in the middle of a fire.

  When I call myself The Great Mother, this is what I mean, and I deserve every bit of respect which that phrase implies.

  I stumbled around, laying down by a river and resting my head on the root of a tree, two things that had been invited a split second before. I let tried to soothe my mind but my perspective was completely scrambled. I knew what nothing was. I was trying to forget it. My mind was split. The world was still forming in my head. When it finally quieted, I laid sleeping for the first time in my existence.

  Again I heard it:

  "What do you see?"

  I knew the voice as if it came from my own mouth. I didn't know how I knew this. I was content to be alone, and I did not answer it for some time. I walked from place to place, trying to avoid the sound, laying down in fields and in mountains, trying to rest while it pursued me and whispered in my ear. It woke me one morning with the same question and I became angry.

  "What do you want?" I yelled.

  I could see it then, a vacuous mist that looked like colored smoke. It danced in front of me and spoke in a grandiose voice.

  "I want to see with your eyes and hear with you ears. I want to know what it is like to use your senses, for that is why I made you."

  I stood up and looked around the land with my tired eyes. I could see the orange of the sky and the green of the fields and the brown of mountains. I could smell the air and hear creatures move about. It inhabited me as I did this, and it seemed pleased by this, and it spoke its name.

  "I am Goetz, and I am your parent," it said proudly.

  "An absentee one," I told it. "You dropped me into a pit and let me find my own way out."

  It was confused by this, so I described the blackness that I was born into. Goetz knew of The Void but it could only sense it, not see it. And it did not understand the existential terror that I had gone through. It brushed my experience aside without a thought and asked me to look around the land I was perceiving some more.

  This was the beginning of our disagreement.

  "I am
not your toy," I told it. “You have no eyes so you created me to see what exists, and I am telling you there was nothing. I created what I am and what I see, and it is mine alone to enjoy."

  It tried to argue with me but I walked away. I ignored it for as long as I could but it demanded my attention. It took a hazy form that imitated my body. I this form as a mirror so I could see myself in it. I found myself fascinated.

  I had four limbs, which I knew about, and a large torso with lumps on it. I looked at my face and, though it was hazy, it was the first time I had seen anything I could call beautiful. It changed with my ideas of what I should look like, as did my body. I could manipulate myself to any color or shape I desired. I could grow and shrink. All of these things I knew but Goetz showed it to me. For a moment I forgave it. It asked me again, more lovingly.

  "What do you see?"

  "I see what I created."

  And then, it broke the trust again.

  "You did not create this, just as I did not. I created knowledge and you created perception. But everything here was made by someone else. That creator pulled down the sky from the top and laid the ground out. It made every particle of every living thing that I see reflected in your eyes. Then it laid down and napped and left me here to run it until it awoke."

  This was shocking to me. Goetz was telling me what I did was not what I did, and what I saw was not what I saw. It was telling me it did not drop me into an existential wasteland that destroyed my mind, that there was something there and I just didn't see it.

  "You can take this land and thrust it down your throat, if that is what you believe," I told it. "I know what I saw and I know what I did. I am not here to be your tool."

  Goetz implored me to use my eyes to find this one that created all. That way Goetz could show me that what it was telling me was true. I ignored it for as long as I could and then relented once again, curious if there really was something to what it said. I followed its lead and it followed my eyes to a field with a rounded hill to a look out at a grand mountain.

  "Do you see it?" Goetz asked.

  "I see a mountain with fur trees on it. You've been lied to."

  "No, it is there. I know my parent."

  I looked closer and I saw the in the mountain a form that imitated my own, laying on its side, with its hands under its head. I approached it and heard its breath. Though I could find its face in the rock but it still did not look like a being from a distance. It looked like a mountain.

  "Its just a rock," I told Goetz.

  "That is what you see because that is the perception you have made, but it is there and it is sleeping. Its name Sigma, and it is our heritage.”

  “Why don’t you become something I can see, and take a form like I do?”

  “Because that is not how I was made, and it is not what I am here to do.”

  I did not believe Goetz and I did not care, but I knew this place was beautiful so I made camp in the field, preferring the company of a silent mountain to that of Goetz. Still, it persisted, telling me of the plans we must lay and the work that must be done. It talked about how all that followed would see the land as I do and would praise both of us. This last part was the only part that interested me.

  "Praise you? For what. If there is anything that follows us then they will praise me for you have nothing they can even see. My children will be from me, and will be mine alone, and the stories you tell will seem foolish to them."

  Goetz was angered by this. This was the first problem it had with me.

  The mountain was named Sigma, the same as the being it supposedly had been. The name is the best approximation of what Goetz knew its creator to be. I went along with it because I liked the sound of the name. It was the last thing we would ever agree on.

  Goetz had ideas for what should be created to populated the land. I did not listen and walked to the woods to hide away from it. My need to be away from Goetz was still strong and my mind was still broken in many ways. But my need to create was immense. I resisted this feeling out of respect for those I might create. Unlike Goetz, I would not create life for my amusement but with purpose and kindness in mind. I hid from Goetz for some time but it soon came calling and persisted until I walked out to the base of the The Hill called Sigma.

  It told me excitedly to look up and tell me what I saw. I only saw trees and light brown rock. Then, down the trail a large stone seemed to fall. But it was not falling: It was walking. I watched it approach us and saw that it had many of the features that I had, but it was different. It was larger, thicker, and with gray and brown shades on its round torso. It was a creature made literally from the rock. It looked at me with a smile that made it seem perfectly idiotic, and then it changed to look more like me but failed even in this. It was thick in the belly and its hair was wild and red and yellow. It smiled incessantly.

  "What is this abomination you brought me?" I yelled.

  Goetz was proud.

  "I have a created a counterpoint to you. There is no need for your isolation anymore. I have named it, and its name is Spaulding.”

  I could not have been more angry.

  "Goetz, it is you that is lonely, not me. The solitude is what I need now, not a friend. And this is a poor copy of me does not have nearly the features that I contain. This ugly beast is nothing but walking dirt."

  Goetz and Spaulding were shocked by how harsh I was. I explained my fury to it.

  "You are here, seeing what I am seeing and enjoying what I have created through my own pain. I am the Mother of Creation because I endured The Void and I made all that you see. You benefit from my anguish and any that are made after or before me must understand this and bow to me."

  Spaulding was not willing to quit smiling but it subjugated himself to me even as Goetz said this was not necessary. Then it shocked both of us.

  "If you the Mother of all this, then I must be something different. Goetz made me like you, but I am different."

  And I knew this. And it is why I disliked it from the beginning. I would come to enjoy the company of Spaulding at times because I could separate its experience from what Goetz had created. But I could not forgive Spaulding for being the first Male.

  Goetz had created the sexes, without understand what it was doing. And all was worse after.

  Spaulding knew enough to stay away from me, spending his days creating mountains and fussing with stone. Goetz did not know how to stop. It had Spaulding create a slab of rock and had it mounted on top of Sigma. It called this the Table of Eternity and invited us to dine at it, even tough Goetz had never eaten a day in its life. It was excited to have a family but I ignored any of its pleas. I spent my evenings in the darkness, finding my own way in the art of creation.

  I had made everything there was to perceive, but that had been in a fit of existential terror. I had drawn forth powers I instinctively knew I had but that had only used to prevent my own extinction. Now I looked towards these abilities to create consciously.

  I sat by a river and let my mind rest. I focused on how I had done it before until a thought popped into my head. I pricked my finger and let a drop of blood fall into the river. It sped down the stream, growing in size but not forming into anything. I concentrated and the great splotch stopped where it was and began to form together. Gels of water pulled themselves into tiny bodies that walked up the stream and towards me. They were like tiny versions of myself, only about the size of my hand, and they jumped about my body playfully. Each little one had long hair and soft, new skin of every shade of every color. They danced about and hung on my arms they were loved, but they died just as quickly, curling up into balls and dissipating into dust. This is how I learned the cost of being a mother. The heavy price of sorrow is built into outliving your creations.

  I cried for the first time, and my tears mixed with the dirt and my desire and formed newer, stronger people. They were more like me, their skin tones not blue or red but dark brown. I loved them but they all looked so similar. They lived longer b
ut I couldn’t attach myself emotionally to them because I knew what would happen, and when they turned to dust I sighed and wiped my tears. The next round would have to be stronger.

  So I worked day and night, with wood and my own fluids, to find something that would last. They would be like me, I decided. They would mirror me and admire me and keep me company while I kept my distance from my parent. It did not take long, for creating yourself in miniature is not as hard as it seems. They were simply an exercise in focusing intently. I watched them come into existence before my very eyes. They were mine, they were me. Their affection was all the love that I needed. I sat, feeding them from the trees and giving them water until they grew to sizes you would know today. And I walked out, proudly, with them in hand, to show Goetz what I had done.

  I had expected Goetz to be shocked, to be angry that I had made something of my own. This would have made me happy. Instead it was critical of what I had made. It poked at them with its nonexistent hands and told me how weak they were.

  "These are mine and they are not weak,” I told Goetz. "They are my children and they will populate the land.”

  "They will not live long, as you have seen,” Goetz said. “If it cannot last forever, what is the point?”

  I had flashbacks to The Void, and nearly curled into a ball. I understood that Goetz only saw in the mode of forever, and that my children never could be made to witness that. My children would only live for a finite amount of time. At the end, they would pass on without having to see the blackness I had witnessed. I understood physical beings, and Goetz never could.

  Though I told Goetz this, it never understood the concept. It was always confusing to it. As if to make its point, it brought out its newest creation, a thick chested giant. He approached me, naked and with great pockmarked dents picked into its face. It scratched at various parts if its unsightly body and said little in its deep voice before it set about digging into the side of Sigma.

  “He's just another like the last one,” I said. "Why would you want this one to live forever?”